Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

Dissidia said:
"She’d embody fan service, of course as a buxom bartender woman" Kappa

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As much as i like Tifa (i mean who doesn't), but doesn't fit in SC, and while she fits in Tekken i don't want her in T7, maybe in Tekken 8 but even then it's not something i necessarily want.

This whole guest things is getting silly tbh (hello MK11 aka the game becoming more and more Hollywood Movies crossover), if Namco want to put some guests character, at least do something like Capcom does with adding Final Fight characters into SF, so like adding Death by Degrees character into Tekken for example.

I mean sure, Guests sell, and sometimes they can be super cool, like geralt in SC6, but imo this guest thing has reached overboard levels, F*ck that.

Of course SFV has its weakness too, like the thousands of Blond characters
 
I personally think SC6 and T7 have enough guest characters, Whoever they have in mind to implement, they should save them for the next entries. Tifa would be a great choice for T8 seeing as FF7R is being split up into multiple games, so her presence there will serve has advertisement for them. When it comes to SC7, I dunno but I know I don't what a character who has a futuristic look to them, so no Cloud Strife please.
 
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LisaK said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1266739387569598466
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My favorite Yoshi design in SC in his SC3 P1 and SC6, in Tekken it's Tekken 2 P1 and Tekken 3 P1

But for me this draw by Raf Grassetti (God Of War Director) is now by far the best Yoshimitsu has ever looked

raf-grassetti-yoshimitsu-grassetti-01.jpg

DanteSC3 said:
Yuffie has always been my favorite FFVII girl, then Aerith. Tifa is a distant third. She’s even lower if I can pick non-playable girls like Elena and Jessie and Shera.
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Yuffie is awesome, don't know who's my favorite between Tifa and Aerith, could be aerith, her innocence made me melt more than 1 time. Kind of girl you can blindly trust, something so rare, damn i wanna cry now lol

All FF7 cast is great anyway tbh, love them all
 
sytus said:
I personally think SC6 and T7 have enough guest characters, Whoever they have in mind to implement, they should save them for the next entries. Tifa would be a great choice for T8 seeing as FF7R is being split up into multiple games, so her presence there will serve has advertisement for them. When it comes to SC7, I dunno but I know I don't what a character who has a futuristic look to them, so no Cloud Strife please.
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Tekken 8 wont be out for years and years; I mean, they are still working on continuing support content for the current game, they have made not the slightest indication that they are yet looking towards the next entry, we are at the beginning of a new console generation, and Namco's fighters have always followed a pattern of being a released a decent while after the newest hardware (which is smart for a large number of technical and prudent business reasons that I won't belabour once again here). And personally, weaponless fighter or not, I don't know that I agree that Tifa is a better fit for Tekken than she is for Soulcalibur.


The major problem I have with the anti-guest sentiment (and at this point I am no longer responding to Styus' post but speaking more generally), is that it often seems so very arbitrary; I still have yet to hear a principled reason for why guests (a longstanding feature of the franchise) are a problem, either from a mechanical standpoint (they have usually been handled competently and in a way that enhances and appropriately compliments the existing mechanics for a particular entry), or a tonal one--I mean, when you're talking about the balls-to-the-wall insanity, goofiness and, bluntly, mediocrity that underpins Soulcalibur's plot, are a couple more portals to an alternate time and place really going to be a deal breaker for anyone?

Regardless, I've said it before and I'll say it again, whether one favours the guests or not, they are clearly a part of a fairly predictable sales and promotion strategy in how Namco has chosen to approach this entry: it can be taken more or less as a forgone conclusion that if there is a third season pass, it will include a guest--and again, that's a good thing, insofar as the guest helps justify that further development in the first place. So it's really a question of who we would want that guest to be (or more to the point, who we could realistically expect it would be)--not whether guests are supported unanimously by the community or whether this or that person doesn't care for their supposed role in diluting some nebulously defined sense of thematic purity that the series has never actually even tried to pull off. And in those terms, I don't see how Tifa could really look more out of place than Link, Spawn, Necrid Darth Vader, Ezio, or 2B--or for that matter, Groh, Azwel, Zwei, or Algol, to name just a few of the more recent original characters who took the look of the character design in bizarre directions.

Dissidia said:
The next FF7R game won’t be out for at least 2 years minimum so If we were to get a season 3 it would be completed with its 4 characters beforehand.
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Actually, they have been pretty clear from the moment they revealed they had decided to break the game in multiple parts that they were going to try to release each volume as close to a year after the previous one as possible. Even if we presume that the current rough circumstances for the industry could significantly set that target back (which I think is reasonable), there is no way a developer like SquareEnix would have set such an aggressive target and promoted it widely if they weren't already pretty deep into development on that second part; in fact, even though I have not really kept up with the news on that game, I'm pretty sure more than one of the devs has expressly said as much.

By comparison, Soulcalibur VI's content over the last couple of years has (as I need not point out to anyone here) been developed at a snail's pace. And even if the DLC character did have to precede the release of the character's 'home franchise' game, that wouldn't necessarily be a problem (the Apprentice was released for SCIV before The Force Unleashed was released), and is especially non-problematic here in that it would be in between two different releases that comprise parts of the same base game. In any event, I think we can safely presume that the timetable will be at least as negatively effected for the products coming out of Project Soul (one of Namco's third string projects in terms of priority), relative to one of the current flagship projects of SquareEnix.

In other words (and forgive me for saying it, I'm not trying to pick on you, but..), I think you're read is absolutely wrong here too: the timing is likely to be perfect for cross promotion--or at least more than acceptable as these things go; even if we did see FFVII:R-V2 two years from now (as opposed to a year from two months ago or somewhere in the span of those two predictions), it would still probably be a feasible and potentially very attractive arrangement for both parties.

DanteSC3 said:
Yuffie has always been my favorite FFVII girl, then Aerith. Tifa is a distant third. She’s even lower if I can pick non-playable girls like Elena and Jessie and Shera.
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But it's not really about who your 'best girl' is. I mean, it's tempting to engage you on those terms, based on your opinion, because, as someone who has only played the original FFVII and not yet got to the first entry in the remake, I have to say that Tifa is by far the most fleshed-out and realistically realized female protagonist in the whole FFVII subfranchise, up until the remake, at least. And I find her imminently likeable as a character--she may be somewhat the epitome of that predictably selfless, long-suffering Final Fantasy hero, but taking her in the context of the work she is found in, its hard to find a fault with her character. Whereas Yuffie is treated as basically comic relief and Aeris is a little underdeveloped to say the least.

But again, it's not really about how much we "like" a character, whatever that means (personally, I don't really rank characters in that way--they are what they are to the plot and the only real question for me is whether they are effectively written and presented within their niche). Rather, Tifa makes sense for Soulcalibur for reasons that have very little to do with her character (I mean, has any guest ever been effectively written into the larger Soulcalibur narrative, itself a rather uneven mess? Of course not.)

Tifa is the obvious choice (or at least the co-equal choice with Cloud) for a combination of factors, each of which is essential for a guest: she is a prominent protagonist in her own game, she has enough broad appeal with fans of that game that she could pull new sales for the base product as well as the season pass, and she has an established quality of movement that would allow her adaptation into a Soulcalibur game, and said aesthetics are reasonably well defined enough and in alignment with Soulcalibur's visual flare to allow for that adaptation to be not terribly forced. Yuffie or Elena, for example, really have none of those things going for them and are non-candidates for this type of thing.

Then again, given your use of the spoiler tag, I get that your line of discussion here may have just been an aside discussing your favourite FF characters and not meant to be commentary upon the main topic.
 
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Rusted Blade said:
I still have yet to hear a principled reason for why guests (a longstanding feature of the franchise) are a problem, either from a mechanical standpoint (they have usually been handled competently and in a way that enhances and appropriately compliments the existing mechanics for a particular entry), or a tonal one--I mean, when you're talking about the balls-to-the-wall insanity, goofiness and, bluntly, mediocrity that underpins Soulcalibur's plot, are a couple more portals to an alternate time and place really going to be a deal breaker for anyone?
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The biggest problem from a mechanical standpoint is that they will only exist in the game that they are featured in, and will likely never return in any way, shape, or form in the future. The only exception to this rule, really, has been Kratos, who was reborn in Aeon from SoulCalibur V, but that's been scrapped with our "reboot", so we're not going to see that style again, in all likelihood. Link's style sort of lived on between a few of the custom styles in SoulCalibur III, but those didn't live on either. Spawn has some shades in Azwel, but that's... no, they're not the same. Heihachi "came back" with Devil Jin, but unless we get a Kazuya or something in another game, the Mishima fist style is still obviously Tekken, not SoulCalibur. The Jedi aren't represented in any way, and Ezio and 2B are unique enough where it's practically impossible to replicate them without infringing on some level. Geralt and Haohmaru -might- could be repurposed, but there's no guarantee, so getting a real character is preferable to a guest, as they can continue to exist in the next game with a greater certainty.

Rusted Blade said:
Actually, they have been pretty clear from the moment they revealed they had decided to break the game in multiple parts that they were going to try to release each volume as close to a year after the previous one as possible. Even if we presume that the current rough circumstances for the industry could significantly set that target back (which I think is reasonable), there is no way a developer like SquareEnix would have set such an aggressive target and promoted it widely if they weren't already pretty deep into development on that second part; in fact, even though I have not really kept up with the news on that game, I'm pretty sure more than one of the devs has expressly said as much.
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Even without COVID's intervention, you're hilarious if you think that Square-Enix can keep timelines, promises, deadlines, and that sort of thing. Just look at Kingdom Hearts III and Final Fantasy Versus XIII XV for evidence to the contrary. This is the same Square-Enix that said not even they know how many parts that the Final Fantasy VII Remake project will be, who had a decent chunk of a game developed by CyberConnect2 and threw it out wholesale and started over fresh with all internal development. You cannot, by any measure, trust what Square-Enix says and expect to not be disappointed. They're deranged.

Yes indeed, this was just a side conversation, nothing to do with who would or wouldn't make a proper guest for SoulCalibur. As I noted in the other post, they have an unwritten rule where characters who are not main seem not to be allowed to be included, Yoda being the sole exclusion to the rule. To address what you're saying anyway, yes, Yuffie is a bit of a comic relief, and as she and Vincent are both optional characters, by function they cannot be pivotal to the plot, which is one of the things I'm hoping the Remake addresses, because as other entries in the Compilation showed, they do have plenty to bring to the table. Even in the original game, though, I did rather enjoy their stories and character (though my liking an edgy vampire boy like Vincent may have had to do with my underaged self at the time, I wouldn't feel the same if I played FFVII for the first time at present).

Between Tifa and Aerith, though, I wouldn't say either was underdeveloped. They both serve their roles in the plot, for past, present, and future. Tifa got more screentime, for obvious reasons, so it would appear that she's more fleshed out, but Aerith has plenty going for her when you read between the lines and consider things from Zack's point of view (though this does require experiencing Crisis Core, external to the main game, there were plenty of hints in the main game that alluded to their history), as it related to Cloud and his journey. Tifa is the canon ending pairing for Cloud, so she's got to fill that role, so they had to build her such that she was able to properly fulfill that role (well, they did if they wanted to make a quality product, unlike Final Fantasy XV...), so the things you're saying about her, in perspective, make a lot of sense.

But as she relates to SoulCalibur, I don't really think she'd make for a guest selection, due to the rules they seem to be governing themselves by. If we got a Final Fantasy VII Remake guest, it would either have to be Cloud or Sephiroth, and quite honestly, we don't have a need for either one of them, from a mechanical standpoint. So it doesn't seem like a good idea, to me. Beyond that, see my above as to the temporal nature of guests, and if we want to have a brawler as a mainstay, we shouldn't get one as a guest, a style that's guaranteed to not be here in the next game.
 
Rusted Blade said:
Tekken 8 wont be out for years and years; I mean, they are still working on continuing support content for the current game, they have made not the slightest indication that they are yet looking towards the next entry, we are at the beginning of a new console generation, and Namco's fighters have always followed a pattern of being a released a decent while after the newest hardware (which is smart for a large number of technical and prudent business reasons that I won't belabour once again here). And personally, weaponless fighter or not, I don't know that I agree that Tifa is a better fit for Tekken than she is for Soulcalibur.
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Tifa fits Tekken tonally and mechanically better than Soul Calibur, I'm surprised you don't see this perspective. And yeah, Tekken 8 won't be out until mid 9th gen, but the FF7R episodes are going to take years. I predict it will take a decade for the chapters to conclude.

Rusted Blade said:
The major problem I have with the anti-guest sentiment, is that it often seems so very arbitrary; I still have yet to hear a principled reason for why guests are a problem, either from a mechanical standpoint (they have usually been handled competently and in a way that enhances and appropriately compliments the existing mechanics for a particular entry), or a tonal one
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You only have to look at Street Fighter X Tekken to see how the mechanical changes to the Tekken characters resulted in them being completely different, making them feel alien to play. Even Akuma and Geese in Tekken 7 has resulted in them playing by different rules to the Tekken cast just to remain faithful to their original franchises. Then you've got Yoda who's clearly busted from the outgo because highs don't hit him while he's in the neutral. We've been lucky with the likes of Geralt, 2B and Haohmaru, but I wonder if that's because Project Soul took into consideration the tone and mechanics of them before they signed the deal.

When it comes to tone itself, I'd rather have a Calibur game, a Star Wars game and a crossover game. Clashing aesthetics is really off putting for me that I struggle to enjoy playing games that do it. It's like putting a scoop of ice cream on my roast dinner. Both are great, but what a way to ruin them both by putting them together.
 
DanteSC3 said:
The biggest problem from a mechanical standpoint is that they will only exist in the game that they are featured in, and will likely never return in any way, shape, or form in the future. The only exception to this rule, really, has been Kratos, who was reborn in Aeon from SoulCalibur V, but that's been scrapped with our "reboot", so we're not going to see that style again, in all likelihood. Link's style sort of lived on between a few of the custom styles in SoulCalibur III, but those didn't live on either. Spawn has some shades in Azwel, but that's... no, they're not the same. Heihachi "came back" with Devil Jin, but unless we get a Kazuya or something in another game, the Mishima fist style is still obviously Tekken, not SoulCalibur. The Jedi aren't represented in any way, and Ezio and 2B are unique enough where it's practically impossible to replicate them without infringing on some level. Geralt and Haohmaru -might- could be repurposed, but there's no guarantee, so getting a real character is preferable to a guest, as they can continue to exist in the next game with a greater certainty.
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But why is that even a problem at all, for us as the consumer/gamer? If they want to go through the effort of developing some movesets that will only be included in full in one game and willc ontribute little more than sporadic moves to characters thereafter, why should I (or any of us) treat that like skin off our noses? You're certainly not the first to advance this objection here, but if I am blunt, this is more an indication of OCD on your part with regard to how content is propagated than a problem with any individual character as content in themselves.

DanteSC3 said:
Even without COVID's intervention, you're hilarious if you think that Square-Enix can keep timelines, promises, deadlines, and that sort of thing. Just look at Kingdom Hearts III and Final Fantasy Versus XIII XV for evidence to the contrary. This is the same Square-Enix that said not even they know how many parts that the Final Fantasy VII Remake project will be, who had a decent chunk of a game developed by CyberConnect2 and threw it out wholesale and started over fresh with all internal development. You cannot, by any measure, trust what Square-Enix says and expect to not be disappointed. They're deranged.
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I would say 'deranged' is a bit hyperbolic, but your overall point is taken all the same. Still, there are significant indications that the decision to split the game up was only taken after they were several years into development on this product already, and that this helped inform their throwing out the indication that the next entry would not be as far behind as one would expect if they were starting from scratch. The fact that they have released part of the product already also distinguishes this situation in many important dimensions from the other examples of development hell you mentioned, where they did not at least have their basic approach to work with the rlevant engine and the underlying mechanics for the overall game pretty well established. In any event, everything here has to be viewed as being compared against Project Soul's development pace...which clearly gives them some flex.

DanteSC3 said:
Between Tifa and Aerith, though, I wouldn't say either was underdeveloped. They both serve their roles in the plot, for past, present, and future. Tifa got more screentime, for obvious reasons, so it would appear that she's more fleshed out. . .
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I'm not just talking sheer screentime; Tifa gets way more development in the backstory as well. Consider just how much she knows about the truth of Cloud's situation during the first two acts of that game, which she sits on, and which decisions actually make sense (and make her all the more admiral) when you know her motivations. And I wouldn't exactly say that she is the 'ultimate canon love interest', because we don't see that in any of the FFVII media: in fact, Advent Children and the other 'Compilation of FFVII' stories seem to confirm that, despite everything, they never end up together, at least within the timeframe covered by any work to date. In AC, Cloud is still obsessing over the manic pixie dream girl that knew for a couple of months--who at best probably thought of him as a younger brother and at worst, the guy who had creepily stolen her actual boyfriend's identity after he was killed--and Tifa is still looking after him and patiently waiting for him to develop into an emotionally stable human being. I suppose we are meant to suspect that after the emotional resolution/catharsis at the end of Advent Children, the two finally end up together. But frankly, that's always the presumption at the end of any work the two have appeared in together and it hasn't worked out yet...

But getting back to the central point, whether she was boosted for a particular role in the plot or not is really not the point if we are comparing the degree of nuance and realism in her character to another: point is, forefront or backstory, she is a much more deeply developed in the original FFVII than is Aeris, whose role is much more McGuffin-like. I wouldn't go as far as to suggest that Aeris is just a famous case of a destined-to-be-Fridged love interest who is there mostly to provide motivation, but think about it: in the original game, we learn very, very little about who she is beyond her ancestry, her mostly kind and nurturing disposition, and the fascination Cloud has with her. And frankly, she also gets fairly short-shrift in Crisis Core as well.. Don't get me wrong, I have a softspot for her same as anyone else who played the original in its day and was not anticipating how things would play out for her, but as characters go, I think she is actually meant to be somewhat nebulous. And I actually think that's one of the things that makes FF7's plot effective and surprising: Cloud's story is not what he thinks it is, Aeris was never really his girl, and most of the guilt he has taken upon himself was never really his burden to bear. Whatever else one does or doe snot like about that story, you can always say it was good at setting up and then subverting any expectations one might have based on the usual heroic RPG formula. But in order for that to work, Aeris had to be half-developed and only so knowable to the person consuming the story as Cloud and the other principle protagonists experienced it.

DanteSC3 said:
But as she relates to SoulCalibur, I don't really think she'd make for a guest selection, due to the rules they seem to be governing themselves by.
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You're going to have to be more specific about what you think those supposed self-imposed rules are. If you're talking about the character needing to be a primary one, I think Tifa is clearly one of the principle characters of FFVII:R and would be more than acceptable to both of the relevant parties who might transact for her use for the purpose of cross-promotion. And weapons or no, her visual design, 'power level', and so forth all make her probably the ideal selection--though admittedly, Coud has the star power. Sephiroth is not even remotely a possibility for oh so so many reasons.
 
sytus said:
Tifa fits Tekken tonally and mechanically better than Soul Calibur, I'm surprised you don't see this perspective.
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I really don't, so you'll have to be more specific with your argument if you want me to understand. Because other than the fact that Tekken is mostly unarmed fighters and Soulcalibur is mostly armed fighters (which is clearly not an iron-clad, fast rule running in either direction with regard to either franchise), I don't see how she fits that much better in Tekken. Because she comes from a world that has mixed fantasy and modern aesthetics, strong arguments can be made either way as to the 'tonal' aspect, but when it comes to mechanics, there is no way that she fits better in Tekken's idiosyncratically paced 2.5D style of combat; Tifa's style is all about speed and maneuverability and that would be much more difficult to faithfully render in Tekken's style of gameplay, when compared against Soulcalibur's 8wayrun/less bound to combos and juggles approach. I just couldn't disagree with you more in that respect.

sytus said:
You only have to look at Street Fighter X Tekken to see how the mechanical changes to the Tekken characters resulted in them being completely different, making them feel alien to play. Even Akuma and Geese in Tekken 7 has resulted in them playing by different rules to the Tekken cast just to remain faithful to their original franchises.
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Yeah sure, but that's a bit of a non-sequitor/false comparison: the first example is an entire cross-over game that they made by forcing half the roster into a basic gameplay format that doesn't even have the same number of dimensions as they normally operate within in their home franchise! It was also was not done by Namco/Project Soul and thus doesn't represent their abilities to faithfully render a guest into their own work. And the second is still not Project Soul, and again, involves a much larger leap in terms of format than is involved with most of Soulcalibur's guests. It's not really fair to lay the evaluations of the work of other studios at PS's feet and treat that as evidence for what the quality of their adaptational work would look like--especially when we have nearly 20 years of their own mostly consistently good work in that area to consider instead.

sytus said:
Then you've got Yoda who's clearly busted from the outgo because highs don't hit him while he's in the neutral.
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Yeah, I mean there's really no defending their choice/approach with regard to that particular guest selection. But still, I would argue that the fact that we can only point to one really bad example across five games and nearly twenty years of these adaptations as a pretty good batting average.

sytus said:
We've been lucky with the likes of Geralt, 2B and Haohmaru, but I wonder if that's because Project Soul took into consideration the tone and mechanics of them before they signed the deal.
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If I had to guess, I would say that is exactly the explanation for their general success with these characters to date. So long as they spend some effort contemplating their selections well (I actually still feel that Haohmaru might have been their first psuedo-misstep in this regard in a while, but hey, clearly I am out-numbered in that respect as most people have received him warmly), I'm happy to see ten guests per game. It's not the number (at least not until a huge threshold has been passed), it's how they handle each individual adaptation that matters to me. And for now, they are doing well enough in respect to the recent guests that I'd happily support their taking another crack or two.

sytus said:
When it comes to tone itself, I'd rather have a Calibur game, a Star Wars game and a crossover game. Clashing aesthetics is really off putting for me that I struggle to enjoy playing games that do it. It's like putting a scoop of ice cream on my roast dinner. Both are great, but what a way to ruin them both by putting them together.
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I could relate to that with regard to introducing guests into many games. But for Soulcalibur? It's always been a mad mishmash of tone and style, with continuity and consistency in its story, aesthetics, and setting never a priority. It's really all about the spectacle, so I'm happy to accept some cross-pollinated art design and mechanics. But yeah, at that point it is a bit of a subjective call, no doubt.
 
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Rusted Blade said:
But why is that even a problem at all, for us as the consumer/gamer? If they want to go through the effort of developing some movesets that will only be included in full in one game and will contribute little more than sporadic moves to characters thereafter, why should I (or any of us) treat that like skin off our noses? You're certainly not the first to advance this objection here, but if I am blunt, this is more an indication of OCD on your part with regard to how content is propagated than a problem with any individual character as content in themselves.
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I don't really find it to be all that strange to not want to bother to use/master a character that it's known for an absolute fact will not return in the next game. Guests can be a fun side diversion, but for folks who take the game seriously as the game mechanics and competition are concerned, guests are just a diversion from the main course. All the work you put into mastering a guest is really wasted effort, in the long run. And as far as their usability goes for custom characters, their gimmicks are so heavy that it just feels awkward to use them, though that idea is also bleeding over to the main cast as of SoulCalibur VI, being fair, but maybe that's just my own idiosyncrasy at work.

Rusted Blade said:
I would say 'deranged' is a bit hyperbolic, but your overall point is taken all the same.
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Maybe, but it's fueled by a little more than what I've just said above, like Final Fantasy XIII before it, it took being essentially forced to release a demo version of the game to spur development along to create a cohesive end goal. Up until the point where they were making the demo, they had no idea what the final product was going to be, just a pool of ideas. That's ridiculous. That development cycle ending with folks in the graphics department literally just painting rocks with nothing else better to do, too, among other developmental silliness involved with that project. They really just have been off the rails since Final Fantasy XII. and I don't expect a return to sanity anytime soon.

Rusted Blade said:
You're going to have to be more specific about what you think those supposed self-imposed rules are. If you're talking about the character needing to be a primary one, I think Tifa is clearly one of the principle characters of FFVII:R and would be more than acceptable to both of the relevant parties who might transact for her use for the purpose of cross-promotion. And weapons or no, her visual design, 'power level', and so forth all make her probably the ideal selection--though admittedly, Cloud has the star power. Sephiroth is not even remotely a possibility for oh so so many reasons.
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Cloud, Barret, and Tifa are the poster heroes of Final Fantasy VII, that much is true, but Cloud is the one on literally all of the promotional material scattered across every little thing here and there over all the years that Final Fantasy VII has been a thing. Cloud is so far above Barret and Tifa that you can show literally anyone Cloud, and they'll be able to tell you they know who he is. You'll find a fair few who could identify Barret and Tifa, too, but Cloud is just on an entirely different level, transcending the JRPG genre even. He's a cultural gaming icon.
 
DanteSC3 said:
I don't really find it to be all that strange to not want to bother to use/master a character that it's known for an absolute fact will not return in the next game. Guests can be a fun side diversion, but for folks who take the game seriously as the game mechanics and competition are concerned, guests are just a diversion from the main course. All the work you put into mastering a guest is really wasted effort, in the long run.
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Eh, sort of, but not really. No offense, la mia amica, but I'm someone who puts much more of an emphasis on the competitive and play aspects than you typically do, and the bulk of my time spent playing the game is with other people in various contexts representing the span of levels of serious dedication to the mechanics. And I've literally never heard someone say "Man, I wish I hadn't spent all of those years having fun playing Link." or anyhting remotely like it.

Now, you might call that an argument from authority, but I'm giving you my honest read as someone who is all about the nuts and bolts first and foremost: the fact that guests don't persist might drive some players away from them in the grand scheme, but there are always seriously dedicated players who will still take a chance on them. I mean, look, you have to re-learn characters to a substantial extent for a new entry anyway (and never has that been more true than now). Likewise, people like to mix things up. I can't speak for the level of esports player who competes at the tournament level today--I'm just not in that class and never was, not by today's standard--but the pervasive attitude that I have always seen in how people choose their characters is that it is an eclectic mix of factors, and (speaking of idiosyncrasies) there's just something that calls to you from the flow of movement/technique from this or that moveset. Sometimes its the character you've been maining since forever, but not always. And I don't see any serious player ignoring that component just because they aren't sure the character will be around forever.

DanteSC3 said:
And as far as their usability goes for custom characters, their gimmicks are so heavy that it just feels awkward to use them, though that idea is also bleeding over to the main cast as of SoulCalibur VI, being fair, but maybe that's just my own idiosyncrasy at work.
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I would say that this also far too much of a generalization: would a Tifa-based moveset not provide immense CaS potential? For that matter, does Haohmaru not? Even Geralt is pretty amazing for capturing a general warrior-warlock vibe that suites a large number of creations, both originals and references.

DanteSC3 said:
Maybe, but it's fueled by a little more than what I've just said above, like Final Fantasy XIII before it, it took being essentially forced to release a demo version of the game to spur development along to create a cohesive end goal. Up until the point where they were making the demo, they had no idea what the final product was going to be, just a pool of ideas. That's ridiculous. That development cycle ending with folks in the graphics department literally just painting rocks with nothing else better to do, too, among other developmental silliness involved with that project. They really just have been off the rails since Final Fantasy XII. and I don't expect a return to sanity anytime soon.
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I mean, I can't really defend their recent games in that franchise: I haven't played most of them and that's an indication in itself where I suspect their quality lays (though truth be told, I find time for only the smallest fraction of games I'd like to give a chance, had I more time these days). It's ironic that almost every game I do try from SquareEnix is great these days, but none of them are final fantasy: 16 year old me would have had his mind blown to hear that I loved their 'Tomb Raider' game, but wouldn't touch 'FFXIII'. FFVII:R will be the first game in the series that I will have played more than an hour or two of since XII. But all we do have to work with here in divining a likely timing is what they have said to industry press. And this is not just any new FF experiment: this is the product their consumers have been asking for for twenty years now: you better believe they are throwing resources at it to make sure that cash cow is delivering!

DanteSC3 said:
Cloud, Barret, and Tifa are the poster heroes of Final Fantasy VII, that much is true, but Cloud is the one on literally all of the promotional material scattered across every little thing here and there over all the years that Final Fantasy VII has been a thing. Cloud is so far above Barret and Tifa that you can show literally anyone Cloud, and they'll be able to tell you they know who he is. You'll find a fair few who could identify Barret and Tifa, too, but Cloud is just on an entirely different level, transcending the JRPG genre even. He's a cultural gaming icon.
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Yes, but you're not really going with a blue ocean marketing plan if you are trying to pick this character: you want the one that will get a specific subset of uber fan most likely to purchase a copy of SCVI just so they can play the game they appear in as a fighter. Is that character Cloud or Tifa? I'm not sure, but even if I get off the fence and say Cloud, there are other factors at play, and I would like to think the devs would go with Tifa for her better moveset potential. After-all, you just as much want the character to appeal to the SCVI players who might be undecided about another season pass.
 
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@Rusted Blade
Our esteemed colleagues @Dissidia and @DanteSC3 are correct that the next installment of FFVIIR won't be out for at least two years. SE never made any indication that they were looking towards annual releases, and in fact have been quite clear as recently as two months ago that a) they still don't know how many installments the full project will be comprised of, b) they don't know what the volume of even the second installment will be, and c) they're still in the conceptual stage on how to fabricate the world map for travel between towns.

Factoring in as well their insistence upon rendering unique assets for each sector depicted in Midgar (no doubt a design sensibility they will be carrying forward to each individual town around the world of FFVII) -- we're in for a long wait on Part 2.

On a related note, but one potentially more closely related to Soulcalibur, Square Enix's CEO said something very interesting just this week:

Square Enix also has some initiatives to grow the sales of Final Fantasy VII Remake, although they are not ready to disclose it as of yet.

“Capturing new players is key. I will refrain from going into the details, but we have plans for initiatives to capture players throughout the year, so please keep an eye on our progress. I also note that we will not engage in any marketing strategy that relies solely on pricing.”

It is interesting to know that they have plans to grow sales through various initiatives since Final Fantasy VII Remake is a single-player game with no Games as a Service element in it. They don’t want to do it by reducing the price so we will have to wait and see what they have planned in this regard.
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Oh, and one final FFVII note, Rusted: Cloud and Tifa are involved romantically after the events of the original game, though one could be forgiven for not perceiving this as definite from "Advent Children." Supplementary materials and interviews confirm it, but even having verification about it, that's not to say it was all sugar and rainbows for them.

Dissidia said:
... they don’t owe us Tifa because Tekken got Noctis...
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Oh, yes, they do. As FFXV's biggest fan and a lover of the Soulgames since the original "Soul Edge" arcade cabinet blew 10-year-old-me's mind in the summer of '96 -- you better believe they owe us Tifa in SC now.

SSfox said:
don't know who's my favorite between Tifa and Aerith, could be aerith, her innocence made me melt more than 1 time.
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Are you sure you're thinking of Aerith? "Innocence" would probably never come up for me were I compiling a list of attributes for her.
 
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2 years is the minimum but even I feel like that's being too optimistic. The only modern precedent we have for full games releasing sequels are the FFXIII games.

Each game was two years apart from 2009/10-2013/14. But the thing is XIII had the biggest budget and sales. XIII-2 reduced the budget and got less sales, and LR got an even smaller budget and got less sales than XIII-2. A profitable way to milk Lightning but this won't be happening for VIIR.

These games are gonna be big budget from start to end it seems, so they aren't going to just shoot them out. They at least want them to wow people and Square is notorious for focusing on style over substance.....

and as Dante said COVID already has delayed so much...
 
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TresDias said:
@Rusted Blade
Our esteemed colleagues @Dissidia and @DanteSC3 are correct that the next installment of FFVIIR won't be out for at least two years. SE never made any indication that they were looking towards annual releases, and in fact have been quite clear as recently as two months ago that a) they still don't know how many installments the full project will be comprised of, b) they don't know what the volume of even the second installment will be, and c) they're still in the conceptual stage on how to fabricate the world map for travel between towns.

Factoring in as well their insistence upon rendering unique assets for each sector depicted in Midgar (no doubt a design sensibility they will be carrying forward to each individual town around the world of FFVII) -- we're in for a long wait on Part 2.

On a related note, but one potentially more closely related to Soulcalibur, Square Enix's CEO said something very interesting just this week:
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Although I will admit I have followed the game's development rather indirectly for the most part, I'm virtually certain that I saw them touting this particular hope when they were first discussing the break-up (I tried to find a source just now, but the volume of industry press on the topic is insane now), but perhaps I'm misremembering. Regardless, taking all of your extra info into account, I agree it is likely to be an impossible target at this point, even if they were well ahead on the production of many assets. Nevertheless, I think the fact that we are inbetween releases for a new multiple volume game means that a guest from FFVII:R is reasonably attractive to both the potential licensor and licensee.

TresDias said:
Oh, yes, they do. As FFXV's biggest fan and a lover of the Soulgames since the original "Soul Edge" arcade cabinet blew 10-year-old-me's mind in the summer of '96 -- you better believe they owe us Tifa in SC now.
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F%#&ing-A. :)

But no, all joking aside, @Dissidia, I don't think anyone has said Tifa is 'owed', whether by virtue of Noctis being included in Tekken or for any other reason. What has been said (which has a certain degree of logic to it) is that if Noctis was added to Tekken without any nervous hand-wringing about his armed status, then surely the inverse is true for Tifa and Soulcalibur (indeed, I would argue that Tifa is much less of a surprising mismatch thematically for SC than Noctis was for Tekken), and that similarly utilizing Tifa makes a certain amount of sense.

Now let me clear about one thing: I don't think this stylistic cross-over was planned or something that Namco/the Tekken and PS development teams would have opted for, all things being equal. Rather it was just a matter of timing: Noctis was part of a hot Square property at the time and thus made sense as a guest to both companies from a promotional perspective. But it does demonstrate that other factors will bend towards that consideration. The character still has to make sense to the devs from a gameplay perspective over-all, but clearly the "but he's armed!!!"/"but she's unarmed!!!" protestations of certain fans (despite the fact that Tekken has had variously armed combatants since forever, and Soulcalibur has had unarmed fighters since forever) doesn't really count for much against cross-promotional appeal for the companies eager to engage in advantageous licensing in these franchises.

TresDias said:
Oh, and one final FFVII note, Rusted: Cloud and Tifa are involved romantically after the events of the original game, though one could be forgiven for not perceiving this as definite from "Advent Children." Supplementary materials and interviews confirm it, but even having verification about it, that's not to say it was all sugar and rainbows for them.
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Well, as to that, I guess it comes down to whether one considers Word of God to be sufficient to establish something that is itself not an integral part of the work, even if the outside info seems to clash with what is suggested in the work itself. Without jumping either way on that question, I will say that I was ever of the opinion that they weren't 'romantically involved': Tifa is clearly still holding a flame for Cloud, and Cloud seems forever on the cusp of reciprocating (in his angst-ridden, unbearably emo kind of way), but is held back by the fact that he is still consumed with guilt and unresolved feelings regarding Aeris and other elements of hsi past that make him conflicted. They clearly care for eachother, but what I was alluding to previously in responding to Dante is that I don't think they were "together" as a couple, even by that point, in any significant sense.

That's actually one of my main problems with FFVII:AC: not that they are not together--I really don't give a shit about 'shipping' characters and honestly, at that point, I feel Tifa could do better anyway, but rather that in many ways it is just a more boring, shorter retelling of all the same plot and character arcs of the original game. We catch up with the characters for the first time years after the events of the game and so much seems to have just been switched back to the status quo ante. Now, I agree that sometimes it can add an element of realism to show that people can still get stuc in their same self-destructive habits and that the world at large doesn't necessarily shift to a perfect state after the 'happy ending' you were initially shown, but for much of that movie I found the hand-holding that Cloud was still having to get from everyone in order to move on and begin having some perspective a bit much at that point.

TresDias said:
Are you sure you're thinking of Aerith? "Innocence" would probably never come up for me were I compiling a list of attributes for her.
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I've been told that her character has changed significantly in FFVII:R, so I wonder if maybe you are having some recentism impact here. I don't know that I'd call the Aeris of the original FFVII 'innocent' precisely, but of all the principle protagonists (with the possible exception of Red XIII), she is presented as by far the most sagely, restrained, and peaceful one:

Even in a game where the mechanics pretty much turned all characters into generalists in combat, she had a strong bent towards healing. Her weapon was the least lethal of any playable character. She frequently espoused a desire to live in peaceful coexistence (and this is presented somewhat as the way of her people and the cause for their downfall). She would typically offer little to now resistance on the multiple occasions she was abducted (granted, this was clearly partly just for plot convenience). Her means of making her way in the world was to grow flowers in an old church. Her musical ques are all soft and melodious. Even her presentation suggested a softer and kinder disposition relative to the harsh quasi-steam punk of the rest of the cast. And of course, when put to the ultimate test, rather than looking to continued violence as a solution to the problems beleaguering her world, she decided instead a different path, which she may well have known would end with her own blood sacrifice.

Now, would I call her 'innocent' exactly? No, because while there are shades of apparent naivety to her when we first meet here, as the backstory gets more revealed, we learn that she has as much reason as anyone in Midgar to know how dirty and brutal the world can be. Responding to that ugliness with serenity and an dedication to others is simply how she rises to meet it. But I definitely can understand what Fox is driving at there when he uses that descriptor: Aeris has a good heart that has weathered the unkindness that has been shown to her. Now, as I understand it, that has been retconned, maybe even to an extreme extent, in the remake. Both of the people who have played the remake whom I have talked to about it have made a point of saying she's even a little bloodthirsty in this one, which if true, would be rather a dramatic re-read on that character, albeit one that can be justified by everything she has been put through by the time the story opens up. I think it was also suggested to me that she seems to know a lot more about her ancestry and what happened to her people this time around? I don't know: I'm reserving judgment until I've played it myself.
 
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Rusted Blade said:
.. and Soulcalibur has had unarmed fighters since forever
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When did this start happening ? The goofy broken-weapon state in Soul Blade (that was clearly a weakened character state) that never returned ?
The out-of-place 1-time guest characters that are the exception rather than the rule ?


---
In regards to FF:
If it takes some anachronistic character from a weeb game released over 2 decades ago as the guest character to anchor Season 3.. I'll be honest: I may have to compromise on my principles. I'm hoping there is another way, but we're in strange times.

SC6's 2 season passes have been exceptional so far, and there isn't any indication that they'll drop the ball if a Season 3 gets the go-ahead from the higher ups. New seasons allow for fat changes to game mechanics not available in regular balance patches (new HUDs and selection background, SA, RI revamped SA, many new moves for every character). Makes the game feel fresher, even though I don't agree with every balance change I recognize I could be biased
 
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