It’s almost summer, which means we’re headed for hot days on the beach, outdoor concerts, and frantically shooting paint guns at giant salmon armed with frying pans.
What, is that not what your season looks like?
That’s how my summer is going to shape up, thank you, because on July 23 I will be playing Splatoon Raiders on Nintendo Switch 2. Splatoon Raiders is a single-player-focused spin-off of the wildly popular Splatoon trilogy, and while it features similar gameplay, a lot of the game’s other elements are very, very different from what we’ve grown used to in the other Splatoons. Specifically, Splatoon Raiders looks like it will be far more story-focused than even the single-player bits of Splatoons 1, 2, and 3, which means it’s a good time to brush up on our collective Splatoon lore and come up with some wild theories together!
The Splats so far
It’s been a bit since Splatoon 3, so maybe you’ve forgotten, or maybe you just never cared much about Splatoon lore to begin with, so here’s a quick recap. Splatoon takes place in a post-apocalyptic version of our world where humans have died out, and after an event known as the Great Flood, a new race of cephalopod-based humanoids have risen to take our place. These creatures are known as Inklings, if they’re based on squids, and Octolings, for the ones based on Octopuses. These creatures are able to shift back and forth between a humanoid form and a cephalopod form at will, with the latter being able to swim in ink and move quickly and the former being able to operate guns and other tools. This is useful, as the favorite pastime of these creatures is to engage in various forms of sport that involve ink-shooting guns that splatter the play space in different colors, allowing for contests like Turf War (covering as much space in your team’s color as possible), Tower Control, and a capture-the-flag mode known as Rainmaker, among others. Oddly, none of these creatures are able to survive in regular water.
Outside of their sporting interests, Inklings and Octolings love to dress up and listen to music, and their world includes robust fashion scenes and concert scenes not unlike our own. They can also hold down jobs, such as working for a company known as Grizzco Industries to collect eggs while fending off the warrior-like Salmonids, who are (of course) another sapient race evolved from salmon—put a bookmark in this, we’re coming back to it shortly.
Splatoon 1, 2, and 3‘s story content thus far has involved a lot of different conflicts that don’t really seem to relate to what we know of Splatoon Raiders juuuust yet; it’s mostly about someone continuously stealing the Great Zapfish that powers Inkopolis and puttering around in a lot of ruins of the old human world. But worth mentioning is the music trio at the center of Splatoon 3: Deep Cut. Deep Cut consists of the Octoling Shiver, the Inkling Frye, and a large goofy manta ray named Big Man. The three initially appear as Robin Hood-esque bandits in Splatoon 3, hunting treasure in human ruins and using it to support the poor and needy. By the end of the game, they’ve teamed up with the player to face and defeat a bigger threat.
The Salmons we know
This gets us to the start of Splatoon Raiders. We know the game kicks off with Shiver, Frye, and Big Man finding a treasure map of an area called the Spirhalite Islands. In keeping with their previous love of treasure hunting, they set off with a mechanic (the player) to start a hunt, but their helicopter crashes and they’re forced into survival mode. Unfortunately, the islands are also inhabited by Salmonids who don’t seem thrilled that they’re there, so the player has to fight them off while also trying to get off the islands with a boatload of treasure.
And…that’s basically what we know about the plot of the game! One other thing that’s been pointed out by fans is that the Salmonids in Raiders seem to be a bit different from the ones in regular Splatoon. Splatoon 2 and 3 feature Salmonids based on spawning chum salmon, while Splatoon Raiders‘ salmon look more like sockeye salmon.
Where we’re swimming
The minimal knowledge of Splatoon Raiders’ story has not prevented fans from creating all sorts of theories around the game’s potential lore and setting. One element that many have seized upon is the scene in the trailer where the helicopter crashes. In it, just before the crash, Frye remarks on an “odd glow” in the clouds, and the subsequent storm that sends their vehicle flying seems to be concentrated around a gold beam of light that’s still visible in the distance from the Spirhalite Islands.
What’s that glow? We don’t know! But a popular theory is that it’s somehow related to the “three lights,” a lore element introduced in Splatoon 3. A Sunken Scroll in Splatoon 3 tells the story of the Great Flood, and how it nearly washed away the world, “until three lights appeared and united to consume the disaster.” Theories as to what those lights actually were have varied in the time since Splatoon 3, but it could be that the light at the start of Splatoon Raiders is related. This would mean Splatoon Raiders could give us a better look into the very weird and surprisingly deep lore of Splatoon’s world, including how the Great Flood came about and how the Inklings, Octolings, and Salmonids evolved in the first place.
Some people have also pointed out that in that same Sunken Scroll, there are three symbols in the sky, perhaps meant to represent the three lights. The three symbols are the same as the symbols for the three members of Deep Cut. Does this mean Deep Cut stopped the Great Flood? Or their ancestors did? We don’t know, but it does make a lot of sense to tie these two things together given that Deep Cut is at the center of Splatoon Raiders‘ story.
For a game about squids shooting ink guns at one another, Splatoon has always had some really interesting lore going on under the surface, largely contained within its entirely optional collectible Sunken Scrolls, as well as various pieces of set dressing across all three games. Of course, I am primarily in this for the sick fashion, which Splatoon Raiders better let me wear even while hanging out on a remote island. But okay, sure, we can have some new lore as a treat between splattings.
