Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom has passed away today at the age of 96, and devoted fans around the world are mourning her loss. But while this is a time for honoring her legacy, it is also a time to look forward. Many are asking what the Queen’s death will mean for the royal family, and more importantly, what it means for the highly anticipated launch of Splatoon 3, which lands on Nintendo Switch September 9th, 2022.
First let’s look at the playerbase. As is well established by anyone who has played Splatoon or Splatoon 2, some of the worst players you can come across are, of course, the British. Whether they’re playing with a tea and a bunch of unseasoned beans in one hand and a controller in the other, we’re not sure. But everyone knows that when you see a union jack icon on your team, you’re upset. So with the loss of their god-leader, Queen Elizabeth II, we can expect that many British citizens will simply be too depressed to turn on their Nintendo Switch, instead looking to maps of Africa and India to remember what they once had.
This means that most games you play should be more competitive, as they’ll be filled with players from non UK countries. On the other hand, however, if you do see the rare Brit show up on your squad, your best bet is to just quit the match immediately and eat the rating loss.
But what about the weapons? In Splatoon 2, the strongest weapon was easily the N-Zap 85. This gun is making a return in Splatoon 3 and is sure to be one of the more powerful weapons there as well. But those following the story about the Queen know that the legendary figure passed away today after shooting herself in the head with a home-made weapon designed to look like the Sploosh-o-Matic — her favorite Splatoon 2 gun — that she had a royal cosplayer 3D print for her. While this is absolutely tragic, because the Sploosh-o-Matic is one of the weaker Splatoon weapons, fans should expect Nintendo to strongly buff the gun in the coming days as a tribute to the late monarch.
The Sploosh-o-Matic will surely be weak for the first few days of launch, and you should still avoid it for now, but hardcore players may want to pick it up in anticipation of the upcoming buff, just to get a good feel for a weapon that they likely never really used in the old game, unlike the Queen.
What about the stages? Those will probably stay the same. Why would that change because of the Queen dying? What? Very odd thing to expect.
Edit: Nintendo has announced an additional stage coming to Splatoon 3, which will take place at the Queen’s funeral. So that’s on us for being so mean about saying it wouldn’t matter. Sorry. Not sure why we came out so hot on that. You were absolutely right.
Well that’s all we know about Splatoon 3’s upcoming meta, as it relates to the death of Queen Elizabeth II! We will of course update this article as more information comes out this week, but in the meantime, make sure to check out the new Queen Elizabeth model of the Nintendo Switch OLED that the company just announced in the wake of her untimely passing!
