I Want Apartments in Splatoon 3

(relaxing instrumental music) - [Vic] Hey guys, it’s Vic! And welcome back to another peaceful day in Splatoon 2! I’m (chuckles) sitting outdoors in this nice chair! And now I’m sitting outdoors on this little skate ramp! And now I’m sitting outdoors on the floor over by Sheldon’s Shop! Are you seeing a pattern? Because I’m seeing a pattern. Everywhere that you can go in Splatoon 2 is outdoors, and I’m here today to explain why we’d benefit from an additional indoor hub in Splatoon 3. And by an indoor hub, I mean apartments. I want apartments in Splatoon 3, and you should too! I’m here to convince you of that. Let’s go! Now before I get started, I wanna make it clear that I don’t think we’re gonna see Splatoon 3 any time soon. I wouldn’t be shocked if we see a spinoff first, or some kind of other game in 2021 or 2022.

00:55 - Maybe we can get lucky, and it won’t be nearly as long as our friends in the Animal Crossing community had to wait, you know, nearly seven and a half years! (laughs) I wanna push the idea of apartments today as a convenient hub world for you to be able to play the game more effectively, and to have a little bit of customization at the same time. Okay so, we’ve got plenty of places in Splatoon 1 and Splatoon 2 that support the idea that inklings do live in or around the stages in the game. Take Moray Towers for example, Moray Towers is a parking garage. If inklings, and octolings post expansion we can assume, are driving around, they have to live somewhere nearby. Maybe Flounder Heights from Splatoon 1’s map list? If we include Flounder Heights, the apartments are right there. They’re right in front of our eyes.

01:47 - We know that playable inklings in the game are 14, ‘cause that’s the age when they can finally control their squid kid ability. We’re talking about, honestly, a post-apocalyptic society here after all, we’re letting 14 year olds carry heavy weaponry. We know that any inkling can make as much money as they want playing turf war ranked all day, so why can’t they drive a car, or earn enough money for an apartment? I feel like the devs were toying with the idea when Splatoon 1 was still in development. The loading screen for Splatoon 1 does show off what looks to be an apartment. Maybe it was meant to be our inkling’s room? There are in-game shoes and gear on the right wall, a small laptop on the table, and even a custom squid shaped chair.

02:29 - Imagine in the future, we can have customized knickknacks or furniture to make every single apartment a little bit unique. And knowing that some of the Splatoon development team originated from the Animal Crossing development team, it wouldn’t have surprised me if they tried to go down this route originally. Even if the customization was simple, like chair colors or different room layouts, you’d have this extra layer of customization that would make your character feel even more unique to you! For creators that love to focus on making custom OCs, this would have been a great way to bring a character to life. Please, please, Nintendo, just let me put my inkling down in a chair in my room! Thank you very much. Let’s see if there’s an example of a game where the hub world is your home.

03:11 - In “No Straight Roads,” available for PC, Switch, and a couple of other platforms, the two main characters live in an underground hub world that consists of your home, and then like, a bunch of other rooms. You feel more connected to the world because the characters you’re playing with are a part of the environment! The characters you interact with in the game, even get to live with you inside your home. Imagine if you could have your friends inklings, and octolings, and maybe even salmonids, hang out at your house. Even if they were just NPCs sitting in your home, I think it would be fun to have alternating players from your friends list, just be sitting on your couch, or a chair, or pick out a snack from the refrigerator, or it just, you know, like in your home! Maybe you could even have a preferred pose for your character to do when they’re in somebody’s apartment. No Straight Roads also lets you have collectibles.

04:00 - For those that don’t know, there are small collectible Splatoon weapon figurines that are actually sold as merchandise in Nintendo World, and other places too, but I usually just find them online these days. Imagine if you could have a tiny little shelf with these figurines on them, (peaceful instrumental music) maybe you would unlock a weapons figurine for reaching a certain number of points on a weapon, kind of like how you get medals in Splatoon 2. If this information was available to your Switch friends, it can be an aesthetically pleasing way to show off all that time that you’ve put into Splatoon 3 with your friends! Our community loves having as many unique NPCs as possible in the game after all. What if there was an NPC made to direct you to your apartment, or maybe to guide you to other players apartments? Boom! (claps) Extra character, thank me later! This could function in a similar way to the Dream Islands that we have in Animal Crossing. Could you imagine a player spending hours of their time making the perfect apartment so others could take a look? I could! (laughs) No longer will those 2,000 hour play times in Splatoon be just for the main game.

05:01 - There could be people who lose a good amount of time visiting other players’ homes just for fun. Believe me, if you could move the furniture, it would be game over! People would spend so much time making their houses like, perfect! You know it, I know it! I would do it. You would do it. Your friends do it. It would be like Animal Crossing 2.0, let’s go. If Nintendo wanted to go above and beyond, (laughs) and please feel free to take my idea, Nintendo, why stop there? What if, through internet connectivity, your home could function like a private battle, and you could like, invite your friends to your home? Again, we know Splatoon did have Animal Crossing influence, so why not? Even if it was minimal, like all you could do would be walk around and enter your squid form like in recon mode, I think this would let players truly immerse themselves in their home. Even if only we could recon in our own Splatoon 3 apartment, that would still be a major upgrade from the hub world in Splatoon 2. Isn’t it nice just saying it? Splatoon apartment. Splatoon apartment.

06:05 - Give us Splatoon apartments! And who knows, maybe you could access Plaza posts from a computer in your home? Again, on the Splatoon 1 loading screen, we do see a computer. Why couldn’t our playable character use that computer to check out all the hottest, newest posts? For those that would miss the Plaza, there could still be a Plaza. Maybe this in-house computer could be a streamlined version of the Plaza to let players see more posts at once, instead of a handful we only get to see in Inkopolis Square. You could refresh more posts quicker, and maybe even look at posts from other regions with ease. It could be an alternative for the current menu in Splatoon 2, which is also used to look at the map rotations and change our character’s appearance.

06:46 - If a computer sounds too farfetched, why not just the squid phone? Just blot that inkling down in a chair, or on a couch, or maybe even standing up wherever they want, and open up that squid phone and do everything you normally would on the menu. If we wanted a simple customization option outside of the phone, what’s stopping you from having a little closet in the apartment? Just walk over to the closet, hit enter, change your inkling’s appearance, and then you can be on your merry way! Just imagine all the different things you could do inside of your apartment. If we wanna add more functionality, maybe Crusty Sean has takeout now, so you can go over to Crusty Sean’s restaurant, ‘cause he’s upgraded since Splatoon 2, you get your food from his lovely establishment, you bring it home, you put it in your fridge, and then when you’re ready, you can eat the food before you go out to play turf war. If you have a television, maybe there’s a home shopping network where you can go ahead and buy all your weapons, and your gear, and everything else you need, right from your own home if you don’t wanna actually visit other places in the hub world. I’m assuming they wouldn’t take away the shops since they’ve always been a big part of Splatoon 1 and Splatoon 2, but you never know, they could try to mix things up in the next game.

07:54 - And the idea of replays could constitute pretty much its own video in regards to Splatoon 3, but imagine if you could use that little laptop to watch replays, your recent matches? People have always wanted a replay function in Splatoon, similar to how we have one in Smash, so why not give it to us there? Imagine if your inkling had a little teeny tiny console, and you can play the old games in Splatoon 1, like Squid Jump! That’d be cool. I could ramble on about little additional ways that could bring the apartment to life, like, all day, I swear! With the development cycle between Splatoon 2 and Splatoon 3 being longer than the one between Splatoon 1 and Splatoon 2, assuming Splatoon 3 is in development yet, the development team will have more time to flesh out ideas. A lot of people consider Splatoon 1 to be almost like a beta for Splatoon 2, a lot of the models were upgraded from the ones and Splatoon 1, and some of the sub weapons and maps made it into the second game. But even with this in mind, I don’t think Splatoon 1 was meant to be a beta, I just think the game came out very late into the Wii U’s life cycle, and Nintendo wanted to take it’s very strong success of this brand new IP, and put it as an early game title on the Switch. I’m sure a lot of people remember that Splatoon 2 was one of the only first party multiplayer games on the Switch for a long time, even through the summer of 2018, as Pokemon, Animal Crossing, and even Smash Ultimate, weren’t out yet.

09:17 - A lot of time and resources went into promoting the game, creating Splat Fests, and making sure there was enough of a unique feel in Splatoon 2 that the game just didn’t feel a 100% like Splatoon 1 but with extra ideas thrown in. With more than 10 million copies sold, we know that the Splatoon series will have another entry in the future. Nintendo has been padding time with the extra Splat Fests we’ve been getting, but eventually I feel like they’re gonna go silent on Splatoon for awhile, and then finally bring us Splatoon 3. And in Splatoon 3, you’ll be able to sit in your apartment hub room, with your friends, and maybe even a pet! Imagine you could have like a pet snail, or some other little creature. We know Nintendo loves designing odd creatures for Splatoon, just look at the train station for Octo expansion! If we could have our own pets that look like sea cucumber, I don’t think anybody would complain.

10:08 - I personally would love to have a pet snail. I’m sure other players in the community would flip out over a pet fish, or maybe if we can just grow some plants! Why not have some barnacles in your apartment? The list goes on and on. So have you been convinced? If you could have an apartment in Splatoon 3, what would you put in it? I would love to have a room with a big window, the sunlight shining down on my hoard of potted plants and my weapon collection. Yeah, that’d be nice. Maybe your inkling’s room could even become the loading screen in Splatoon 3, actively changing as you add or remove furniture from it over time as you play the game. There’s so much potential hidden in the idea of having apartments! If you liked this video, and you want more rambles about my ideas, please let me know in the comments.

10:56 - If you subscribed, you’ll see my videos first too! I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, like, here’s my original short notes for this video before I wrote this script. Thank you for listening and have a great day. (relaxing instrumental music) .