Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

sytus said:
The only element of truth to the unrealistic argument regarding the sexes is that sexual dimophism does play a roll, in that on average, females are weaker than men on average due to increased height and upper body mass. So for instance, if you had a tribe of 10,000 people, at a rough guess there would be one warrior woman to twenty warrior men and that's across the entire world with our species. Nothing is more evident than having men and women separated in the majority of sports because men would dominate nearly all the top positions. We already see this with trans women smashing it against real women, something that has been causing a lot of controversy in recent years, so it's understandable that you wouldn't see women historically winning in these situations, but that's only because there are no second chances in warfare, you win or you die. Still, it was dumb of him to bring in the unrealistic argument over the Witcher of all games and it doesn't debunk the fact that there are women out there that are the exception to the rule. I'm 6'1", very broad and have a lot of strength for saying I don't work out, but I would never underestimate a trained female fighter putting me flat on my ass with ease.
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Yeah, you're preaching the choir homes: I have some formal background in physiology, a good understanding of newtonian physics, and have trained in martial arts since a kid (well, lapsed these days, but still), so I'm aware of how the biomechanics operate and how sexually dimorphic differences in muscle mass and conditioning shake out, as a general statistical matter. What had the HEMA people laughing up a storm at this halfwit was the particular arguments he was advancing--suggesting a woman couldn't even reliably lift a medieval weapon: the reality is that swords are in general pretty lite compared to what people who have never held one are inclined to believe. And as just about anybody who's done weapons training will tell you, the entire point of a weapon (especially a bladed weapon) is that they are a force multiplier: so while it is true that strength conditioning is far from irrelevant, the truth is that many of the world's great duelists are known to have been very diminutive and/or slight men. Knowing your craft as a swordsman always was more important than having the stature of a titan, once warfare and weapons-craft evolved beyond the very primitive stage where it was just bands of people throwing the overall mass of their fighters against that of their opponents.

So it's generally believed today that the relative paucity of cultures with warrior women* is better explained as a cultural inheritance and/or a relic of sexually dimorphic biopsychology/sociobiology more so than extreme handicaps in strength. But whatever the historical cause, the world of modern athletics and martial arts makes it pretty damn clear that the effective use of a sword is well within the reach of any human being of average health and discipline, if they are interested in putting in the time. The fact that this guy honestly thought that not only could no historical woman ever be classified as a true warrior, but also not even a hereditary leader in a fantasy scenario where the fictional social rules and training might have given her every reason to be one (and every advantage from birth to grow into one) demonstrates just how eagerly some people embrace their own constructed realities as fact, even where they are based on absolutely zero first hand knowledge from any relevant base of education in an applicable field.

*and let's remember there have been plenty of historical cultures where women were expected to know how to fight in the defense of their homes--particularly those where men might be absent for long periods of time.
 
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My thoughts on this topic are all over the damn place, so buckle up your seatbelts, lol.

Regarding the possibility of Salia, and generally of background characters from SC lore becoming roster members in the future, I don't know why that idea gets resistance. I'm not saying this to attack anyone, I mean it out of curiosity. My preference is that lore characters would be made into proper roster members since these background characters are already established members of the SC universe, in terms of lore, but sometimes even in terms of what weapon or fighting style they may be associated with. Project Soul has lots of weapons, fighting styles, and characters to choose from, since they've created many of them as background characters, yet they continue to clutter their own universe with additions like ZWEI, Grøh, Azwel, Viola, etc. Whom I don't really like because I don't like their fighting styles... they look like something out of an anime or something :/ I feel like these styles have been shoehorned into SC somehow.
Edit: on a spectrum of characters with fantasy elements in their fighting styles, I know that we have plenty of outlandish stuff already in SC. I feel that on this spectrum, however, recent roster additions like the ones I named above are getting farther out on the fantasy side of the spectrum, and I'm not totally receptive to this.

I am finding that my own preference of roster members from the lore over new characters stems from the fact that a lot of these new characters (named above) use outlandish styles and, at least in my eyes, push the games away from being a weapons fighter and more some kind of mugen fighter mixed with fantasy shit.

To rebut my own point, I think this may be some issue in my own head, that lore characters somehow represent a facet of roster members that might have their elements of fantasy toned down (not completely eliminated) compared to some of the new characters that we've gotten, which haven't really resonated with me recently. The funny thing with this is that it's all silly, wishful thinking on my part. If PS wants to work fantasy elements into a character, they'll do it in some way or another. They could also utterly screw up introducing background characters as roster members and have it come off like the kids of SCV. :(

I guess I just like the idea of these background and lore characters becoming playable because the last, and often only time we saw concept art of them, they had basic weapons, which triggers one's imagination to start working on how that kind of weapon and playstyle might make it into the game, and it's exciting to not see them automatically associated with some outlandish fantasy stuff like some of the new characters introduced lately.

I'm sure there are plenty of holes to poke in what I just wrote; I've never tried articulating in depth why I prefer the idea of lore characters becoming part of the roster. A lot is motivated by my reception to new characters in recent games; lore characters some how represent a departure from that in my head.
 
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The way Shura would ate in this 'Yakuza' concept..
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Spanky said:
I guess I just like the idea of these background and lore characters becoming playable because the last, and often only time we saw concept art of them, they had basic weapons, which triggers one's imagination to start working on how that kind of weapon and playstyle might make it into the game, and it's exciting to not see them automatically associated with some outlandish fantasy stuff like some of the new characters introduced lately.
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This.
 
Spanky said:
My thoughts on this topic are all over the damn place, so buckle up your seatbelts, lol.

Regarding the possibility of Salia, and generally of background characters from SC lore becoming roster members in the future, I don't know why that idea gets resistance. I'm not saying this to attack anyone, I mean it out of curiosity. My preference is that lore characters would be made into proper roster members since these background characters are already established members of the SC universe, in terms of lore, but sometimes even in terms of what weapon or fighting style they may be associated with. Project Soul has lots of weapons, fighting styles, and characters to choose from, since they've created many of them as background characters, yet they continue to clutter their own universe with additions like ZWEI, Grøh, Azwel, Viola, etc. Whom I don't really like because I don't like their fighting styles... they look like something out of an anime or something :/ I feel like these styles have been shoehorned into SC somehow.
Edit: on a spectrum of characters with fantasy elements in their fighting styles, I know that we have plenty of outlandish stuff already in SC. I feel that on this spectrum, however, recent roster additions like the ones I named above are getting farther out on the fantasy side of the spectrum, and I'm not totally receptive to this.

I am finding that my own preference of roster members from the lore over new characters stems from the fact that a lot of these new characters (named above) use outlandish styles and, at least in my eyes, push the games away from being a weapons fighter and more some kind of mugen fighter mixed with fantasy shit.

To rebut my own point, I think this may be some issue in my own head, that lore characters somehow represent a facet of roster members that might have their elements of fantasy toned down (not completely eliminated) compared to some of the new characters that we've gotten, which haven't really resonated with me recently. The funny thing with this is that it's all silly, wishful thinking on my part. If PS wants to work fantasy elements into a character, they'll do it in some way or another. They could also utterly screw up introducing background characters as roster members and have it come off like the kids of SCV. :(

I guess I just like the idea of these background and lore characters becoming playable because the last, and often only time we saw concept art of them, they had basic weapons, which triggers one's imagination to start working on how that kind of weapon and playstyle might make it into the game, and it's exciting to not see them automatically associated with some outlandish fantasy stuff like some of the new characters introduced lately.

I'm sure there are plenty of holes to poke in what I just wrote; I've never tried articulating in depth why I prefer the idea of lore characters becoming part of the roster. A lot is motivated by my reception to new characters in recent games; lore characters some how represent a departure from that in my head.
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I can only speak for myself, of course, but I'm not so much resistant to the idea itself--I really don't care that much about the character designs, at least not in any serious way when compared against anything that truly affects gameplay. And as you say, maybe we could at least count on some of these to be based in more grounded historical weapons, insofar as some of them have the role of rank and file soldiers and such. But, just assuming for a moment that is the case (which, as you also note, maybe we shouldn't), even then I can't help but be a wet blanket on this topic. It's just not how the series cultivates it's new roster members, as a historical matter. There's a couple of characters (invariably family members, literal or adopted) who in the early series got promoted from background characters to playable characters in the following game. What has never happened is that a playable character was developed from some random niche tertiary character from further back in the franchise background story, just because some fans really liked the cut of their jib.

There are reasons why development in this genre tends to spin out new characters in new franchise entries who have never been mentioned before: if the devs thought their older designs/concept for a character were worthy of being rostered characters, they would have been in either the game where they were introduced or the following one. Beyond that, developing new concepts is just a part of any new fighter, so the competition is already stiff among the new concepts for those small handful of slots for new characters (to say nothing of the larger selective pressure that only so many characters can get into the game in terms of legacy characters and new ones) and the idea that one of Dampierre's crew is going to fight their way to the forefront in that scenario is just not very realistic.
 
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Rusted Blade said:
There's are reasons why development in this genre tends to spin out new characters in new franchise entries who have never been mentioned before: if the devs though their older designs/concept for a character were worthy of being rostered characters, they would have been in either the game where they were introduced or the following one. Beyond that, developing new concepts is just a part of any new fighter, so the competition is already stiff among the new concepts for those small handful of slots for new characters (to say nothing of the larger selective pressure that only so many characters can get into the game in terms of legacy characters and new ones) and the idea that one of Dampierre's crew is going to fight their way to the forefront in that scenario is just not very realistic.
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I agree with your sentiments here. There are various factors that influence who gets to join the roster, and I agree that if these background characters were considered salvageable or usable by the development teams, we'd be playing as them by now.
Also quick meaningless note, Salia is a member of the Schwarzwind and is thus associated with Siegfried, not Dampierre, lol. :)
 
Spanky said:
I agree with your sentiments here. There are various factors that influence who gets to join the roster, and I agree that if these background characters were considered salvageable or usable by the development teams, we'd be playing as them by now.
Also quick meaningless note, Salia is a member of the Schwarzwind and is thus associated with Siegfried, not Dampierre, lol. :)
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Yeah, I know, but others have prognosticated Dampierre's crew getting in, in a future entry, and I think those are a roughly equivalent scenario, so I just threw them in for variety so it doesn't seem like I am picking on Salia in particular. Though I will admit, those goofballs also make for an easier target!
 
More than anything, I'd just be interested in seeing what kind of design Salia would get. It'd be nice to have another armor-clad lady on the roster, especially since she'd likely get a much different type of aesthetic, being a mercenary instead of a princess.
 
mokamoka827 said:
More than anything, I'd just be interested in seeing what kind of design Salia would get. It'd be nice to have another armor-clad lady on the roster, especially since she'd likely get a much different type of aesthetic, being a mercenary instead of a princess.
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Ideas like this interest me. It's tempting to focus on the idea of Salia somehow making the roster, since she's a name and a face we can theorize about, and how her designs and execution may differ from that of an existing roster member like Hilde. Maybe that's part of the appeal of background characters in the lore...🤔
 
sytus said:
Those look like Kendo moves.

Looking into this a bit more of a potential fighting style for Salia, I think she would be super interesting to play if she had a low, medium and high stances with full movement like in this video.


View attachment 78875

It would operate like Yoshimitsu's stances (8B+K/B+K/2B+K) with moves flowing into these stances. Some of these attacks could have auto guard impacts representing the riposting of the long sword. Even though I've just thought up this on the fly, I do think this would be a better direction for Salia than planting Geralt's moves on her.
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I like the idea of seeing a proper representation of a European longsword fighting style in SC (something much lighter than the greatsword Siegfried uses). I feel that's always been a big omission in SC. The closest we've had have been Ezio (but he uses a billion weapons, not only a sword) and Geralt (but he doesn't actually fight, he does ballet).
 
Are any of you familiar with japanese representation of western long sword fighting ? ie in manga/anime ?
I've seen the berserk giant anime swords, and sabre/rapiers, but can't quite recall any depictions of longswords/bastard swords in japanese media (mainly because I don't follow it close enough)
There was a bunch of recent twitter retweets by the developers showcasing people training with eastern weapons (sais, staff, dao.. etc) but I noticed they didn't have any of western medieval katas.

My only 2 comments are :
• Yes a bastard sword/longsword should have been brought in long time ago
• It should be the beginner friendly solid fundamental moveset alongside with mitsurugi (not sure if Hwang's dao moveset will also fall into the jack-of-all-trades category)
 
Klimat said:
I don't remember picking any fights, just pointing out how I thought it was strange anyone would single out Amy specifically for something 50% of the roster was "guilty" off. You need to chill out.

Wrong.

By this logic Amy already had vastly different costume styles in other SC games because she used to be a Raphael clone, so all of Raphael costumes should count, shouldn't they?

Not really. He's a Japanese Elvis in different levels of undress and that's it.

What can I say, it's the same basic idea every time.

By the way, I think Lost Swords might had you covered Kappa:
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aside from it just being a boring shitty cash grab excuse of a game, that trailer is what pushed me to delete lost swords. i could understand them advertising porn costumes on ivy or even literally any other adult female character, but AMY?! like i could expect that shit from creepy pedo weebs but from the official channel ? 🤮
 
Allyjandro said:
aside from it just being a boring shitty cash grab excuse of a game, that trailer is what pushed me to delete lost swords. i could understand them advertising porn costumes on ivy or even literally any other adult female character, but AMY?! like i could expect that shit from creepy pedo weebs but from the official channel ? 🤮
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Japan has a problem with fetishising and sexualising young girls unfortunately.
 
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