It’s not really the complete SC3: AE roster if Olcadan isn’t a part of the DLC.
I believe Dante means the whole roster as regards unique movesets. There's still plenty of time for Namco to include mimics if they choose--since they only need create the models, a couple of simple art assets, and a tiny bit of coding for such characters, I think it would make sense for them to at some point add a third pulldown menu (such as is currently used for CaS and random selections) to the character select screen, with this pulldown menu allowing the player to choose Edge Master, Charade, or Olcadan, per their preference, to truly round out the SE-SCIII main cast--and all of this added as one of their patch freebies to all players.
Mimics don't really bring much to the party at the end of the day, and would not go over well as pay-for DLC, but one can hope for something like I describe above; they represent a significantly larger amount of effort when compared against those handful of CaS freebies they have released for free thus far, but at the same time, a truly trivial amount of effort when compared against a character with their own moveset. And there's no reason they couldn't dole a new one out every few months. Of course we've seen no indication Namco has plans to do this, and there have been SC games without mimics before--this just strikes me as just about the only way they could do it.
Yell is more likely ダンピエール (Dampierre. The last three characters on their own are how "yell" is transliterated to Japanese. Transliteration to kana is weird like that.) than Hilde.
Ehhh, I guess that's not
exactly nothing, but I think "is more likely" is quite a stretch... Dampierre is one of the least popular characters in the series, arrives in the original narrative significantly later than anyone we've seen hinted at for DLC before, and would not seem to fit any of the patterns and design priorities of the devs as demonstrated so far. To me, this is a little like speculating that "Star" is Necrid because he comes from another star system. Sure, I guess, but there's just too much arguing against.
I really feel like Hilde and Algol are going to have to wait. If they are indeed adding Rock, then it would make far more sense to include Hwang and Li Long than it would for Hilde and Algol. Having the complete SoulCalibur III: Arcade Edition roster, which is arguably the best, but definitely most complete, roster we've had in the series, would be an amazing achievement for this game to reach, and a great way to cement its place in history.
I realize that Hilde and Algol are more unique, but that's not stopping them from releasing Cassandra and Amy in the season one pass, so uniqueness isn't a qualifying factor, it doesn't seem like. I know I've been one of the louder preachers of narrative over the past year, but all signs really do point to narrative having significance over unique styles, particularly with the return of Rock, and the possibility of having both Hwang and Yun-seong, which certainly opens the possibility of having both Li Long and Maxi.
We have so many other "clone pairs" already, to leave a couple out just seems pointless, since they're differentiating them even more in this game than they ever have before (even though SoulCalibur III was already differentiating them a fair bit, especially Hwang and Li Long), and this is a throwback to the old times, it just makes perfect sense for everyone to be included, and given enough to set them apart.
Yup, I completely agree--but then I've been arguing since the beginning that they were likely to close out the SE-SCIII main roster before considering SCIV characters, and as soon as I realized there was a configuration of the likely picks for the six codenamed characters that would allow them to do that, and composite the SCIII:AE cast as a consequence, it seemed all but a lock. Every indication here is that their approach is stretching towards reconstituting all of that core cast from the original narrative arc of the first half of the franchise.
But I also agree with all the smaller details you stress there. Calling a character a "clone" because they have a similar weapon is just not accurate--not with regard to this series anyway. Li Long played very differently from Maxi in SCIII:AE, with Li Long lacking Maxi's speed, guarunteed strings, and overall combo capability, instead gaining slightly increased range and a fair bit of zone control from his dual-nunchuku style. And Yun-seong has played markedly differently from Hwang since his first appearance. And that was without the tools that they have presently for differentiating characters.
Between the complexity of movesets in contemporary SC games and the advantages of Soul Charge, I am no more concerned that Li Long will duplicate Maxi, Rock will duplicate Astaroth, Cassandra will duplicate Sophitia, and Hwang and Yun-seong will duplicate eachother than I am concerned that Nightmare and Siegried or Kilik and Seong-Mina duplicate one-another. The devs for this series demonstrated ages ago how similar weapons (and indeed, these exact pairs of characters) can coexist in a given game and play quite differently with enough attention to detail--and they have more methods (and success) in accomplishing that goal in the current game than ever before.
