Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

I felt like SC2 was honestly the true start of good things to come for stages. The backgrounds were extremely detailed, the stages even had some life brought to them (like in Maxi/Cervantes Pirate Cove stage where you can see sharks and fish in the water), and most of the stages themselves went from just Ring Outs at every part to actually adding walls which even offered gameplay alterations and combo potential from them. SC3 improved on this even further with shattering walls and slightly better backgrounds.
 
The Tekken 6 sheep stage takes it a little far

I didn't mind it as it's entire theme including the music conveys silliness. I still think the biggest crime when it comes to Tekken 6 stages was locking the tomato festival stage behind random stage select.
 
Never before seen early concept art for SC3 Setsuka:
Efi237IUYAAr72C.jpg



Pretty cool, but i'm glad they went with the middle design.
 
In the costume on the right, it looks like she has a little piece of paper tucked into her kimono at her chest. Does anyone know what that could be? Or am I reading into the design too much? Lol.
 
Never before seen early concept art for SC3 Setsuka:
View attachment 78408


Pretty cool, but i'm glad they went with the middle design.
I just noticed that the design to the left hints at Setsuka not being planned as an umbrella wielder from the very beginning. This further adds to the theory that she was derived from the Iaijutsu character designs in the SE/SC concept art of scrapped character designs rather than being a Shurayukihime rip-off (at least initially).

Also, it seems like making her a brunette may have been a merely aesthetic decision, given that blonde hair does indeed look rather bland with the pink and red kimono. (EDIT: yep, that's what the tweet said, dummy)

I hope the early character sketches will keep on coming...
 
Does anyone have an explanation on who this anzu is? I am hearing chatter that she could replace Natalie in Season 3
She is a minor character in Setsuka’s Soul Chronicle, who is presumed dead, but it’s possible that she may be the mysterious voice near the end, which could be a tease that she’ll be important in the future. Of course, the same thing could be said of Wilhelm, or maybe even Lucius, or Maelys... so it’s nothing concrete. Still, spooky either way.
 
That title goes to SC3. I kinda hoping SC7 just updates those stages as they are all gorgeous.
In a general artistic sense, yes, but the technical advantage of SoulCalibur V stages gives them the win, I think. Stages like Kilik’s and Elysium’s, where the final round takes place on a different area of the stage, or Astaroth’s, where a ring out win results in a new area to fight in, they make the fights a lot more dynamic. Also, having infinite stages was also a great mixup that is missing from SoulCalibur VI, aside from the Faraway Meadow from Hilde’s Soul Chronicle and the Grand Labyrinth from Training Mode, but neither of these are general use legitimately.
You're both "wrong": I think we can probably agree that the stage design peaked in SCIII-SCV (though, honestly, it was one of the strongest design features of the series even in the earlier games), but for my money, SCIV edges both of those games out by combining the high caliber artistic design employed in SCIII and the technical experimentation that was continued in SCV. Soucalibur IV's stages are just much more beautifully rendered than SCIII's especially when it comes to the subtlety of the texture work and the depth of the colour fields employed. And from a creative design standpoint, they are even more varied and thoughtful--to say nothing of the extra gameplay elements introduced by interactive elements.

SCV's stages, meanwhile, just feel a little dull and paint-by-numbers to me: they aren't problematic in this regard to the same extent that SCVI's stages are, but they definetly started the trend towards stages being less colourful and vibrant. And though they do have more animation in the background, it's often handled in a much more clumsy and artifical-looking manner than it was in SCIV. The people and other in-motion elements are brought way to close into the foreground, where their repetitive and cloned nature becomes far too obvious: SCIV's stage design was quite clever in that animation was often pushed far into the background and/or used clever lighting such that the technical limitations of this type of animation were far less obvious, and thus the overall effect more seamless--and even when the elements were brought further up (or even straight into the fighting area itself) it was done in a way that was typically more clever and never stood out as particularly unnatural.

Seriously, open up this page, choose five or seven stages from both games at random, boot them up on your old system (or find them on youtube if you don't still own the appropriate systems and software), and observe how much more ham-fisted the archers and orcs or festival revelers of SCV look when compared to the animated elements in SCIV. The interactive features are similarly more subtly and enjoyably implemented in SCIV, whether it's the manipulable walls of the cage in Phantom Pavilion, the destructible rails on Sailor's Rest, or the marching shieldwall in Ostrheinsburg Castle Throne Room.

Yeah, look, there are a couple of standout designs in SCV, and pretty much every stage in SCIII is eyecandy, but for overall technical and artistic achievement in visual design, combined with creative gameplay dimensions, and beauty, subtlety, and polish in the overall package, nothing in the rest of the series to date can compare with what was accomplished with SCIV's stages.
 
Back