EGMi Cover Story for Soul Calibur V

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EGM now has their June 6th issue of their magazine available to view online which features Soul Calibur 5 on the cover and an interesting interview with producer Hisaharu Tago and director Daishi Odashima.

You can click here to view the issue. You can also buy the current issue at your local news stand. Special thanks to Mr.Nobody for providing the tip.
 
I've stated this before elsewhere, but I feel like we're in good hands with Odashima. Of course, being a SC1 kinda guy, it makes me happy to have a SC1 competitive player heading the gameplay side of the project up. When you add to that that he seems to hate homogenized characters and loves fast gameplay I can't wait to see what's next. And I always like timeskips a lot, so I'm even excited about the story. I like everything I've seen and heard so far (except for blocking not reducing the meter as of yet).
 
Daishi Odashima said:
"There's also a concept in Japanese called wabi-sabi, which means 'a perfect balance between too much and too little.' So it's not like you can just make everything over the top and it'll be OK, some elements have to be kind of bland on purpose. [That even goes] for characters: some can be strong, and some we want to be kind of weak, on purpose. That's a perfect balance from the Japanese mentality."

Please tell me something was lost in translation here. The way this sounds from how I'm interpreting it, it's completely unacceptable.
 
Daishi Odashima said:
"There's also a concept in Japanese called wabi-sabi, which means 'a perfect balance between too much and too little.' So it's not like you can just make everything over the top and it'll be OK, some elements have to be kind of bland on purpose. [That even goes] for characters: some can be strong, and some we want to be kind of weak, on purpose. That's a perfect balance from the Japanese mentality."

Please tell me something was lost in translation here. The way this sounds from how I'm interpreting it, it's completely unacceptable.
Yeaaaaaaaaaah....I don't like the sound of that either....I hope he meant that he used those kinds of methods on the old games. <__<
But there's just no real way of telling right now since the game is too new...looks like we'll just have to wait and see on this.
Unless, someone else can elaborate on what he truly meant.

But over the interview was really awesome and informative! ^_^
 
I enjoyed the article
especially Odashima's "More than one and less than 50!"
Great answer..HAHA!!!
 
Daishi Odashima said:
"There's also a concept in Japanese called wabi-sabi, which means 'a perfect balance between too much and too little.' So it's not like you can just make everything over the top and it'll be OK, some elements have to be kind of bland on purpose. [That even goes] for characters: some can be strong, and some we want to be kind of weak, on purpose. That's a perfect balance from the Japanese mentality."

Please tell me something was lost in translation here. The way this sounds from how I'm interpreting it, it's completely unacceptable.

Sadly, I don't think this was incorrectly translated. Ono said something similar about AE a few months back.
 
This was a very interesting interview, especially the first part about the petition.

As for wabi-sabi, I don't mind it.
 
I do agree with that whole wabi-sabi thing, having some characters "stronger" than others, there is a line of acceptability. A Hilde and Rock comparison is completely unacceptable, but i feel like if every character was the same in terms of tier ranking the game would get boring.
 
I think just about all competitive players can agree the wabi-sabi thing is a very bad idea. It reminds me of Tekken 4 where the developers admitted they designed Jin to be the most powerful character in the game, and big surprise, he was the only character used in tournaments.

Maybe they could reach some kind of compromise. Maybe they could add obviously overpowered moves for certain characters, but only make those available in the "special" mode. Similar to how weapon effects are only available in special VS in SC4.
 
When Japanese developers make affirmative value claims regarding skewed character balance, I think we interpret them way too simplistically. I don't think these responses do the philosophy justice.

Are 5/5 matchups across the board really what everyone wants in a fighting game (assuming this is possible in a game with character variance)? Sounds fancifully democratic but I don't know.
 
maybe they should just have 50% returning chars and the other half new chars with a balanced system. since there will be like 11 to 15 new chars the gameplay will seem new but still familar to former players and it wont be boring becuase of the new character styles. I have a feeling that since the game will be balanced they will focus mainly on each chars style of play and make it more......ummmm "defined".
 
i can see the reasoning behind the 'wabi-sabi' thing, but just about every game has implemented it incorrectly (or too much to the extreme, rather) to be considered a good philosophy

anybody who references ANY SF4 iteration as a 'good' example of it is flat-out wrong (even if Odashima himself said it). With SF4, all you saw in tournaments were 1 million ryus and sagats. it was rediculous, as well as annoying! which was the whole reasoning behind the re-balancing for SSF4. It fixed alot of the problems with balance of SF4, and many considered it to be superior because of it. I mean, there were twice as many characters, and the vast majority of them were competitive. It still has its share of issues, specifically with the extremes of the tier-lists. Now that AE is out, it's getting more like the old SF4, but this time, instead of DP-trading-to-ultra ryu and sagat, now you have the twins. because of that, there are rumors that there will be (YET ANOTHER) rebalancing in the works

Also, the whole, overpowered-Jin-in-T4 thing is in fact the 'wabi-sabi' philosophy (being that he was created to be stronger than others), but taken too far, as I'm sure that the developers didn't anticipate that he'd be THAT strong. No developer anticipates that on purpose, I'm sure, but it almost always ends up that way. This leads to fighting games where you have useless characters, which is always bad design in my eyes -- if you put in a character who doesn't have enough tools to realistically compete with other normal (non-boss) characters, not only did you disappoint and needlessly frustrate fans of that character (at worst, possibly drawing them away from the game), but surprise!, you just wasted months and thousands of dollars of development resources that could have been used to make your game more fun
 
SF4 was the more interesting game....SSF4 was more balanced but was really boring to me.
SSF4AE is just a troll release for capcom's next SSFAE4S.

wabi sabi in fighting games translates exactly to why people say, "a balanced game is boring."

However, I trust in Odaishima

We pretty much both want the same thing, so any times he opens his mouth about the game it's music to my ears. I just want more details.
 

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