@Nyte It wouldn't happen so swiftly, no. SoulCalibur VII is likely going to retell the stories of SoulCalibur II through SoulCalibur IV, as those stories all take place in the same timeframe of 1590-1591, and then we'd get some aftermath to set up the next game, much like there is aftermath in SoulCalibur VI that sets up SoulCalibur II. So they wouldn't lurch forward in a timeskip, that's one of the biggest reasons it would fail. It would be a gradual move this time, and actually fleshed out properly, as they're taking the story seriously now, where all story elements are canon, and nothing is just filler fluff. They can tell this tale, they can tell it well, they can justify it, and the signs point to that they will. Raphael is primed to become Nightmare and Amy's upcoming Soul Chronicle will prime her to become Viola. That is SoulCalibur V's backstory.
The problem with making another game after SoulCalibur V is that SoulCalibur V was so woefully incomplete, they would have to spend half of the game retreading the previous game and tying up loose ends before moving forward. Instead, they elected to get back in the good graces of fans by rebooting the timeline, in order to bring back the fan favorite characters, to retell the story, and to do it right this time. That includes SoulCalibur V, or we wouldn't have introduced Graf Dumas and we wouldn't have Azwel toying with Amy, teasing Viola vibes. Azwel is a plot device to set up the future events, to give them justification. It's a subtle thing that is working pretty well, if you ask me. It is a reboot, but about 98% of the story is exactly the same, with the remaining 1% being chalked up to gameplay and story segregation and the other 1% being chalked up to cleaning up the narrative, it is not the kind of reboot that is going to change things so largely. Zasalamel has different motivations to seek the power of the two swords, now, but I fully expect the end result to be nearly the same. We'll get either Abyss or Night Terror (likely the latter), and chaos will be sewn that sets up the events of SoulCalibur IV.
Considering that Azwel is responsible for 2/3 of the Raphael/Viola/Z.W.E.I. story already, it is not, in the very least, a stretch that he would be responsible for Z.W.E.I. as well. The possibilities are that E.I.N. is an expected or unexpected byproduct of Azwel's experiments with Grøh, that when Raphael (while assuming the identity of Graf Dumas) puts him to death later, and Grøh transforms into Z.W.E.I., or that it is simply another member of the Aval Organization who Azwel experiments on who is the man who would become Z.W.E.I. by the same circumstances, and between the two, having a character already established who didn't impact our story in SoulCalibur VI nearly as much as it was expected, him having a future purpose makes a lot more sense to me than having to set up yet another new character in SoulCalibur VII to transform instead. Either possibility exists, but one seems more likely than the other, to me at least.
