Most leaks point out for less than 30, so it will be most likely something around 27 + guest.
I really don't see Namco making more than one guest character and if is in fact Zorro and they wanted a second guest, I doubt they wouldn't bring it from One Piece itself.
All in all, 24 character o launch is not awful, specially considering how much work a single SC takes.
Given how that supposed "former employee" explained it to me, a second guest would come as DLC (akin to Tekken 7 which got a second
and third) but they didn't have or offer anything specific other than it's a female character makes it seem like the character probably isn't also from One Piece because I feel like that kind of thing would at least be known and was part of the deal with Zoro they likely would have known about to some extent, and said character wasn't even completely decided on yet other than a criteria to pull from that they wanted to include a female guest finally.
Like I went into on a previous post, two big criteria that guest characters on SC have never filled are anime/manga characters or female characters.
In regards to females, KOS-MOS was planned as one on III from what I recall but was settled on being creation parts, while Bayonetta was set to be SCV's originally until they realized she'd break the game and be overpowered by design if they were faithful with her, so they went with their second choice, Ezio, and settled on having Bayonetta's character designer Mari Shimazaki design outfits for Ivy, Tira, and Leixia instead.
If you want my opinion and speculation on the matter.... again, assuming that person was actually telling the truth to me, then I could easily see 2B being that second guest since it's a female character who's highly requested, and was originally highly requested to be Tekken 7's third guest character, being second most requested only to Kazuma Kiryu. Annnd neither was chosen there for that.
Which brings me to another point....
When has the fanbase ever highly requested (or rallied for) a guest character for Soul Calibur
and actually got them before?
Soul Calibur guest characters specialize in the WTF factor and unexpectedness, but are popular and bring some kind of reaching interest with every one of them, with no single criteria being repeated yet.
If 2B does wind up being a guest character, I would quicker believe she come later than originally being the one at launch.
I suppose my point is that I've had some time to process and reflect on the possibility since it's still an uncertainty and none of my Bamco contacts can currently confirm or deny any of the things that person sent me, so all I'm left with is to think "Well, what if?"
And that "what if?" brought those thoughts there.
