Splatoon 3’s Grand Festival has concluded and it proved to be a fantastic event for all involved with concerts, chaos, and colours as players duked it out over several game modes to decide what was more important: The past, Present, or future. It was a celebration of Splatoon, and in a way, a fantastic send-off for the 3rd game in the series. What was the Grand Festival like? Get your tickets, ink up, and stay fresh as we take a look at this weekend’s event!
The Grand Festival festivities actually kicked off before the weekend when Grizzco Industries put out an employee notice to participate in a big run to defend the Grand Festival Venue. The target? Splatoon 3 players had to gather a culmination total of 700,000,000 Golden Eggs in some very challenging runs during the great salmonoid migration. Being a model employee and not being one to say no to Mr Grizz, I put on my uniform and rolled up my sleeves along with my co-workers, and started fighting off the salmonoids. Upon returning to headquarters, I was shocked to see the Golden Egg counter had maxed out 1 Golden Egg shy of 1 billion! The Grand Festival was saved and would proceed thanks to Grizzco Industries’ efforts, and as the Grand Festival commenced, it was announced that players actually achieved over double the target number with over 1.5 billion Golden Eggs collected!
A celebration was in order and upon arriving at the Grand Festival location, I took a look around the event to find out where all the vendors were and to get the lay of the land so to speak. The event was set up with paint waterfalls splashing players as they entered the Grand Festival and there was an amazing gold sculpture at the entrance signifying that this was a very special event. I headed on through the gates to celebrate at the concert which was a collaboration between the superstars of the Splatoon games. We had Deep Cut, the Squid Sisters, and Off the Hook all performing together and the crowd was going wild. Splatfest players had exclusive access to the stands behind the crowd, or those looking to party could wade into the crowd and emote along with the songs. I checked out both, and after taking some drone shots of the concert, I decided to join the fray and cheer along with the rest of the attendees.
After Partying for a while and reveling in the celebrations, it was time to get to work to fight for Team Future. I fought against the best of them in some standard matches, before diving into the Tri-colour battles. This was actually my first time experiencing the Tri-colour battles of Splatoon 3 and I was blown away by how cool they are! It’s a 2v2v4 situation where one team defends, while the 2 smaller teams attack. I was on the attacking team for the first round and on top of trying to secure the Ultra Signal, I also had to be mindful of making sure we dominated the paint coverage too. As a roller main,. I made sure to ink our base before heading into the thick of it. Competition was fierce and I would hate to admit it… but the other teams came to play! This was the most intense and challenging battles I have ever experienced and every inch of paint was hard fought.
We managed to secure victory with the help of the other team before moving to defend. I was blown away by how hard it was considering the defending team is the largest. Everyone was playing for keeps and our team managed to secure victory the first time, but unfortunately fell in the 3rd round. I played a fair few tri-colour battles before the Grand Festival was drawing to a close. To be honest, I was sad to see it end.
The only good thing about its ending was finding out the results of the Splatfest. I was so anxious to see if Team Future would secure the win. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be… we weren’t even in the race and it was neck and neck between teams Past and Present. Team Past ended up securing the win with Callie and Marie delivering a special message to the players. While it wasn’t the outcome I had hoped for, after fighting against team past on several occasions, they put in the work.
Team Past winning was really a bittersweet ending to Splatoon 3, returning to the game that launched this incredibly successful franchise, and looking back to just how far the series had come. It’s not the end of Splatoon 3, as the game is only 2 years old, but it is the end of regular updates. What does that mean? It means now we will see previous Splatfests be recycled which isn’t a bad thing, and most likely won’t see new content until Splatoon 4 inevitably launches on the Nintendo Switch’s successor hopefully sometime next year.
While the past may have won the Splatfest overall, it looks like Splatoon players will be looking forward to the future of the Splatoon Franchise. Stay fresh!
