My long interview with Soul Calibur VI producer @ EVO Japan

Kayane

[12] Conqueror
Question: Is Kayane single?
Answer: *Hesitation...silence*

OK, next question... where can I get all those beautiful high-res stills that have been released so far, like this one???
Soul-Calibur-VI-Xianghua-2.jpg
 
Cool - would be nice if there was one place to get all those screenshots in high-res that have been released so far, like a complete archive.

Kayane should have asked why SoulCalibur VI features Flat Earth symbolism - who does he report to - and who is really overseeing the project? :-p

Another thing that interests me is this:

How much of the old team is working on SCVI? How many members from the original SCI are working on VI?
 
Glad to see that she brought up the distance that SC activation pushes the opponent back is ideal for some characters and kinda shitty for others so maybe the pushback distance shouldn't be universal.
 
The parts of the interview that interested me the most:

Motohiro Okubo said:
We wanted to go back to the era between Soul Calibur I et II with this new game… Well, it will not be specifically between, but it’ll be around that era.Wewant to go back to the concept of the clash between the Soul Edge and the Soul Calibur.
That essentially confirms something that people suspected. This whole "around that era" obviously means that they're just gonna take the SC1 and SC2 events and rewrite everything. Not necessarily change everything, but maybe be more specific on some parts, for example, we always knew that Kilik was malfested, but we had never seen him going mad, something we saw in the SC6 trailer.

Motohiro Okubo said:
As far as ideas go, we already have lots of them as well as finalized concepts, but we can’t talk about them yet. But we can already tell you that fans will love them !
First off, the single player content isn't finished yet, but this may hint at SC3 story mode, because it is highly regarded by fans, maybe even Chronicles of the Swords, you never know.

Motohiro Okubo said:
We cannot yet say it’d be 20 characters. We’re still working on that. Discussing it and trying to find new ideas. So no, it’s probably not going to be 20 characters.
It seems that what @Vergeben said was right, he had said they weren't sure about how many characters would end up in the game, and some would end up as DLC if not finished before the release. More speficially, @Vergeben talked about Zasalamel, who was gonna be DLC, but was then changed back to the main roster, by "trying to find new ideas", I assume they're deciding who to finish first. Its good to know we won't have just 20 characters, though, a bigger roster is always good.

Motohiro Okubo said:
*long pause* It might be a bit of an excuse, but the Tekken and Soul Calibur teams aren’t the same. And the problem lying with that is that, at the time, we didn’t think Square Enix would allow us to use Noctis. We too were surprised ! And so during the negociations part of development, we obviously couldn’t share any information with the Soul Calibur team, so even them didn’t know about it. Development on Tekken 7 began much earlier than Soul Calibur VI, so I guess that’s a bit of an excuse. Also, I must admit that I do think that Noctis would’ve fitted more in Soul Calibur VI, but that’s something we can’t change, unfortunately.

In the office, now that we have a playable version of Noctis, we take a look at the videos and the builds. The Soul Calibur team did think « Yeah, we really would’ve loved having him », but yeah, Tekken happened earlier, so that’s that. In hindsight, we do think he would’ve fitted better in Soul Calibur, but it still makes for a nice surprise for Tekken fans, who’ll love him.

But in any case, you can be sure that we’ll have a lot of surprises of the same caliber in Soul Calibur VI ! We can’t say anything more yet, but you’ll have some really cool characters !
Noctis will not be a guest in SC6, basically, at least thats not in the near plans. But "surprises of the same caliber" makes me somewhat happy, though. Maybe 2B or someone else from FF, like Gladiolus or Cloud?

Kayane said:
Have you ever thought about making a collaboration with anime characters ?
Motohiro Okubo said:
There are a lot of ideas and possibilities with these kinds of collaborations, so don’t mark it as an impossibility.
I like this. I don't care about anime in general, but many people dismiss anime characters as guests in SC and other games because "they're anime and [insert excuse here]", now we have proof that they are a possibility.

Kayane said:
Yes, well it’s because they were already asking me « Please, tell the producer this and that », so I was thinking that, okay, I should make a post for people to ask me the questions I’d ask you, because they’re very excited to see all the trailers and all the gameplay and everybody envies me because i’m playing the game and meeting you. So I’m here for them too, because they really wanted to talk to you. And, it’s funny, because we’re like, talking about gameplay. They have some crazy suggestions about the Story Mode. I said that Nightmare is the same character as Siegfried. They saw that and were like « Can Siegfried be in the game too ? He has to be in the game ! » and I said, « Well Nightmare’s in the game, so Siegfried, we’re not sure… » and so they were like « Oh, my heart is broken if he’s not in the game ! »*laughs*
Motohiro Okubo said:
As a developper, it’s easy to include characters from previous games, but that’s not really a positive in my mind. Some people won’t like it and, balance-wise, it’d lead up to some problems. Characters are a hard thing to work on.
Kayane said:
You know, even if the balance isn’t really good, I think that they’d be quite happy to have Siegfried in the game ! *laughs* I’ve seen how passionnate and how much love Siegfried has.
Motohiro Okubo said:
You can tell them that you did get your point across for Siegfried and 2B, though I can’t guarantee it’ll lead to anything. *laughs*
I don't know about you, but this dialogue makes it sound a lot like Siegfried will not be a playable character. Its a shame, but he seems to be getting our hopes down regarding our blonde swordsman, hopefully he will at least be a costume, though.
 
The parts of the interview that interested me the most:


That essentially confirms something that people suspected. This whole "around that era" obviously means that they're just gonna take the SC1 and SC2 events and rewrite everything. Not necessarily change everything, but maybe be more specific on some parts, for example, we always knew that Kilik was malfested, but we had never seen him going mad, something we saw in the SC6 trailer.


First off, the single player content isn't finished yet, but this may hint at SC3 story mode, because it is highly regarded by fans, maybe even Chronicles of the Swords, you never know.


It seems that what @Vergeben said was right, he had said they weren't sure about how many characters would end up in the game, and some would end up as DLC if not finished before the release. More speficially, @Vergeben talked about Zasalamel, who was gonna be DLC, but was then changed back to the main roster, by "trying to find new ideas", I assume they're deciding who to finish first. Its good to know we won't have just 20 characters, though, a bigger roster is always good.


Noctis will not be a guest in SC6, basically, at least thats not in the near plans. But "surprises of the same caliber" makes me somewhat happy, though. Maybe 2B or someone else from FF, like Gladiolus or Cloud?



I like this. I don't care about anime in general, but many people dismiss anime characters as guests in SC and other games because "they're anime and [insert excuse here]", now we have proof that they are a possibility.





I don't know about you, but this dialogue makes it sound a lot like Siegfried will not be a playable character. Its a shame, but he seems to be getting our hopes down regarding our blonde swordsman, hopefully he will at least be a costume, though.

To me, it sounds like Kayane tried to grift him for a confirmation on Sieg, but it was punishable on block.
 
Siegfried was used by Nightmare, is necessary NOT lose the original history because fanboys, in SCII was without Siegfried and even so is a game very well remembered, to me on SCVI Siegfried is the host of the Nightmare that make sense a lot, because this seems like a retelling of this important part of history
 
Siegfried and Nightmare-controlled-Siegfried were both in SC1. Also in the story, Siegfried was freed from Nightmare, than got controlled again, both happening in the time span of SC1.

If anybody were to get upset that they were in, it’s because they didn’t know the story before.
 
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