Full showcase of the Street Wave Wrastor skin animations made last year to coincide with Rivals' Heat Wave event. Based off the various side events and inspirations from the AZ venue.
*Lucas and Wrastor from Rivals of Aether are walking with each other. Wrastor is walking faster than usual.*
Lucas: Hey, what's the rush?
Wrastor: I hate this road. I want to get out of here as quickly as possible.
Why?
The road's haunted, man.
...are you serious?
Yep.
*As they keep walking their usual speeds, Lucas hears a crack, from his feet.*
*He looks down to see... a skull fragment, with a mix of blood!*
*Lucas catches up with Wrastor.*
*As soon as they both leave the road, an unknown spirit appears! It seems to be the person in Wrastor's story, since half of their head looks like it's been blown off...*
First batch of VS. portraits made for Rivals of Aether's Workshop Pack update in February. This was the first time I ever professionally did something this grand, and I'm glad I was able to do it.
Additional help was from @thisisellian.
Fun fact: clairen can actually jump the same number of times as wrastor, the character whose whole gimmick is that he has multiple jumps.
This is due to the fact that she has two specials that refresh her double jump in mid air - if she lands a grab, her double jump will be refilled, and if she lands a counter a counter her double jump will be refilled. She can’t chain grabs or counters to get infinite jumps, but she can counter and then grab or grab and then counter to get two double jump refills. This means that she has 4 total jumps, the same number as wrastor.
Jump refills are really cool!!! They let you do nutty combos, and if someone tries to break your combo YOU CAN KEEP THE COMBO GOING MWAHAHAHA
I love clairen, she’s so much fun
If any other character can jump refill let me know, I think it’s an incredibly cool tech but so far I only know that clairen can do it
The only tech I learnt from other people is wavedashing and her true combos (down tilt into itself, down air into down smash), everything else is home grown Randy-certified tech
I think my number 1 fear for the Rivals 2 story mode is that they pull some 'twist reveal' where Loxodont was actually being spoken to by the abyss and made evil that way the whole time and he's so-called redeemed at the end of the game. I'm already pretty sure he's going to be playable since he's the big bad of the series, and god I just want some proper villains in the roster.
I think a big part of why the Rivals cast always has contrivances and abyss trickery making them fight each other is that almost none are at all bad guys. The closest we really have are Sylvanos, who is more of a force of nature than anything, and Elliana, who I'll be real was and is completely justified fight me. The closest we have to properly evil characters are like Zetterburn and Wrastor who are major figures in groups that pillage and raid other civilizations, but that's almost never really focused on lore-wise.
I think with the Dungeons of Aether characters coming to Rivals 2, we could see some good variety there as well; Artemis would be a breath of fresh air in this regard, as she's almost comically evil in how aggressive and power-hungry she is (and she's great for that.) She definitely comes off as a 'hero-by-circumstance' instead of a proper do-gooder, and I think that'll make her much more interesting in the Rivals 2 lineup.
Also while we're at it give me unique voicelines for certain matchups. There's a few characters who have well-established rivalries/other relationships, and with how they're finally really characterizing the cast in-game, I want to see them go that route with some unique bits of dialogue. Doesn't have to be anything much, but something like Elliana sounding more bloodthirsty and aggressive against Wrastor or Maypul acknowledging Sylvanos as the powerful being that forces her people to stick to the treetops would make them game so much more lively. I'm sure we'll at least see more of that in the story mode, though, even if not actually in-game.