DanteSC3
[14] Master
Alternative, Astaroth gets new throws and Rock reclaims his original throws.
Season 3 Wishlist
- Thread starter Ramusu20
- Start date
sytus
[14] Master
By the time SC4 came about, Rock was already pretty unique to Astaroth in the throwing department as his throws are mainly based around grabbing the legs of a grounded opponent. You really need to watch this video and compare what Rock has here that Astaroth doesn't in SC6. The argument that Rock has nothing because Astaroth has them has been moot for over a decade.
Byros
[10] Knight
Season 3 Wishlist...
Removal of reversal edge for good, this one alone would be worth the price of admission.
Other than that:
Quality of Life:
Final thought:
How about a separate story expansion for Soul Chronicle & Libra of Soul, similar to what MK11 has just announced.
Removal of reversal edge for good, this one alone would be worth the price of admission.
Other than that:
- 12 weapons per character with special attributes (Namco already has them from SC2 & SC3)
- Stages from previous games.
- Medieval armor parts from previous games.
- Facial hair for CaS.
- Bonus fighting styles from SC3.
- Real arcade mode with final boss fight & what if endings.
- Edge Master, Olcadan & Valeria.
- 2P Costumes from previous games.
Quality of Life:
- Option to turn on/off overdone depth of field effect.
- Option to turn on/off hit effects, particles, explosions, etc.
- Option to turn on/off equipment damage.
- Option to turn on/off command input buffering.
- Slider bar to adjust gameplay speed.
- Independent butt slider for CaS.
- Ability to select different background images for the anemic menu interface.
- Ability to select menu music + missing BGM fom previous games.
- Better interface to filter/browse/download CaS from other players.
Final thought:
How about a separate story expansion for Soul Chronicle & Libra of Soul, similar to what MK11 has just announced.
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- Banned
- #64
- Thread starter
- #65
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
Maybe, but I don't think the current chapters are any less a natural stopping point than the previous ones--so they didn't increase or decrease my expectation of further content one way or the other. Indeed, the only concrete sentiment I took out of those chapters was "Really, we're still wasting resources on more nonsense, cringey light novel chapters for characters who already had fully fleshed out (if awful) melodrama narratives? This could have been an extra stage, or forty extra CaS items, or a mimic character, or team battle, or just a million possible better things they could have done with those resources besides tell us more about Eem-Groh...
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Klimat
[13] Hero
Groh's chapter is literally called "Side Story 1", it's a no-brainer there will be at the very least "Side Story 2" and probably more to really get to something important. At this point of SC6 life cycle it can't be just a random throw away plot, they are clearly building up to something here. Might be Season 3 related, might be for SC7, but even if it builds up to SC7, it still needs Season 3 to have enough time to get there unless they droped one chapter with Setsuka only to drop 4-5 chapters all at once with Hwang, which won't make much sense.
- Thread starter
- #68
Thank you for giving me more hope! I really want Rock to join Season 3!
DanteSC3
[14] Master
I agree with your premise, but it doesn't necessarily mean anything in and of itself, considering how they've been with numbers since Cassandra. Hers was kind of a more special case, a misdirection "gotcha" moment where she had a series of 0-alpha, 0-beta, 0-gamma episodes that were sequenced before her episode 1, with the twist, but Setsuka's started with an episode 0 for some reason (she wouldn't be the only one whose episode 1 doesn't have a fight and is just a prologue of sorts, so... why?) and her numbers are also out of order, because her story jumped back and forth through time. So really, they can do what they want with the numbers and it doesn't have to follow a logical flow, in and of itself.
But as for Grøh's actual chapter that we got building towards something, I don't really agree. It really did just seem like a throwaway, considering it was just a fight against two Lizardmen and a Cult Priest, the randomest of random encounters, unless they're just trying to send a message to Aeon fans or something, is the best interpretation I have of it. Learning that he was aware of Maxi's fate doesn't really help anything, considering Grøh had already abandoned you to do his own stuff when you were working with Maxi during Libra of Soul. And then his flashback to Curtis was equally a bit random, like yes, you'd miss your departed friend, that's normal, but what it actually adds to the narrative is pretty questionable.
I'm not saying I wouldn't want more, don't misunderstand, I'm just saying there's no guarantee of anything until we actually get it, that this isn't a sufficient hint, in and of itself, to tell us that we'll be getting more Grøh story parts.
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
You would be able to speak to this better than me (or just about anyone for that matter), but it seems to me as if the whole Groh, Azwel, Raphael and Amy cluster of characters has reached a pretty natural stopping point for the current entry. Drawing any one of them into a new thread might feel redundant, I would think? I'm confused that they felt the need to add more Groh story ("Hey, let's have more Groh!" is a mystifying statement to me in any context), but I think it's telling that the bit they added seems to have just been a random little encounter with mooks that jsut provided chapter to hang a bunch of exposition on (that serves as some connective tissue between the two modes?)
Ugh. I'm sorry, but I'm gonna say it again: for me, this is such a waste of resources when there is so much in other areas of content we could hope to have fleshed out. Everyone has already had a more than fleshed out Soul Chronicle--indeed, every single playable character, minus two of the guests and Inferno has received more direct attention than they have in any single game previously.
It's not exactly good storytelling, mind you: it's a pretty silly narrative with equally goofy characterization delivered plot beats dominated by nauseatingly repetitive formulaic "go to point a to hear to find NPC {SCRIPT RETURN: BANDIT}" paint-by-numbers nonsense and some of the most tin-eared dialogue ever to be (half effectively) translated into English, and very dubiously sounded great in any language. Even the stuff that isn't complete filler doesn't serve up much in terms of compelling story or particularly believable characters, but to be fair, my impression of that issue might be better if the presentation: the digital light novel format is, in my opinion, a massive step in the wrong direction for how you should be telling a story in a franchise such of this, which has traditionally been told better (if much more minimalisticly)in previous stories.
True, the series has long experimented with supplementing it's featured visual storytelling in and around missions with text blocks and written dialogue, but this has got to be the first time the quantity-to-quality ratio has gotten so severely out of whack. The acting is too hammy by half even for Soulcalibur (in fact, that might be the way I'd describe the entirety of the single player content in this game), although the performances are so consistently over-the-top (except when they are just the opposite and flat--or stilted altogether) that I have to think a lot of the problems come down to direction rather than the actors. Then again, you could have the best actors and directors in the world and what are you gonna do with that writing? The dialogue is just so unnatural and amateur hour--again, even judging by the discount Soulcalibur gets for being balls-to-the-wall, unabashedly absurd: it's still bad even by that yardstick. These stories could have been told in 1/25th the time and been structurally better for it.
True, the series has long experimented with supplementing it's featured visual storytelling in and around missions with text blocks and written dialogue, but this has got to be the first time the quantity-to-quality ratio has gotten so severely out of whack. The acting is too hammy by half even for Soulcalibur (in fact, that might be the way I'd describe the entirety of the single player content in this game), although the performances are so consistently over-the-top (except when they are just the opposite and flat--or stilted altogether) that I have to think a lot of the problems come down to direction rather than the actors. Then again, you could have the best actors and directors in the world and what are you gonna do with that writing? The dialogue is just so unnatural and amateur hour--again, even judging by the discount Soulcalibur gets for being balls-to-the-wall, unabashedly absurd: it's still bad even by that yardstick. These stories could have been told in 1/25th the time and been structurally better for it.
I get that even in a hardcore community like this, a not-insignificant amount of people will be advocates for this kind of content, but the game has met that burden and then some, and kinda suffered for it: stage design and selection is an area that is slowly improving, but still abysmal if you compare it to pretty much any previous game in the franchise. I'm actually a habitual defender against some criticism of this CaS editor (I think it's by far the best to date) but even I will admit the selection lagged at first and could still use some fleshing out--and even as the selection does consistently build with each release, there's been a general sense that they have been a little one-note for a while. I think the selection is getting there, but there could always be more money spent there.
Of course, there is a natural defense for these chapters: they rely on different skillsets and so it's not always a zero-sum exchange to have the story in addition to the other content, because they rely on other types of staff. There's some support for this in this particular case, because I suspect the singleplayer content is the content that is most heavily outsourced. But that argument is only so effectual: at the end of the day, that work costs money and there is only a finite amount of that which is going to be earmarked for continuing support of Namco's second or third most popular title amongst just its fighters. Anyway, that all i think suffices to explain what I think Season Three (or any forthcoming content) ought to focus on.
DanteSC3
[14] Master
Azwel, Raphael, and Amy, yes, absolutely. Grøh, on the other hand, got a bit of the short end of the stick, in my opinion. His role mostly was to serve as a guide and an inspiration for The Conduit in Libra of Soul, with his ultimate fate left up to the hands of The Conduit. Weirdly the only ambiguous ending of the entire cast, where he might have been killed or spared. This was seemingly averted by his appearance in Hilde's Soul Chronicle, confirming that the "good" ending is considered to be canon, which is why I didn't feel like his new Side Story chapter did much, if anything, for him.
I guess what I would personally be looking for in a Grøh side story would be the actual events of his time after being spared by The Conduit to actually show his regrouping with the Aval Organization in order to continue his missions. But really, beyond that, I'm hoping his role is a bit more substantial in SoulCalibur VII, because while Azwel has got his Ultimate Seeds in a lot of different gardens, Grøh really... doesn't, by comparison, which I get the point that the Aval Organization works in secret and all, but I just wonder if that's a blanket excuse that he could be involved in everyone's and no one's stories all at once until directly confirmed or denied, or what they're really going for with it.
We've already talked about most of what else is in your post, but on this bit in particular, I'd point out that we needed the quantity in this case, considering our "reboot" situation, it was necessary to establish where, why, and how each character is participating in the story, and indeed, to have a unified canon storytelling model as opposed to having everyone enjoying what-if scenarios where they win their respective personal battles. The quality is questionable and inconsistent, with that much I'll agree, but in the bigger picture, I'd say the stories more than served their purpose and gave us the richest shown, not told, story that we've seen in a game yet. And I prefer the visual novel style from SoulCalibur VI over the sepia stills from SoulCalibur V any day.
Would it be nice to have had more actual fully rendered cutscenes? Absolutely. But I'd argue that, and only that, is relevant to the argument where you'd say it has a large impact on other modes. Look at SoulCalibur V's cutscenes again, and you can see, for the few that we got, they had the production levels maxed out, they were crisp, smooth, and beautiful. The cutscenes we got in SoulCalibur VI were pretty good too, mind you, but they weren't as good as the ones from SoulCalibur V, I don't think, with several rough edges that could have been smoothed out, but I think we all know there was a time/budget cut near the end of development for SoulCalibur VI, and some things didn't get completed, though it wasn't nearly so severe as SoulCalibur V's cuts. I'm not saying there isn't time and money sunk into making a visual novel story, it's just significantly less than fully animating and polishing cutscenes for everything, no matter how big nor small.
I feel like SoulCalibur VII will be a lot leaner with the stories, since now, everyone is established (save new characters, they would need a bit more fat on their stories, to set them up properly), and there would be a more favorable balance, assuming they keep the same presentation style moving forward. There would then be a better ratio, and maybe it wouldn't be so potentially invasive for folks who aren't super attached to the lore like myself.
sytus
[14] Master
@Rusted Blade
The execution of the stories and acting are definitely hit or miss but they don't bother me too much as it does you and others. For me they are serviceable but enjoyable, plus character motivations are way more grounded than say MK's reboot story which feel completely out of place with the fights that happen in it. I think if everything was planned out years in advance and the game had a bigger budget we could have gotten something stellar, but we're unfortunately a poverty game with a skeleton crew and limited time. At least in my head and can make the stories sound sweeter without the hammy lines.
The execution of the stories and acting are definitely hit or miss but they don't bother me too much as it does you and others. For me they are serviceable but enjoyable, plus character motivations are way more grounded than say MK's reboot story which feel completely out of place with the fights that happen in it. I think if everything was planned out years in advance and the game had a bigger budget we could have gotten something stellar, but we're unfortunately a poverty game with a skeleton crew and limited time. At least in my head and can make the stories sound sweeter without the hammy lines.
How so?
DanteSC3
[14] Master
It takes place after the end of Libra of Soul, and Grøh is clearly alive, so there's no way the Grøh gets killed ending is canon.
I thought Grøh's fight with The Conduit was in 1587, though? And his appearance in Hilde's Soul Chronicle was in 1583?
DanteSC3
[14] Master
Does Grøh not show up again after the skip to 1588? I could swear he does, unless it was just Hilde remembering Grøh giving her the sealing sword. But I also take their shared combat dialogue to confirm that they spar together, and Hilde wasn't fighting in 1583, at least not in the way where she would be calling out the names of her attacks, as Grøh is suggesting that she should. It seems like I should revisit the Chronicles sometime, only playing them once doesn't have the same power as the implementation of previous lore, if I'm making glaring mistakes like this. And @Rusted Blade says we don't have enough story, we clearly need more if we have so many unanswered questions!
Fredfredburger
[07] Duelist
Season 3 First Pack
Second Pack
Third Pack
Fourth Pack
- Preset costumes for all characters
- Playable character Rock
- Character creation set G
Second Pack
- Playable character Aeon
- Character creation set H
Third Pack
- Playable character Li Long
- Character creation set I
Fourth Pack
- Playable character Yun Seong
- Character creation set J
- Banned
- #79
Klimat
[13] Hero
I bet we'll get Yun first. He's the most popular character left, so from a marketing perspective you want to start strong and advertise on it, also Hwang's plot is a natural point to tease Yun's appearance.
Also no way we'll get Rock first, among all Season 3 non-guests he would need the most amount of work and therefore time to properly declone.
I think Groh's Side Stories as a whole will build up to something, which should not necessarily be the case for every particular individual chapter. The one we've got so far looked more like a recap episode to bring people up to speed on Groh's past adventures, since for many players the last time they checked up on those was in 2018.