Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

I still take the earlier codenames leak for real.

Six codenames, three of which have so far been revealed or leaked to be in season 2 (YELL = Hilde, SNOW = Setsuka, YELLOW = Hwang).
Accordingly, I'm convinced that a potential season 3 will feature the remaining three characters from the codename leak (which I suspect to be STAR = Yun-Seong, STONE = Rock, REPTILE= Lizardman/Aeon) plus guest. Unless they change their original plans which obviously have been made some time ago, but I'd deem that unlikely.
 
WuHT said:
Li Long aint getting no love it appears
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Nothing to say at this point considering the datamine. I'm waiting for that sweet season 3 announcement that can bring the rest of the legacy characters back. If Li Long is a sure thing, I hope his default is shaved head. While the hat is traditional oriental attire, it's not an item of clothing that I think fits Li Long as it's bulky and isn't aesthetically pleasing. It's from his SC3 design so I'm hoping the developers will ignore that look and take inspiration from Soul Blade.
 
The only character I have left on my SC6 wishlist now that Setsuka and Hwang are pretty much confirmed is Li Long, so I wouldn't say he's entirely unloved here lol. If Li Long, Lizardman, Rock, and Yun-seong all come back, that would mean every (non-clone, non-mimic) character from SC3:AE has returned and that would be awesome.

Sadly, the only character I feel very confident about is Yun-seong despite Hwang already being in S2. I just don't think the other three have much demand from anyone besides hardcore SC fans, and I'm sure Namco would rather shove three more guests down our throats than consider adding characters that might not appeal to casuals. -_-
 
Fatal_Exodus said:
Is there a lore reason I missed out on Li Long suddenly having two nunchaku in SCIII or is it purely just for making him unique next to Maxi?
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is it purely just for making him unique next to Maxi
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After almost dying he was traumatized, saved by a girl who took care of him, met Xianghua in which he said he would not return to China, at some point (SC 3) he stopped being afraid and went looking for his love (Chie). It was never explained why he was in Osthreinsburg, but it must be there where he met Taki and she warned that Chie was alive, they stayed together and had a son named Riki (which we do not know his age).
 
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artard4321 said:
I just told them to quit adding guest characters. I'd rather see old characters return or new characters introduced for Season 3.
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I'm just going to reiterate (with emphasis on the critical point) what I said the last this topic came up:

"I'd say that is a pointless effort. Namco is more likely than not to follow this trend into a third season, if there is one--and their reasons make perfect sense from the perspective of a developer: with respect to sales, these characters are pulling more of their own weight. Carefully selected characters from other brands have the potential to generate sales not just for the DLC, but also sales of the core game to people who may have not previously purchased it. I'd submit that you're allowing yourself to fall into a false dichotomy here in the inaccurate assumption that it's a straightforward 'guest vs. legacy/original character for any individual slot' kind of situation, when the reality is that the guest character is doing more than their fair share in contributing to the company's decision to continue support into an additional season.

Besides, personally, I actually think the guests are a great part of the product from a design/artistic angle as well. I mean, the narrative and aesthetics of this brand are so diluted away from any sense of serious storytelling after 25 years of goofy nonsense, its not like continuity or artistic integrity vis-a-vis commercially implanted content are concerns. And one thing to say for PS all through the guest character years is that they have carefully selected and developed characters that made sense not just for cross-promotional purposes, but were also characters that would more or less work appropriately within Soulcalibur's mechanics, while keeping fidelity with their native design from their own franchises. These characters also provide an excuse to tinker with the existing systems, adding some variety and new wrinkles to the gameplay. The results are predictably mixed, and sometimes divisive where balance is concerned (though a perennial topic regardless of guests), but it's hard to argue that at least one guest has become a popular character in every game they've been included in."

And I say (or rather repeat) all of this even though I'm kind of ho-hum on Haohmaru; I know he's been recieved much more postively than was widely anticipated, but I find him to be the least inspired of the guests for this entry. But you know, that's not necessarily a product of him being a guest: we're always going to have favoured/less favoured characters among a given selection.
artard4321 said:
It's almost like saying the SoulCalibur series can't stand on its own without the help of guest characters
. . .
When I bought SoulCalibur VI I expect to play a SoulCalibur game with SoulCalibur characters.
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I mean...they're not going to make a business decision based on some sort prideful stance/sense of purity for the series. Nor would I personally agree that including guests sends any such message; there are countless games which lean on cross promotion and meta-combinations of discrete properties, many of them excellent products. And when your game's main selling point is the actual gameplay/mechanics, and it has a narrative which already is highly fanservicey and flexible when it comes to crazy character set-ups, there's really no reason not to do it.

I know your main objection is that "they can't come back for another entry", but there are at least three reasons why I don't think that's a particularly compelling argument: 1) there are already more characters in the franchise than can possible come back in a single entry anyway, unless future games start doing ten four-character season passes, so what's the difference if there is additional surplus? 2) These styles do in fact inform future characters, sometimes in just a handful of moves, and sometimes (as in Kratos-->Aeon) composing a major part of a new character. And 3) As discussed above, it's not an either/or situation: the guests actually help buoy sales in such a way that we end up with more legacy characters returning because of them, not less.
artard4321 said:
If they have an idea for a guest, it should be saved for SoulCalibur VII instead.
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Except guests are highly time-sensitive, by and large; you want to time them for a period when cross promotional benefits can actually have an impact on sales; that's important both for the producer of the game the content is adapted into and for the holder of the IP from which they are borrowed. Characters are unlikely to be licensed outside of a window where they make sense for all parties, since the cost-benefit analysis shifts considerably thereafter.

weshookhands said:
That's exactly the point. Why would Namco invest in another season and at the same time settle with much less season passes sold than it could have? If we dare hoping for a season 3 in light of the current global economic state at all, the scenario of a guest imo is an absolute economic necessity.

(EDIT: although personally, I'd prefer veterans over guests. On the other hand, I'd prefer another season pass with guests over no season pass at all...)
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Precisely.
weshookhands said:
I still take the earlier codenames leak for real.

Six codenames, three of which have so far been revealed or leaked to be in season 2 (YELL = Hilde, SNOW = Setsuka, YELLOW = Hwang).
Accordingly, I'm convinced that a potential season 3 will feature the remaining three characters from the codename leak (which I suspect to be STAR = Yun-Seong, STONE = Rock, REPTILE= Lizardman/Aeon) plus guest. Unless they change their original plans which obviously have been made some time ago, but I'd deem that unlikely.
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I don't think it was a leak so much as a plant for the purposes of viral marketing, but I agree: I think these were meant to be rough indicators of who was coming. Of course, aside from the specifics of who was coming in what order, those are pretty much the exact characters that were predicted as the likely candidates by many of us as far back as before the game even released; some held out a vain hope as to Dampierre (ugh...) or Zwei (ugh++), but let's face it, if there was going to be three season passes, and each season reserved one spot (of four) for a guest, the likely candidates fore the remaining nine spots were always Tira, Cassandra, Amy, Hilde, Setsuka, Hwang, Rock, Aeon/Lizardman, and Yun-seong--though I wouldn't exactly rule out Li Long as being in contention for that last spot, nor would I say that Algol or Viola are absolute impossibilities (just fairly unlikely).

The real question now (as you allude to above) is whether there is going to be a season Three whatsoever. Several months ago I would have said it was virtually certain that there was one already deep in the planning stages, if not well into initial designs. I think that's still probably true. However, at the risk of being the buzzkill on this subject again, I don't really think that most people are fully appreciating just how bad the global recession we are heading into is likely to get. Even in the (highly unlikely) event that production has already started on some of these characters, it would still not be a guarantee that a Season Three would see an actual release.

I think (and would certainly like to hope) that Season Three is still more likely than not to happen--despite the fact that we still have nothing even remotely resembling confirmation that it has even been planned at any point. But it will depend highly upon factors that we just can't possibly predict at this point. One light of hope is that, despite its high population density, Japan has managed to curb its outbreak somewhat by simply spending like crazy (on top of their already having a very robust medical infrastructure). But the average Namco software product (and certainly the product in question here) needs to sell well in foreign markets, and their largest such markets are in utter free-fall at the moment. If the current efforts to relax lockdown measures in the U.S., U.K. and western Europe prove untenable (or worse), we are looking at a situation where large portions of even the first world will see people struggling to meet their basic needs, nevermind being able to buy DLC content for their video games--and Namco would cut support for the product well in advance of that point if the market trends indicated that level of trouble on the horizon.

That kind of scenario is far from a certainty, but neither is it paranoid fantasy: it's entirely plausible, and the reason why we can't count on anything at this point; and I say this as one of the people who was trumpeting the likelihood of a Season Three before we even knew for a fact there would be a Season 2, because (as things stood then) I thought it made much sense for Namco (and other publsihers of content in this genre) to establish a continuing support model made of numerous season passes as the new standard for fighters. I hate having to take a more cautious tact on this question now, after all of that, just when I felt that prognostication was likely to bear out. But realstically, that's where we are: in highly uncertain times--for content producers, as well as every other sense, unfortunately.

But that little (ok, not so little) digression done: yes, if there is a Season Three, I think we can feel fairly certain on who will be in it: Rock, a guest, and Aeon/Lizardman are all pretty much locks as I see it. The fourth spot is most likely to go to Yun-seong or Li Long, but Viola or Algol would not exactly shock me to the core.

Fatal_Exodus said:
Is there a lore reason I missed out on Li Long suddenly having two nunchaku in SCIII or is it purely just for making him unique next to Maxi?
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He always preferred two: he was merely showing off in Soul Edge. :) All joking aside, yes, I believe the standard presumption is that he was given two to help distinguish his new style from that of Maxi.
 
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From the fandom wiki

soulcalibur.fandom.com

Li Long

In this Chinese name, the family name is Li (李). Li Long (リ・ロン, Ri Ron, Chinese: 李龍, Pinyin: Lǐ Lóng), is a character in the Soul series of video games. He appears in Soul Edge and appears as a bonus character in Soulcalibur III. After the death of the great Eirakutei/Yǒnglèdì (永乐帝), the Ming...
soulcalibur.fandom.com soulcalibur.fandom.com

Soul Edge

After the death of the great Eirakutei/Yǒnglèdì (永乐帝), the Ming Dynasty was left open to plundering by pirates from southern Japan. Li Long was hired by the emperor on a private mission to assassinate the leader of the pirates and bring Soul Edge home with him. However, he never really cared about Soul Edge and instead decided to not only assassinate the leader of the pirates, but the daimyo feudal lords as well. This was not part of the mission, but there was no doubt in his mind that he would succeed. However, Long was not as strong as he thought, and an attack on the head of a powerful family in Honshū failed horribly. Left badly injured, he was rescued by a young girl named Chie. Chie was the daughter of the former leader of the Fu-Ma clan, Hachibei, operating as an innkeeper. Chie had been traumatized by the death of her mother as a child and had permanently lost the ability to speak. She devoted herself to Long's care, and they eventually fell in love; and he stayed with Chie long after he was made fit for travel again. One day, while Li Long was out, a fight had broken out at the Inn. Chie was thought to have been killed, and a wounded Hachibei told Long that a wandering swordsman had started the fight and left. Witnesses thought that it may have been Heishiro Mitsurugi, but obviously, Mitsurugi was not the only swordsman wandering the land. In actuality, the swordsman had been a ninja of the Fu-Ma clan, sent by its leader, Toki, to take back the ninjatō, Mekki-Maru, that Hachibei had stolen from them. Long set out for revenge on Chie's behalf, learning along the way that Mitsurugi was looking for Soul Edge. Li Long decided that if he found the sword first, Mitsurugi would eventually have to come to fight him; and if it turned out that Mitsurugi wasn't responsible for Chie's death, he would seek out every last swordsman until he got his revenge.

In his journey, he came to Valencia, Spain, where he found the dread pirate, Cervantes de Leon, keeper of the watchers—one of which Long had killed previously—and possessor of the Soul Edge. He tried to steal the evil blade from him, and ended up in a fierce battle with the pirate; but he was quickly defeated by the sword's overwhelming power and fell to the ground, drenched in blood, calling out Chie's name. At that exact moment, Chie awoke in a monastery in Honshū. She may have been severely scarred on her back, but she was alive, and eventually learned of Long's misguided quest for revenge on her behalf. She waited for him for a month, when she discovered that she was pregnant with his child.

Soulcalibur III

After his complete defeat at the pirate's hand, Li Long tried to escape. Cervantes chased him, but for some odd reason he gave up pursuit (probably due to the presence of Sophitia Alexandra). Before fainting, Li Long took a look back and witnessed a bright column of light coming from the port - the Evil Seed. When he woke up, he found he not only suffered physically, but mentally as well. He questioned himself if his acts were righteous and not atrocities, and his confidence shattered while his inner self was consumed. Unable to fend off the assassins hunting him anymore, he fled during the nights, disguised and under a false name.

Three years later, when Xianghua, a member of the Ming Dynasty Imperial Guard, was preparing to leave on a similar mission on the emperor's behalf, she was asked by Meimei to check on her brother, Long, and see if he was alive. Xianghua did eventually learn that Li Long had not died, finding him just after having won a battle, but he told her that he would never return to Ming Dynasty China again. Eventually he stumbled upon a town, and hoped to get lost among its population. But even there his pursuers were approaching him. About to lose hope, he was saved by a girl. He tried to leave, but at last he accepted her offer and stayed with her, knowing it wasn't meant to last. His pursuers were still on the hunt, and she reminded him of Chie, stirring his guilty conscience. She took care of him, because she felt he has lost everything.

Then one day the assassins found him. The girl tried to tell him to leave, but Li Long ignored her and stood with his weapon in hand, trembling. In the past, it was hard to believe he'd been defeated, but now he barely defeated his foes. In that moment something returned to him: how to fight for something. He decided to leave after that. As he was leaving, the girl ran to him and gently touched his back, communicating her feelings more clearly than ever. But still he left the town that day, now knowing what to do, for the ones who urge him to live.

Half of himself was left with that dreaded blade. Now it's time to regain it, but still he doesn't know that his lover is searching for him, and that the proof of their love is now breathing.

Soulcalibur V

Li Long eventually crossed paths with Taki, from whom he learned about Chie's survival.

He now lives with the Fu-ma clan, which is under Chie's leadership, with her and their son.

God damn, the more I hear about Toki, the more I want him to be a fully fleshed out playable villain.

Toki.png


Also Li Long is one of the few characters who has a happy ending.
 
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I noticed in the Haohmaru trailer that the pink lights starts shining in the "number 2". Okay okay it could be due to being in the center of the screen. Still my guess is the next character will be revealed in the 2nd of June which is a Tuesday.
And of course i'm team Setsuka. Hoping she is the one entering the stage of history.
I'm not trying to look to things in my favour but actually the 2nd of June it's my Birthday :-)

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