Proposal: Soulcalibur Arena / What would your perfect Soulcalibur game look like?

[Rusted Blade]

So I've been thinking about my perfect Soulcalibur game for some time. The game I would see made if I was massively successful venture capitalist who not only purchased a controlling amount of stock Namco Bandai, but was also lending it a huge amount of capital to get big projects done. Basically I'm imagining a scenario where budget is not nearly as big an issue for a Soulcalibur game as it is today. I want the concept I develop to be vaguely realistic and consistent with the notion that we would want the entry to be commercially viable, but we'd be willing to fund it more at the front-end, at a level much greater than that which the last few SC games have gotten. I want to explore a scenario where I am hypothetically in a position to set broad development goals / content outlines for a Soulcalibur entry and detail what would I mandate.

In these terms, what I think the franchise needs is a theoretical game that I call 'Soulcalibur Arena': a love letter to the franchise to-date that prioritizes the legacy of gameplay and design features, but cuts the fat when it comes to extraneous story content. It would still have some single player modes that I think would be well received by longtime series fans (even those who are more casual / less competitive about their play), but there would be no story campaign as such--no hour upon hour of virtual light novel talking heads and tedious set-ups for battles with cookie cutter NPCs. It would be streamlined in this respect and therefore allow for more concessions towards roster size, stage selection, creation resources, modes, solid and expansive mechanics, and other important core offerings.

And aside from that one concession, the game would be fairly ambitious in scope: indeed, arguably so idealized, one might have to assume a budget up to twice that of any recent SC game, although I will discuss in a follow-up post how some content delivery models might be used to mitigate these costs and make this a more realistic concept. I've debated starting with the modes first to define the outer parameters of the gameplay options, but I think I'll start with discussing content, just to put in focus what the priorities would be here.

Roster:

And the first priority is to cram in as much of the variety of movesets from across the franchise as possible. This would be accomplished in two ways: 1) returning every major roster character from every previous mainline entry, plus a handful of characters who have made minor appearances in the past, but never quite got a full independent moveset representation, and 2) a vastly expanded guest character roster, including some returning guests, where feasible. There would be no concerns about continuity in the fights the roster can account for.

The Soulcalibur cast would consist of: Abelia, Aeon/Lizardman hybrid, Algol, Amy, Arthur, Astaroth, Azwel, Cassandra, Cervantes, Chester, Dampierre, Greed, Groh, Han-myeong, Hilde, Hwang, Ivy, Kilik, Leixia, Li long, Maxi, Miser, Mitsurugi, Natsu, Nightmare, Patroklos, Pyrrha, Raphael, Rock, Seong-Mina, Setsuka, Siegfried, Sophitia, Taki, Talim, Tira, Valeria, Viola, Voldo, Xiangua, Xiba, Yoshimitsu, Yun-seong, Zasalamel, ZWEI, and two new original characters. Pyrrha and Patroklos would each have a moveset composed of their regular and alpha/omega variants, perhaps effectuated through Soul Charge (which would function similar to VI's version of the mechanic). Abelia, Arthur, Chester, Greed, Han-Myeong, Miser, and Valeria would, of course, be the upgraded to similar moveset complexity and uniqueness to the rest of the cast. Hell, maybe throw Kamikirimisu in there with a unique kanabo moveset.

I also imagine up to a dozen or more guests. Whether this would be feasible without losing too much budget to licensing fees, who can say: I think we're moving into an era where this is going to be increasingly something that almost all fighters do a lot of, and I think Namco already wants to be a leader in that area. Anyway, it's my fantasy and it doesn't definitively break reality, so they're in! I'm just going to list some of the characters I have in the past thought/presently do think would make for great transplants into the Soulcalibur formula, irrespective of whether they have enough clout currently to be advisable as guests today:

Heihachi, Devil Jin, Kazuya, Alisa, Lars, Panda (Tekken); Ryu Hyabusa, Kasumi (Dead or Alive); Tifa Lockheart (Final Fantasy VII); Monkey (Enslaved), Corvo, Daud, Emily (Dishonored); the Dragonborn, the Breton (Elder Scrolls); Alucard, Gabriel (Castlevania: Lords of Shadow); some Xenoblade character or another; Kratos (using his look and skillset from the recent God of War soft reboot); a Tales character; a Sekuro, Bloodborne, or Dark Souls character; Rey and the Apprentice (Star Wars--hey I thought the Apprentice worked perfectly well in IV!); Scorpion and Kitana (Mortal Kombat); Fulgore (Killer Instinct); Strider Hyru (various Capcom titles); an Injustice-inspired Wonder Woman; Ezio and Altair (Assasin's Creed); 2B and 9S (Nier: Automota); Geralt and Letho (The Witcher); Link and Gannon (The Legend of Zelda--yes, I know the licensing issues likely to preclude this, but how can we not mention the possibility?); Spawn and Necrid; and who knows, maybe Haohmaru will turn out so awesome that we'd want him or another Samurai Showdown character back in the future.

Each character would come with 2-4 default outfits, and 12 weapons, both of which could be changed with quick menus on the select screen, with a setting to set the default from these options or a custom version. There would additionally be a mimic slot on the character select screen, from which you could choose Edge Master (who randomly selects a style each round), Olcadan (who randomly selects a style and then sticks with it for a full match), and Charade (who mimics your opponents style unless they are also playing Charade, in which case you both use the same randomly selected style each round). Super powered versions of the bosses Inferno, Abyss, Night Terror and Elysium (with her own moveset that borrows heavily from Sophitia in the same way the current day Inferno borrows from Nightmare) are also fought during the single player modes, but are not selectable for multiplayer.

Stages:

Another big priority, this game would feature a minimum of 30-35 stages, perhaps more with continuing support. The stages would be lush with colour and detail, and often alive with activity, as classic Soulcalibur stages have typically been. There will be multiple configurations of many maps, with differing platform sizes and shapes, cage elements, and other features which change the dynamics. Many other stages would be heavy in interactive elements (multiple levels, walls that can be knocked down) as were sometimes featured in SCIV and SCV.

Among the many stages would be various series classics and archetypes, such as: a raft stage; a coliseum stage; a cathedral stage; the Shrine of Eurydice; Kenpaektu Shrine; Valentine Manor (library or hall); a ship at sea stage; a castle siege stage; the Money Pit; the Astral Chaos; Ostrheinsburg castle armory; an egyptian temple stage; a city square stage; an imperial gardens stage; a grassy plateau stage; a forest glen stage; a labrynth stage; an icey cliffside stage; Fu-ma Sanctuary; Seong Dojo; a city port stage; an active volcanic wasteland stage; the Tower of Remembrance; Jyurakudai Villa; a Japanese feudal castle courtyard stage; Wolkfrone Castle throneroom; a windmill stage; and a stage for each guest character.

Creation content:

Creation mode would also get its fullest treatment to date in this game, with an expansive effort to try to capture all of the disparate styles and options throughout the series history. An effort would be made to replicate upwards of 90% of all art assets that had ever been a part of any one of any character's outfits in any fighter entry in the franchise (SE, SCI, SCII, SCIII/AE, SCIV/BD, SCV, SC:LS, SCVI), plus virtually all items, textures, faces, hairstyles, patterns and options ever featured in any version of the creation editor. On top of this would be added 300 new wardrobe items, 50 new objects, 25 new hair styles, 12 new faces per gender, and a few more voice options.

In addition to the potentially thousands of items this collection may pull in, the editor would be more feature rich in options than ever, including 24 base races (though that's not that many more than currently exist, its worth noting), all styles available for creations (including guests), a three-fold increase in surface patterns, and a greatly expanded colour palette tool. Each character/moveset would also contribute 12 different weapons to the CaS selection, for a pretty vast array of weaponry to suit CaS characters. Every player would be granted 500 save slots for their own creations and 500 for downloaded creations, and there would be vastly improved character database interface, with detailed search functions.

Modes:

Having fleshed out the content offerings, it's time to explore what the gameplay would look like. Here everything I would include would be a classic stage or a variation thereof, but again, fuller and deeper in construction than any one game has typically allowed for, especially with recent games. The main menu and the sub-options would look like this:


Arcade:
-Tale of Swords
-Versus

Battle:
-Standard Match (single player and offline versus)
-Custom Match
-Team Battle
-Tag Battle

Challenge:
-Path of Legendary Souls
-Field of Destiny
-Survival
-Time Attack

Network:
-Standard Match (ranked)
-Custom Match
-Team Battle
-Tag Battle
-Field of Destiny
-Free Training
-Online replay archive

Training:
-Free Training
-The Proving Grounds
-Olcadan's Arena
-Training manual (text, stills, and frame data charts)
-Stat tracker

Creation:
-Editor
-Online Library
-Set defaults

Museum:
-Soundtracks
-Art
-Exhibition Theatre
-Personal replay Theatre


Most of those are self-explanatory and have been in various entries of the franchise over the years, although it's been a while for some. But here's some additional detail to make sense of the additional items, or those returning with a twist:

Versus Arcade would exactly what you would expect, 8 rounds of randomly selected opponents. However, Tale of Swords would be a variation on standard vs. that would be this game's sole major concession to a deeper exploration of story and lore: each character would have 10 matches that were predetermined for them, and each of these battles would represent a different plot beat from across their story in the Soulcalibur narrative, starting with their earliest appearance and ending with their latest appearance, probably circa SCIV or SCV. A few of these rounds for each character will feature brief in-engine dialogue exchanges before or after battles, and a tiny little outro screen, but this mode is meant to just give the tines hint of the character's story arc, not a deep lore dive. Indeed, lore is largely absent even from the museum mode, which instead will focus on a comprehensive collection of series production art and soundtracks, along with the return of the oldschool exhibition theatre for all non-guest characters.

The Path of Legendary Souls mode takes a page from SCIV's Tower of Lost Souls (with bits of SCIII:CE's Soul Arena Mission mode and SCVI's Libra of Soul mode mixed in): 100 floors, each of which represents a unique combination of stage elements and special effects (think sinking floors and lava barriers and all the other variants in SCIII:CE) various character debuff/enemy buff status effects (lowered damage, poison, and all the many other status variations appearing in the most recent five games), particular win conditions (ring outs or hot potato victories, for example), and different basic battle modes (single, team, or tag battles). These features combine to create truly and increasingly devious criteria for the floors as the enemy AI difficulty slowly scales towards flawless at the same time. It ends with a floor wherein the player is given one round/life and must pass through a gauntlet of all four bosses running super insane AI and with various buffs/narrowed win conditions, that will take you half a decade to conquer.

Field of Destiny represents a mini tactical strategy mode that is kind of a quick match/non-story variant of SCIII:CE's Chronicles of the Sword mode: herein you roam a little map with groups of up to three original or custom characters, which you can give various weapon and potion buffs to as you try to capture the map, engaging in rounds of tag battle combat as you contest nodes and split up your forces to hold them. It can be played local single player versus the machine, local versus, or online versus.

Team Battle, inexplicably removed in SCIII and (even more mind-boggling) never re-introduced, will now return, with up to 12v12 bouts. Tag Battles (with up to three characters per side) will also return for the first time since SCIV. Survivor and Time Attack modes will work more or less as you'd expect.

Network Custom Match: Matchmaking will have a huge proliferation of options for getting matches started. Ranked will work much as it does in SCVI (but with a more nuanced system for ranking), but you will also be able to do custom searches for matches with various conditions, custom hosting with many options, a lobby list, and an alternative interface to all of these features rolled into a variation on the global coliseo system. Multiple active matches per lobby can be enabled, and full voice and open text chat would be enabled, with the current generic messages retained only as a potential time-saving feature. Overall, matchmaking would be much more reliable and faithful to the options you choose than has been the case with the last two entries, and smoothly operating netcode would be a development priority.

Training would get a massive, massive overhaul and would now consist of three modes, plus a hefty open library of data:

• Free Training: This would be the variant of the training mode we currently have. All features/bells and whistles currently in training mode would be included here, plus the option to display detailed frame data when browsing move lists and testing moves and combos. It would also include an extra bonus of an endless corridor level, and would also be available via network play for collaborative training. Charade is your default opponent here, though anybody can be swapped in for him.
• The Proving Grounds: This mode would feature more guided training by Edge Master of general mechanics, skills, and gameplay features, with ramping difficulty curves, leading into more and more complex mechanics and more complicated and demanding drills on those mechanics.
• Olcadan's Arena: Lastly, this massive resource would offer character specific training exploring each character's entire repertoire of moves, mechanics, standard combos and unique features.
• Training manual/Technical library: a large compendium of text, stills, and frame data/move quality charts which overlaps with and compliments the three active training modes.

Well, that about does it for my daydream, until I can think of the next thing to make it a little less realistic in scope. I'll probably add a detailed section on mechanics later. In the meantime, I'd be very interested in knowing what people think of the idea of such a game with a greater focus on the franchise's gameplay, a largely expanded amount of content, and decreased agonizing over the story. In a follow-up post I will be discussing how the game might be delivered in pieces under continuing support DLC models, but I do recognize that even with the benefit of the doubt, the game is probably bigger than would ever happen without a serious bankroll at the outset, and some degree of risk of loss that a company like Namco would be unwilling to take, especially in this day and age, in a truly realistic context. Nevertheless, as an exercise in defining the perfect Soulcalibur game, this is what I would want to deliver.

But more so than hearing what you think of my vision, I'd also like to hear others define the parameters of their ideal game for the franchise: what would you prioritize and which features could you do without? Come on, let's all create our perfect games in our heads so we can all be that much more unreasonable and surly with what we get with the remainder of SCVI's life. ;)

 

[DanteSC3]

What you're describing could work in a "SoulCalibur Tag Tournament" kind of way, which might be nice, and still, honestly, was what I was expecting we would get instead of SoulCalibur V, originally, and then, instead of SoulCalibur VI doing what it's doing, if we were going to get another SoulCalibur game, I had a mild expectation that they might do this, in order to recoup costs, but they made pachinko, mobile game, single player pay to win, all that other junk...

And while it might be fun for a one-off, I don't think this would be a "perfect" SoulCalibur game in any stretch of the word. SoulCalibur is all about the complete package, not just the gameplay, for me at least. I care about the story, the characters, the different modes of play, all of that, which is why SoulCalibur and SoulCalibur II are tied for my top favorite, with SoulCalibur III trailing just behind. The first game set the premise for the ones that would follow, and invented the 8-way-run system we all know and love. The gameplay was nigh-perfection, and would only be improved further in SoulCalibur II, but then the mechanically-challenged SoulCalibur III diluted it with its glitches and broken hitboxes and that sort of thing. And then SoulCalibur IV happened, setting up a tangent that's led us to where we are now, with meters and gauges and all other manners of complexity, borrowing ideas form other fighting games, which I argue might could be unnecessary, since the games were fine before then. But they have made it work.

Mission Mode was great, offering the various challenges and tweaks to the way the game is played, has always been a pretty fun experience, testing your abilities in a wide range of settings. And more importantly than that, an art that seems lost to time, was the satisfaction level that came with unlocking things through your efforts. Weapon Master Mode of SoulCalibur II and Soul Arena of SoulCalibur III would continue this kind of idea, though it was diminished by SoulCalibur IV and nonexistent in SoulCalibur V. SoulCalibur VI sort of brought it back in Libra of Soul, but the RNG aspect of it, meaning I'm sure there's at least one if not several battles I haven't experienced, bothers me on an internal level, to some degree. They really should have had some sort of progress tracker, so you could know what you have and haven't done.

I always enjoy the story of these games too, of course, and the games with the best story modes are SoulCalibur III and SoulCalibur VI. SoulCalibur III hearkened back to Edge Master Mode from SoulBlade, where you're journeying across the world, doing your quest with dialogue points, various challenges, and unlocking things along the way. The branching paths aspect was neat too, giving you reasons to play through more than once and see all the different possibilities. Repeat for the full range of characters, and you had an engaging mode of play that took a lot of time to get through, and never felt tedious, so it was a great value. Compare SoulCalibur VI, where there is only one path, one canon, one narrative, and there's less overall content, but all of it meaningful, so that's nice in its own way. But seeing where all the characters fall into place in the big world of stuff is fantastic, and these two games did it best.

Customization is one of the cooler things that has been added to the series, though its quality has been up and down through the games. SoulCalibur III still arguably did things the best, with respects to layering and non-conflicting pieces. It was also the simplest, without the ability to custom color your weapon, trails, add patterns, stickers, extra equipment all those extra nitty-gritty things to really make the creation yours, but there was something great about never having to wonder about whether you could even use the parts with each other. The custom styles were also great, if unrefined. So a perfect world scenario would be this, but with those styles brought up to the same level as Hwang, Li Long, and Amy from the Arcade Edition. And yes, keeping all the parts from the previous games and not having to buy them again as DLC time and time again.

One of my biggest complaints about customization, though, is that there's no way to unlock, at the very least, templates, if not a library, of all the custom characters that appear in the respective games. It has been a passion of mine to recreate these characters from different modes, either Chronicles of the Sword, story characters (most prevalent in SoulCalibur IV, but also here in SoulCalibur VI), and otherwise. I kind of understand why, in some cases, because some of these characters cheat the system, having unique parts or access to features that you can't replicate in the creator, but this is actually even more frustrating that you can't than anything else too. While it is fun to craft them yourself, in a way, I can't help but feel I miss some details here and there, due to the limited scope with which you can view them, and the darkness of some stages, to get everything just right. I'm not sure why it would be a big hassle to allow you to get these. Side shout-out to SoulCalibur VI's COLOR 3 and COLOR 4 still not being selectable.

But getting away from the singleplayer elements, all important, no doubt, still there does need to be attention paid the the multiplayer modes as well. The return of team battle (with tag!) would be a very welcome addition, though while SoulCalibur IV teased tagging mechanics, SoulCalibur VI doesn't seem to have this, so not having tag would also be fine. But it absolutely does have the mechanics for team battle, in fighting multiple opponents in the single player modes, so it seems like it mostly should just be a doddle to adapt this to multiplayer. My biggest gripe with team battle, though, was always in that you couldn't willingly choose to move down the list, that if you wanted to use one of your later characters, you had to lose with your prior characters, and once lost, you can't get that character back. That's where the tagging bit comes in. Some kind of psuedo-tournament mode would also be nice, like SoulCalibur III had, and you could simulate it in SoulCalibur V's Global Colosseum.

So, in short, I suppose my perfect SoulCalibur game would be something in-line with the first three games in structure, content, unlocks, and all that, but with some of the more modern sensibilities of the newer games added in as well, or put more simply, if SoulCalibur IV hadn't deviated so hard, if SoulCalibur III didn't have its technical issues, if the game progression had just remained linear, each game in the series successively gaining more and more things, without leaving anything behind, including roster, modes, features, everything.