It was really just a constant buildup of many things from the very moment those ink splatters were showing up on the Digital Event.
A lot of things could have been said really about how Nintendo were still stuck in the rut of not making many new efforts into some brand new triple A IP. Wii U was generally just hiding the strides for me that year with all the promises of upcoming games and despite that I generally got the nagging sense that this being a floundering console meant that most of the ideas wouldn't be huge dares on their part. But I was surprised enough to be proven wrong.
My first instinct was that it was some sort of sequel to de Blob but Nintendo never owned that franchise, and after seeing the squids I thought it was building up to some sort of Mario game with bloopers... But nope. Instead it's some kid with a paintball gun. I was confused as hell at that point but gradually as the directors went through the game's mechanics and what it's about it just started to hit all the notes.
It felt carefully crafted and deliberate. "Paintball guns" felt like something people would just use to joke around to the idea of Nintendo doing a third person shooter so at first I felt like this was a little bit too clean cut, but then they showed the actual mechanics - the ability to move between the ink, the fact that it wasn't purely around deathmatch, the ability to jump straight into the action and so forth. It just came together like a marriage. The aforementioned Nintendo assumption was thrown together in a way that felt truly like a Nintendo "solution". I immediately felt like I "got" it. And the trailer just sold me at that point. It helped that the game had an instantly memorable style to it. I instantly came to love the Inklings. I loved the looks of it but I hesitated to think of Splatoon at the time as Nintendo suddenly treating the game as their next all-star IP.
But I was, again, proven wrong when it showed up the next time to have a single player campaign in tow. And the constant push that Nintendo's been giving it since. It's affirmed it wholly and fully - this is the next big thing from them that I'd been waiting for. They treated this title with every ounce of respect that they could muster, and I couldn't have been more thankful for that fact. The idea of characters like the Inklings turning into all-star characters for the company has me so excited.
Just the fact that this is the first non-Mario related franchise to get Amiibo alone says so much to me about how they are treating this. And I truly hope it pays off in every way. I want to see this go big, and the fan support is already making me incredibly stoked for that possibility. Here's hoping Nintendo will do good on the game, and that they'll keep supporting it.
@Geistbox summed it up really nicely. It was just a buildup of excitement. At first I thought it looked odd, yet interesting. I was a little annoyed it was getting so much coverage at E3 but I understood why, and it eventually just grew on me. From then, I was excited to see any news about it and I was hoping for a while that a Splatoon forum would pop up but I didn't actually find out about this place until this year. I'm happy I signed up because it looks like a lot of people are eager to play and chat about the game, and I'm betting the game and community here will be great.
