Actually, I think it's very likely that the reason Owl had references to the vote system splatfests use, is because starting in 2022, Nintendo started using a single engine (ModuleSystem) and S3 was the first developed on it, with TOTK later too which Owl is built off of
Midori was probably not wrong per say, it did have references to the internal vote system Splatoon has. Why that is the case though, your guess is as good as mine.
Not really, in one dev interview Inoue pretty much implied that they would keep developing multiplayer focused experiences in the future. It's pretty much likely they're already developing S4 or at the very very least at the planning stage
I'm the person who found out about Owl and I really don't think so, the source for these leaks all came from a former leaker who had exploited a vulnerability back in Spring/Summer 2024 and the vulnerability was fixed sometime in August 2024
It could also just be that the very early conceptual work was delegated to EPD5 or used EPD5 related frameworks to test stuff. But given it's built off the TOTK engine, anyone's guess is as good as mine
This is 100% a possibility, as far as I remember (although I haven't data mined anything Splatoon related since Grand Fest) the NSO directly references the server side Splatfest related features, so if OOT's NSO app was built off of the S3 one this could also be a possibility
As a quick reminder, this is why we had guessed both projects were related to Splatoon or built on top of the Splatoon engine. It would be interesting to see if OOT still has the references to "voting"
teapawt.net/OctaDatamine/status/18…
Spiral was Raiders as confirmed via datamines a week or so ago, which we thought at the time was meant to be S4.
Owl was actually OOT's remake all along and not an EPD5, but rather an EPD3 project. We will probably never know why in 2024 it had references to EPD5 or the internal vote system Splatoon uses in splatfests.
Splatoon 4 therefore doesn't have a rumored codename anymore
dang this is really surprising considering owl was initially revealed to have been an EPD5 project (the division that works on Splatoon and Animal Crossing) but still really funny we had the name literally 2 years in advance
such a shame because its a really cool special conceptually if only it didnt blind you and make you overstim in adhd : the game