Vader & Yoda 'naturally' fit into Soul Calibur IV

You called 'em!

1. More mature/realistic characters have been done in Smash Bros before (Marth, Roy, C. Falcon)

2. Smash Bros has always been about the odd juxtaposition of characters of different franchises

Contrary to this, there is a recurring time-period theme in Soul Calibur, everyone falls in together a little at least. Spawn, Heihachi, and Link somewhat fit in with that continuity (a demon, an Eastern fighter, and a medieval warrior)

Yes. But at least you're smart enough to consider that fact :-)

Sakurai is going to give a postmortem on the character selection for Brawl at GDC:
http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2008/01/15/awkward-brawl-postmortem-wii-fit-panel-announced-for-gdc/

Story-wise Soul Calibur has always taken itself quite seriously for a fighter. It's never been about crazy cross-overs, and it wasn't a recurring decision to do so (not done in SC3). That's what irks me slightly. That and how does a light saber not just instantly cut through anything in its path?

SSB is a completely different situation; the game is based on cross-overs. The story necessitates and, hell, even seems to acknowledge, that it's just a Nintendo fan's wet-dream, and that's your incentive to play.

Looking at Soul Calibur it seems that if you view it as a solid weapon-fighting game the Star Wars inclusion makes sense. I mean, light saber duels are all about crazy-good fighting. I still can't see how a light saber being blocked by anything but another light saber can look... Right. Never the less i'm eagerly awaiting the opportunity to give them a good go and hope they don't break the game.

Heh, one angle i though of, considering how SC games barely seem to evolve from iteration to iteration, is that the Star Wars characters are another way to revive interest without adding something which breaks the fundamental gameplay.

I thought this game involved ninjas and pirate ships.

I... I can't believe I'm forced to argue this point...

Honestly, how is Star Wars characters any further outside the realm of believability than SC already is? After all, in the same era as the rise of the gun (Mitsurugi's storyline), we have valiant knights, ninjas who supposedly have honor (instead of being the historically detested lowlifes), a Tekken character better known for his cybernetic arms and beam katana, and let's not forget some ancient Greece characters and a barbarian, and a couple three kingdoms dynasty characters. And let's not forget the blade handed gimp... That was Soul Blade.... the precursor to Soul Calibur. Soul Calibur merely took it another step.

And after that step, we have the ultimate in fanservice, Soul Calibur II. The one third party game which performed best on Gamecube.... but it took a Nintendo character to do it. Not to mention you have the absurdity of McFarland in general and the second Tekken character to apparently breach time and space to be there. Soul Calibur 3, meanwhile, toned down the cameos in exchange for the bizarre character editor that frankly thought historical accuracy is some sort of sickness and should be avoided like "plot" on the Fox Network.

So when I see Darth Vader showing up in my fighting game, I will readily admit, I had a "what the fuck" moment. But then I instantly thought about DLC and how much I desperately wanted a Darth Maul additional character. Or how much I pray Namco would take advantage of their Bandai side and bring Char Aznable to a fighting game (he is, after all, a fencer).

And it doesn't make any less sense than Spawn. After all, Star Wars has two main sources of inspiration. Westerns and Samurai Films. And how is SC not related to Samurai?

It doesn't really, in the grand scheme of things

But nerds have always had concerns with "continuity" and whichever way you slice it, this is a more significant violation of continuity even than Heihachi, Spawn, and Link

Weird, I was feeling the same thing here earlier today.

No, it's madness.

It's sad to see a series get to the point where the creators clearly no longer care about it. SC1 was obviously a labor of love and the result was a mind-bogglingly great fighting game. We went from that to "let's just shove in whatever the fans want." Have you ever been to an official forum for a game? If so, you probably know that listening to those people is about the stupidest thing you can do.

SC3 was discovered to be broken after one week, so with the obvious indifference of the creators, I won't hold my breath for SC4 being much better.

360 elite + RROD = Darth Maul?