Do you think the story mode in SC5 is good? (spoilers)

Story mode. Good or bad?

  • Good.

    Votes: 29 31.5%
  • Bad.

    Votes: 63 68.5%

  • Total voters
    92
I don't understand to this day why fighting games refuse to fully explain to us its own systems. Instead, it offers us a bunch of uncontextualised non sequiturs buried in some menu somewhere that we're supposed to seek out and make sense of ourselves. SCV's training mode is better than most in this regard to be fair as it does contextualise a handful of "main moves" in training mode.

Honestly, I think that has to do with the fact that the designers are stuck in the mentality of "you should work to figure this out" which is frankly, stupid and detrimental to growing the playerbase. (read that- I didn't say work was stupid, I said it's stupid in this line of thinking.)

Also I think that if they explained the systems outright, they'd have to answer for stupid design choices by spelling them out. Key example? Korean Backdash Cancel in Tekken.

Tekken: In order to backdash, press back back, but beware you will be open to hits at the end of the backdash animation! If you are afraid of taking hits, use back back then downback to cancel the dash into a block!

Player: Is there any reason for me to use normal backdash then?

Tekken: Not really, no.

Player: Well, why wouldn't you just make normal backdash work that way?

Tekken: BECAUSE SKILLS LEARN THESE POINTLESS HIDDEN SKILLS ROAR!!!
 
Honestly, I think that has to do with the fact that the designers are stuck in the mentality of "you should work to figure this out" which is frankly, stupid and detrimental to growing the playerbase. (read that- I didn't say work was stupid, I said it's stupid in this line of thinking.)

Totally. Those who are inclined will find out anyway, all they're doing is preventing a potential fan from ever scratching beneath the mashy surface.

They by no means have to go into the depths you described, but come on, at the VERY LEAST teach me how to GI and why it's useful ffs.

VF4 on the PS2 did this pretty well if memory serves. I distinctly remember getting a few people into it after lending them it and telling them to go through training, it got them up to speed pretty quickly. Though it couldn't have been that significant since they took it out of 5...
 
Totally. Those who are inclined will find out anyway, all they're doing is preventing a potential fan from ever scratching beneath the mashy surface.

They by no means have to go into the depths you described, but come on, at the VERY LEAST teach me how to GI and why it's useful ffs.

VF4 on the PS2 did this pretty well if memory serves. I distinctly remember getting a few people into it after lending them it and telling them to go through training, it got them up to speed pretty quickly. Though it couldn't have been that significant since they took it out of 5...
VF4: Evolution was sooooooooooo much better, and probably the best training system of any fighting game. Even better than Tekken's, honestly.

It seems Patroklos compares a lot to Yun-Seong, personality wise, and even story-wise.

They're both stubborn as a mule, and even though people try to teach them some sense (Setsuka in Patroklo's case, and in Yun-Seong's case, Talim, Seong Mi-Na, and Hwang) they disregard it and do things anyways.

And with power, they both can easily be manipulated.
 
Heck, they even have similar builds and are almost the same height.

And frankly, taking Mi-Na as talking sense in the first place would be rather dumb of Yun-Seong. Talim is more understandable. As for Hwang, Yun-Seong was shaken- and was then told, go find out for yourself, which was what Yun-Seong did in IV.
 
Honestly, I think that has to do with the fact that the designers are stuck in the mentality of "you should work to figure this out" which is frankly, stupid and detrimental to growing the playerbase. (read that- I didn't say work was stupid, I said it's stupid in this line of thinking.)

Also I think that if they explained the systems outright, they'd have to answer for stupid design choices by spelling them out. Key example? Korean Backdash Cancel in Tekken.

Tekken: In order to backdash, press back back, but beware you will be open to hits at the end of the backdash animation! If you are afraid of taking hits, use back back then downback to cancel the dash into a block!

Player: Is there any reason for me to use normal backdash then?

Tekken: Not really, no.

Player: Well, why wouldn't you just make normal backdash work that way?

Tekken: BECAUSE SKILLS LEARN THESE POINTLESS HIDDEN SKILLS ROAR!!!

To be fair, I think back dash cancels are a glitch that they decided to just keep in.

In general stuff in Tekken is pretty straightforward. The only stuff missing is frame data, which is a bit too much. The manual tells you movement like sidestepping and the like, but honestly you have to be an idiot to not grasp the basic system after messing around for a bit.
 
Eh I felt it was kind of bland and waaay to cliche' for my taste.

Key things that irritated me...
-The lack of characters. I really was hoping that we'd get to learn more about the characters but nope, the people who got the most story time was Patrokolos (who was very annoying), Pyrhha who takes Mary sue to a whole new level (though I do like her), Tira (she was pretty good in the story until she mysteriously vanished), Elysium (meh), and somewhat Ivy.
-The way the story progressed. Seriously, it was like watching an overdone anime overrun with every cliche' imaginable. And it felt like it went by way to fast.
-How Leixia, Xiba, Natsu, and Maxi got such a very and I mean VERY small part. And I swear, Xiba sounded like such a dumb ass it was funny. I really wanted to know more about these newcomers so I can form some sort of fondness for them but that didn't happen...
-That the story ended up creating more question and hardly answered ANY previous questions. Like... How did Cervantes become human again? Did Mitsurugi ever get to challenge Algol? Where has Edge Master been all this time? How did Patrokolos learn Setsuka's style? (I think this one is BS though. They most likely did this to justify her style returning instead of creating a replacement for her but meh). Is Nightmare really Raphael? Did Raphael ever find Amy or discover that Viola really is Amy? Did ZWEI survive his fall? (I'm sure he did thanks to the help of good old trusty Ein) Is Cassandra still alive? What were the details of the fall of Wolfkrone? See what I mean? Way too many questions that went unanswered.

This story to me was disappointing but I'm sure in SC6, they'll fix things and answer some questions. Really, it just depends on the individual. Some liked it, others didn't, some are indifferent. I would categorize this story as either a hit or a miss. You choose?
 
Wow, did this story mode piss me off. There were so many plot holes, nothing was explained or brought to the light, and the majority of the characters in the game were either hi and bye appearances or just left out altogether. I seriously thought that Patroklos was going to be an actual character that I would enjoy but instead made me hate this douchebag and not to mention Pyrrha, who whined, complined, and cried all the time about what to do. Tira was pretty good and actually helped the story be somewhat watchable but once she was gone, it was all downhill from there.

I didn't mind Z.W.E.I. so much as he was a more tolerable character in the story mode and we all would've wished to learn more about this guy but he gets taken out as quickly as he was introduced. We don't know why he has such a beef with Graf Dumas or why he's traveling with Viola. And speaking of Viola, she's given very little to do, despite Tago and Daishi saying that she was going to be a main character in the storyline, talk about having egg all over your face about that one. Siegfried's only role in story mode was to be nothing more than the old mentor character to Patroklos' student character (think Mr. Miyagi and Daniel-san in Karate Kid only with no kind of chemistry whatsoever). I felt as though Siegfried should've had a much better role in this game other than I'm the old mentor and I pass Soul Calibur onto you because it no longer chooses me anymore.

Aside from Siegfried, the other veterans in this game are either not being represented as they should in story mode or not even mentioned at all. To prove what I'm talking about, let's start off with Ivy, who was perhaps the only recognizable veteran in the story that was given something to do. She only gave exposition regarding the Kali-Yuga and Dvapara-Yuga as well as doing nothing afterwards. Then we have Maxi, poor Maxi was reduced to babysitter to Natsu, Xiba, and Leixia, and we're really not given any information on these three either or why they are with Maxi as well as how Xiba ended up with the Kali-Yuga and Leixia wearing the Dvapara-Yuga. Then there's the exclusion of Mitsurugi, Cervantes, and Hilde and I was wondering where Setsuka was since Patroklos now inherits her fighting style and she wasn't mentioned at all in the story, at least that's how I see it, not to mention there was no mentioning of Cassandra and EdgeMaster's random appearance

Finally, there's the villains, one let down after the other. Graf Dumas being the new Nightmare wasn't really fully explained or why he became an overlord of such looking to destroy anyone that was "malfested" and as well as some theories of Raphael being Graf Dumas/Nightmare. Then there was Voldo and the new Astaroth, they clearly served no purpose other than being filler and quite frankly, I wasn't even expecting them to even be in the story mode, much less this game as they were clearly hi and bye appearances that didn't further the story's progress. Finally, we come to Sophit--I mean Elysium, who clearly manipulated Patroklos into killing his own sister and later wanting to fight him because he now has a conscious of his own. All in all, these villains were just bland and made me not want to root against them, let alone root for the hero either.

Conclusively, This story mode was terrible beyond imagination. Nothing was explained or resolved, the characters weren't fleshed out and complex, and the cutscenes were just cut and paste sepia toned sketches. The 17 year skip really threw the continuity and establishment of the series way out the window and is seen as a debacle by most fans (just because Tekken did it for their third installment of the series doesn't mean you can have the same results). The setup was there but the payoff fell flat followed by a thud. Overall, this story mode has to be the worst and many have made comparisons of this story mode to that of MK9 and Blazblue's story mode due to the setup, timeline, execution, and payoff.
 
The story mode idea it self wasn't bad, but the result is.
-The mode only focus on Pyrrha, Patroklos, Tira and a bit on ZWEIT.
-Natsu, Leixia and Xiba have absolutly no important story involvement while they are new characters and replacements.
-The whole story tuned out very cliche.

I don't think this kind of story mode should be developped in fighting games or not in that style.
When the story is over develloped, this always tunrs out to be silly or stereotipical.
I got more involvement in Tekken 2 story thanks to the character bios, endings and opening sequence. Seriously.
Let the imagination make the rest of the story...
 
Cervantes become human again? Did Mitsurugi ever get to challenge Algol? Where has Edge Master been all this time? How did Patrokolos learn Setsuka's style? (I think this one is BS though. They most likely did this to justify her style returning instead of creating a replacement for her but meh). Is Nightmare really Raphael? Did Raphael ever find Amy or discover that Viola really is Amy? Did ZWEI survive his fall? (I'm sure he did thanks to the help of good old trusty Ein) Is Cassandra still alive? What were the details of the fall of Wolfkrone? See what I mean? Way too many questions that went unanswered.

This story to me was disappointing but I'm sure in SC6, they'll fix things and answer some questions. Really, it just depends on the individual. Some liked it, others didn't, some are indifferent. I would categorize this story as either a hit or a miss. You choose?
This this and fucking this.
 
I think they had a lot of good ideas and just didn't have time to incorporate them all or in a well-paced fashion. I wish they would have taken more time to get the story down 100%, even if it took another month or two to release it.
 
If they let it out two months later they'd be competing with SxT.

Which would be suicide, no matter how much better the game would be.
 
If they let it out two months later they'd be competing with SxT.

Which would be suicide, no matter how much better the game would be.

True, I hadn't thought of that. I'm still hoping to see some kind of story-mode DLC, but I don't have my hopes too high.

Damn you, Capcom! XD
 
Soul Calibur should probably just pull a Mortal Kombat and reboot the whole series.

Yeah... Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh.

I'd like to respectfully disagree. Soul Calibur is a bit of a mess at the moment, but it certainly isn't irreparable. I already love SCV, despite its flaws, I think it was a massive improvement on IV in almost every way. And I have confidence that SC VI will improve on it and hopefully explain the loose ends.

A reboot could be cool, but what happened to Moral Kombat is rare. A reboot typically isn't very good. It could be nice, though, to start fresh. As long as my favorite characters stay in it. XD
 
That's exactly what I've been saying the whole time. It worked for MK, why not SC? I think their should be a petition for a reboot for Soul Calibur.
I wouldn't support it to the point where I would sign a petition, but I think it would be easier than fixing the mess that SCV made with the story.

It's not unrepairable by any means, but I think a reboot would be a fresh, current-gen look at the story.
 
Odashima just confirmed that the story mode was supposed to be 4 times bigger than what we got:

http://train2game-news.co.uk/2012/0...ed-size-each-character-was-to-have-own-story/

Thanks a lot, Namco.
"'Actually, some of the voice-overs are already taken but haven't been used, so we want to make use of it somehow, but we don't know how that's going to be.' [Daishi Odashima] said."

Everyone is unfairly scolding Namco for something that was not within their physical bounds to accomplish. From this article and the interview, Namco seems to have taken the story VERY seriously. And from the quote above, it seems as though Story Mode DLC isn't as unlikely as some of us thought...
 
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