Adventure Mode: World of Light

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World of Light
The World of Light logo.

Adventure Mode: World of Light (灯火の星, The Star of Light) is a single-player mode in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and the successor to the Adventure Modes in Melee and Brawl. The mode is accessed from the Spirits main menu item and revolves around the fighters teaming up with Spirits to defeat an "ultimate enemy" named Galeem.

Elements

Galeem and his Master Hand army

• At the beginning of the mode, a cutscene shows all the fighters except Kirby being defeated by Galeem, followed by the World of Light logo. A second cutscene then shows the fighters, now imprisoned by Galeem, being used as molds to create puppets to contain spirits of non-playable characters who did not survive the attack. Afterward the game transitions to the world map, with Kirby, the only available fighter, at the starting point.
• Similar to The Subspace Emissary, the mode features a world map that may be navigated. Map navigation is unlike The Subspace Emissary but somewhat resembles Smash 3DS's Classic Mode: the player character has a fully rendered model on the map, and the character themselves (rather than the player) navigate on predetermined paths between map locations. Galeem appears at the top center of the map, surrounded by what appears to be a forcefield.
  • Both spirits and imprisoned fighters appear on the map as rendered icons, with one type of icon for spirits and one type for fighters. Moving up to and interacting with an icon will reveal which character it is. Opponent fighters (including puppet fighters) appear with distinctive red eyes both on the map and in battle.
    • Defeating an opponent puppet fighter obtains that spirit, and may (but not always) reward the player like in a Spirit Battle, with G, SP, and snacks. Unlike a Spirit Battle, the player may also be rewarded with Skill Spheres. In one piece of footage, an item labeled Health Drain with unknown significance appears on the reward screen.
    • Defeating an opponent fighter (not representing a spirit) unlocks that fighter both in the mode and in the main game. The player may swap to any unlocked fighter through the mode's menu. Uniquely, this is the only way to see the character selection screen with fewer than the starter characters.
      • Mario will always be the first fighter to be unlocked, followed by a choice between Marth, Sheik, and Villager.
  • Items and obstacles appear on the map, including:
    • Treasure chests (resembling those found in Crazy Orders)
    • A waterfall that is swum through by interacting with it
    • A red ! Switch that vanishes when stepped on, transforming a row of Dotted Line Blocks on the map into a bridge of red ! Blocks over lava. The same scene also shows golden ! Blocks, Donut Blocks, and a Warp Pipe.
    • Diamond-shaped objects that teleport the player character to a nearby identical teleporter
    • At least three buildings labeled with the Primary Spirit symbol
    • Various drawn elements that resemble cave entrances and roadblocks
  • Some type of minigame system appears to be present:
    • In one map, the player character collects Food items by moving through them, adding to a counter in the bottom right of the screen. The counter is not seen anytime else.
    • In another map, the player character uses a Zapfish on some type of machine to cause it to emit electricity, decreasing a similar counter in the bottom right of the screen.
  • Bosses are present, but in a few different ways:
    • Rathalos is shown flying next to a treasure chest.
    • Master Hand appears to have some kind of role in creating obstacles for the player: after the player chooses between the previously mentioned Marth, Sheik, and Villager to unlock, he creates two forcefields that block off the paths to the other fighters. In another scene, he destroys a bridge over a river.
    • Galleom does not appear as a rendered model on the map like the previous two, but instead appears as a larger version of the icon used for spirits.
  • The player may zoom out to view the full map by pressing the L button. Areas not yet visited are obscured with clouds.
    • When fully zoomed out, the player character's model is replaced with their stock icon, opponent fighter icons similarly become flat, and various other icons appear on the map. Spirit icons do not appear on the zoomed-out map. In addition, the predetermined paths between map areas become explicitly drawn. Certain paths are drawn with dotted lines; what this means is currently unknown. The other icons resemble a "no entry" sign, different-colored Warp Pipes, a switch with an exclamation point, some type of building, and an unknown swirl-shaped symbol.
      • Some type of non-planar world map travel appears possible, as the zoomed-out map shows two disconnected areas that have been accessed.
  • At least three sub-maps may exist, as these screens show the Back and Menu options but no Full Map option. (In all other scenes, all three options slide off and on the screen together.)
  • Certain other means of transportation are seemingly available via the use of certain spirits, as one clip shows Pokémon Trainer use Lapras to traverse a body of water, while another clip shows the Great Fox traveling through a part of the world map resembling outer space. The bus belonging to Kapp'n also appears parked near a sign drawn on the map labeled "bus stop", and the front car of the Spirit Train appears on some train tracks.
  • One scene shows a shadowy object disappear in a burst of light, followed by a nearby crystal shattering. The significance of this is currently unknown.
  • Numerous drawn elements on the map heavily reference various Smash universes. One building in particular resembles Nintendo's headquarters in Kyoto, Japan.
• The mode contains three endings in total; two of which are bad endings and one being considered the true ending. Initially, the player is given a choice to fight either Galeem or Dharkon, depending on the tree of levels the player chooses; if the player chooses a path that leads to Galeem or Dharkon, this gives one of the two bad endings, depicting the surviving antagonist disposing of the defeated one and consuming the world. If the player chooses a tree of levels that does not lean too far towards either antagonist, Master Hand and Crazy Hand help the player advance; the latter creating a giant rift for the former to enter. Thus, the player is given the ability to play as Master Hand himself, engaging in a Mob Smash-esque match where it defeats 50 enemies similar to False characters from the Subspace Emissary. Although some are colored light blue (Galeem's clones) while others are dark red (Dharkon's clones), both are required to be KOed. If this level is completed successfully, the player is now given the option to fight both Galeem and Dharkhon simultaneously.

Unconfirmed elements

• When this mode is highlighted from the Spirits menu, the artwork on the left side of the screen depicts Galeem, Rathalos, the Werewolf, Balder/the Masked Lumen, and King Bulblin. This context implies that the latter three will have some sort of opponent presence in the mode (if not as a boss). However, of these, only Galeem and Rathalos are actually bosses.

Skill Tree

The Skill Tree is a menu item in World of Light. In it, the player can spend Skill Spheres (スキルのかけら Skill Fragments) in order to learn Adventure Skills. These are effectively power-ups, and appear as icons resembling the stat boost icons found in Smash 4's Smash Tour and Smash Run. Obtaining a power-up also makes power-ups further down the tree available. The player can spend SP to forget a power-up and gain back all of the Skill Spheres spent on it.

Unlockables

Characters may be unlocked through this mode. Playing this mode is required to unlock the ability to train spirits in the dojo or have them explore for treasure.

Plot

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Opening

World of Light starts with a close-up of a Blaster, revealing its aimer to be Fox, which proceeds to warn about his target. The camera then pans to the left, revealing the fighters summoned to the edge of the cliff. Transitioning to behind them, it looks upwards to reveal Galeem with a looming army of Master Hands approaching the mount. After Marth, Zelda, and Pit comment their reassurance over the upcoming battle, all of the Master Hands are disintegrated into a glowing, blue form, soon before being absorbed by Galeem. As the fighters prepare to fight him, Shulk suddenly envisions the downfall of the cast, immediately looking back at them. The singularity between Galeem and his absorbed army creates a black hole, which soon collapses, creating an array of beams of light.

The beams of light quickly extrude from the black hole, rapidly approaching the site. As they aim downwards to consume the fighters, Link successfully reflects three beams before succumbing to another. Samus attempts to unsuccessfully fire towards the beams before being absorbed by one. Both Zelda and Mewtwo attempt to simultaneously reflect the beams with Nayru's Love and Confusion, respectively, before being immediatedly decimated. Sonic and Pikachu attempt to run from the attack, with the earlier attempting to assist the latter in escaping, but both are ultimately desintegrated. Bayonetta successfully dodges three beams at once using Bat Within, but is caught as soon as she is transformed back to her regular form. Both the Pokémon Trainer and Bowser are shown, ordering his Pokémon to use Triple Finish, and using Fire Breath, respectively, in an attempt to supress the beams, only to fail and be consumed by them. Captain Falcon is briefly shown attempting to land into the Blue Falcon to escape, before him and his vehicle are destroyed just as quickly. Lucario is then shown successfully teleporting away from one of the beams with Extreme Speed, finding himself behind Greninja, who jumps upwards to successfully escape from a beam, only to have it hit Lucario, with another reaching Greninja midair. Both female and male Inklings use their Splattershot to shoot ink onto the ground and hide in it, only to soon after have a beam ram into the ground, decimating them. Falco is shown in his Arwing attempting to escape, but is then struck by multiple beams. Both Pit and Dark Pit are shown flying away with abilities given by Palutena, which attempts to reflect an incoming beam with her Reflect Barrier, only to succumb and have the group's flying abilities gone, as each are hit by one beam midair. A cardboard box is shown on the cliff's edge, hiding away Snake, only to have a beam prove his attempt futile. Both Rosalina & Luma and Diddy Kong attempt to fly away from the threat using her Launch Star and his Rocketbarrel Pack, respectively, but both are swallowed by the beams. A group consisting of Wii Fit Trainer, Duck Hunt and Villager is shown, respectively striking a yoga tree pose, cowering in fear as the duck attempts to carry the dog away with Duck Jump, and running in circles in panic, with each being engulfed.

Amidst the massacre, Kirby is shown flying away from a series of beams via his Warp Star. After deviating from many of them, the frequency of the Warp Star's blipping noise increases, having it teleport in its climax, taking with it Kirby, just before a series of beams could surpass it. The beams are then shown consuming multiple non-playable characters, which would later turn into spirits unlike the fighters, as a transition shows the whole planet being consumed by Galeem's beams, creating a massive shine of light that glooms over multiple planets, and soon consumes the entire galaxy. The scenery now shows the barren wasteland in which the site has turned into, inhabited by nothing but spirits that fly over its ruins. A spark of light is shown in the horizon, revealing Kirby as the sole survivor of the attack, taking a rough landing into the ground and his Warp Star disappearing as soon as it collides. As Kirby recovers from the landing, he's shown looking towards the vast landscape in which consists the World of Light.

The scene cuts to a dark room, in which its only source of light is an unconscious Mario being held captive by a series of energy fibers around him. A golden-colored liquid falls beneath Mario, absorbing the fibers and passing through his stand to create a monochrome clone of him on the stand's opposite extreme from the forming liquid. The resulting puppet fighter then disconnects from the base and falls into the ground, motionless. The spirit of a Smoky Progg weaves around the dark room and, forced by Galeem to take control of it through its strings, gives life to the previously inanimate statue, now donning distinctive red, glowing eyes. The camera slowly zooms away, revealing other puppet fighters. The scene cuts back to Kirby, now about to take his first steps into the World of Light.

Trailer

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Gallery

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  Galeem

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  Master Hand

Trivia

• If World of Light's Japanese name has its characters reversed, it can be read as 星の火灯, which is pronounced very similarly to 星のカービィ (Kirby of the Stars), the Japanese name of the Kirby series. Sakurai has stated however, that this was coincidental.
• The cliff appearing at the start of World of Light's reveal trailer is a reference to the opening cutscene from Brawl and the cliff overlooking the Isle of the Ancients and is even used borderline identically, showing all the fighters before changing perspective to look over a sunrise/sunset and an ocean.
  • Also in the reveal trailer, the location where Kirby's Warp Star crash-lands strongly resembles the cliffs used in the reveal trailers for Mega Man, Greninja, and Bowser Jr. prior to the release of Super Smash Bros. 4. This cliff area is further shown to overlook the area in the background of Battlefield.
• The premise of World of Light is identical to an idea that Masahiro Sakurai considered for The Subspace Emissary in Brawl. He had initially envisioned a story in which a single character survives the annihilation of their squadron and must fight back while rounding up his allies. In World of Light, Kirby is this sole survivor. In Subspace Emissary, there were three survivors (Luigi, Ness, and Kirby).
  • According to Sakurai, the reason Kirby, a character he created, was chosen as the sole starting character in World of Light was because he was one of the few characters who could plausibly escape Galeem's attack (the others being Bayonetta and Palutena, although it would contradict the fact spirits of similar powers did not survive), but was also the most suitable as an introductory character among them.