Last November, blogger/exhibitionist Paul Gale revealed PlayStation All-Stars to the world under the codename of “Title Fight“. Then, before the game’s official reveal in April, he divulged a variety of details, such as 8 characters, (including slight surprises like Fat Princess, and Radec), how all of the combatants controlled from a gameplay perspective – even specifying different moves and supers for many of them, descriptions of stages, and other fun later confirmed facts like Battle Royale‘s 3-level super system.

So, in retrospect, it becomes pretty clear that Paul either knows someone at SuperBot, or can see through walls. After PlayStation All-Stars was officially announced in April, Paul continued to give (often obvious) character hints that helped to further validate his source (including unexpected odd-balls like 2 Coles, Toro Inoue, and Big Daddy.)

Why all of this extended exposition? Because Paul Gale has unveiled the final Battle Royale characters that his source has revealed to him, and he shared these characters by pasting a portion of an email he sent SuperBot Entertainment:

25th Anniversary Division:

Cloud Strife, Old Solid Snake PS2 Anniversary Division:

Wander PSX Anniversary Division:

Crash Bandicoot That rounded out the complete list that I was given, tallying 24 characters for the game in total. It was not mentioned to me whom from that list would be available on the disc, as is, whom might be unlockable if you went that route, or whom would me made available exclusively as DLC. Furthermore, it was being speculated that your team was in a negotiation state with Ubisoft, in determining whether to use Altaïr, Ezio, or Connor. Connor was said to be the most likely Assassin’s Creed candidate, as it would correlate with the new game’s release. Finally, Kat’s inclusion was unknown, but being considered after SuperBot began to read fans’ own wishlists across the internet…but unknown as to whether or not she made it in. That’s what I was given. With those last two, IF they made it, and IF all information that was provided to me was as correct as the first batch of 20 that I received periodically, the complete roster of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale would equal 26 when all DLC was complete.

You’ll notice Paul Gale isn’t certain about these last characters, this is because, according to his source, Cloud, and Snake were supposed to be revealed around their 25th anniversaries last month, but were not, additionally, the 20 launch roster confirmation has him puzzled. He’s under the impression that his source may have been fed false information in order to “weed out the mole.”

The most likely explanation I see right now is that SuperBot Entertainment is simply lying to everyone. But why would SuperBot Entertainment pull a Jaffe on us? You see, the excitement surrounding Battle Royale was supposed to be fostered through a slowly revealed character roster, with the intention of gradually building excitement, yet essentially every single character has been spilled prematurely either through Paul Gale, their own site, or the massive beta leak. By causing this confusion, SuperBot will finally be able to surprise us with character reveals.

That being said, “weeding out the mole” does seem like a perfectly good reason to assume none of these characters are going to make it into PlayStation All-Stars, but it seems less likely when the following points are considered:

When questioned via Twitter about Crash’s inclusion in PlayStation All-Stars, Activision responded by stating “SuperBot Entertainment will have more info on this.” When lead game designer Omar Kendall was questioned about Crash making an apperance in PSASBR, Omar replied: “Stay tuned!”

Cole McGrath’s voice actor Eric Laden tweeted earlier this year that he’s excited to be in All-Star‘s cast along with David Hayter, and Nolan North. David Hayter is the voice actor behind Metal Gear‘s Snake(s).

Kat has been leaked more than once, although the validity of these rumors are admittedly questionable.

The idea of falsely leaking so many hugely requested characters seems counter-productive from a marketing standpoint, if they were to feed the mole bad information, it would make more sense to offer characters that we could realistically see in Battle Royale, that don’t have an easily upset tilde wave of fans: Joseph Capelli, Kat, Lil & Larg, and Syphon Filter (there are tons of other good options too) are all perfectly believable inclusions that would have served this scheming purpose better.

PlayStation All-Stars was delayed a month, if SuperBot were to reveal characters at the rate they were, and originally intended, then we’d go a whole month without any character reveals.

And that’s why PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale could have an excess of 20 characters when it releases on November 20th for the PS3 and PlayStation Vita.