Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

I know this is really random and totally in the wrong thread but grateful if someone could humour me - how is it that Siegfried and Nightmare can coexist in the same game in SC but not in SCII? How many times has Siegfried transformed into Nightmare and back again?
 
HD_Reed said:
I know this is really random and totally in the wrong thread but grateful if someone could humour me - how is it that Siegfried and Nightmare can coexist in the same game in SC but not in SCII? How many times has Siegfried transformed into Nightmare and back again?
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Lmao!
I know what you mean. He changes back and forth into Nightmare seemingly all the time.
I always thought they coexisted in SC because when you played as Siegfried, that was supposed to be him after being able to change back to himself.
I don't know why that wasn't possible in SCII. By all rights, it should have been, since he snapped out of it and stopped being possessed by Soul Edge in the story in that game. You only had access to Siegfried as a cosmetic feature in SCII; he was visible in Nightmare's 2p and the bonus costume.
It's odd though. Maybe it was a production cost issue?
Edit: I always thought that in SCII, Nightmare's play-style was conspicuously like Siegfried's, which also is odd to me.
 
HD_Reed said:
I know this is really random and totally in the wrong thread but grateful if someone could humour me - how is it that Siegfried and Nightmare can coexist in the same game in SC but not in SCII? How many times has Siegfried transformed into Nightmare and back again?
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Project Soul most likely wanted to avoid clone characters that were prevalent in SC1, but as new stuff was being added it looks like they abandoned that design philosophy at the very end with Lizardman, Assassin and Berserker. I think if SC2 stayed longer in the arcade, Siegfried might have ended up in the final revision. Here's what the arcade release looked like before more characters were added.

Soul Calibur 2 Character Select Screen Arcade.png
 
HD_Reed said:
How many times has Siegfried transformed into Nightmare and back again?
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Only twice, at the end of SoulBlade and at the beginning of SoulCalibur II. I guess the reason why he's not playable in SoulCalibur II is because he started the game as Nightmare and didn't really get freed until SoulCalibur III. The canon events that happened that led to this (Raphael piercing Soul Edge's eye, then Siegfried finishing it off, forming the Soul Embrace with Soul Calibur) were not shown in SoulCalibur II, so in and of itself, from start to finish, Siegfried was Nightmare in SoulCalibur II. Compare SoulCalibur, where he starts the game as Nightmare and is freed (temporarily) by the end, as you see in the events of his Soul Chronicle in SoulCalibur VI. They came up with the storyline of his being Siegfried again between SoulCalibur II and SoulCalibur III.

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Spanky said:
I always thought that in SCII, Nightmare's play-style was conspicuously like Siegfried's, which also is odd to me.
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They were practically identical in SoulCalibur originally, with only a small handful of different moves. It wasn't until SoulCalibur III (appropriately enough, where Nightmare was no longer Siegfried) until their movesets were vastly differentiated. The opposite of SoulCalibur II was true of SoulBlade, where Nightmare was just an alternate costume for Siegfried (albeit in a different slot, technically).
 
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DanteSC3 said:
Only twice, at the end of SoulBlade and at the beginning of SoulCalibur II. I guess the reason why he's not playable in SoulCalibur II is because he started the game as Nightmare and didn't really get freed until SoulCalibur III. The canon events that happened that led to this (Raphael piercing Soul Edge's eye, then Siegfried finishing it off, forming the Soul Embrace with Soul Calibur) were not shown in SoulCalibur II, so in and of itself, from start to finish, Siegfried was Nightmare in SoulCalibur II. Compare SoulCalibur, where he starts the game as Nightmare and is freed (temporarily) by the end, as you see in the events of his Soul Chronicle in SoulCalibur VI. They came up with the storyline of his being Siegfried again between SoulCalibur II and SoulCalibur III.

Edit:
They were practically identical in SoulCalibur originally, with only a small handful of different moves. It wasn't until SoulCalibur III (appropriately enough, where Nightmare was no longer Siegfried) until their movesets were vastly differentiated. The opposite of SoulCalibur II was true of SoulBlade, where Nightmare was just an alternate costume for Siegfried (albeit in a different slot, technically).
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So the Nightmare you play as in SC1 is the version of him directly following SoulBlade (in one of Siegfried's endings in that game) and the Siegfried you play as in SC1 is when he temporarily regains his freedom (which would explain why Siegfried is an unlockable character in SC1 rather than a starting character - if his appearance takes place after Nightmare's story)? Wouldn't that mean there are three occasions of transformation:

SoulBlade - Siegfried transforms into Nightmare at the end of this game
SC1 - Siegfried regains his freedom temporarily at the end of this game (both Siegfried and Nightmare are playable characters despite not yet being separate entities - rather, they represent different stages of the story within this game?)
SC2 - Siegfried transforms back into Nightmare again at the start of this game/end of SC1/off-screen, but regains his freedom permanently at the end of this game, meaning he is a separate playable character from SC3 onwards?

Have I got that right? Also, anyone know where the gem that is SoulCalibur Legends fits into the above timeline wise?

Thanks in advance - the story of Siegfried/Nightmare has always been a point of confusion for me timeline-wise!
 
HD_Reed said:
Have I got that right? Also, anyone know where the gem that is SoulCalibur Legends fits into the above timeline wise?
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Yes, that’s the right of it. And you say three, I said two because he turned into Nightmare twice, but if you’re including him regaining his original self as a transformation, then sure.

But yeah, SoulCalibur III’s Nightmare is a reanimated corpse utilized by Zasalamel to give Soul Edge a vessel, and then SoulCalibur IV’s Nightmare is Inferno’s will animating the armor, which is why he has no torso. Then SoulCalibur V’s Nightmare was Raphael’s body possessed, and he was freed when Inferno jumped to Pyrrha, so we had another SoulCalibur I scenario with Nightmare and Raphael both in the same game for the beginning and end of the story.

Legends is completely non-canon and is its own wild entity.
 
sytus said:
Project Soul most likely wanted to avoid clone characters that were prevalent in SC1, but as new stuff was being added it looks like they abandoned that design philosophy at the very end with Lizardman, Assassin and Berserker. I think if SC2 stayed longer in the arcade, Siegfried might have ended up in the final revision. Here's what the arcade release looked like before more characters were added.

View attachment 79525
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Sophitia fits the pattern as well: aside from the bonus generic three, she was the last character to be added to the various builds up and until the home release ports. The concept seems to have been to allow for the new blood to be introduced first and then get the older characters/original archetypes in later. Of course, in every other case, the style splits involve two distinct different characters--there's really no way to know for certain that there was even a concept of Nightmare and Siegfried as distinct characters with their own fighting style at this point. Not only is it not until SCIII that they thematically become two different physical entities, as Dante points out, but, more importantly, that is where the styles actually begin to substantially diverge.

Which of those factors was the source for driving the split into a firmer dichotomy, who can say, but I do suspect that the two were never really considered as a pair in SCII, whereas the other style split duos were either planned or a consequence of organic development through the arcade releases, as used to happen for Namco (and other classical) fighters--but in either event, the pseudo-redundancy was made easier by virtue of the fact that there was already an established independent character moveset to add in to represent next to the newcomer with a similar weapon wielded with a new vibe.

Of course, in retrospect it does seem a little silly that the SCII devs had such a mental block against finding a way to justify the two characters at once, given that the story of the franchise by this point already entered well into pulp territory in terms of its tone, continuity, seriousness, and weight--which was perfectly alright, given how well they served the purpose of shaping the characters we got, many of which are iconic in their own way. But that's hindsight, of course: I just don't think the idea of spinning Sigegfried and Nightmare into belligerents who could have full agency at the same time in the same world (and would be mechanically distinct in terms of gameplay) had yet occurred. I suppose it's not impossible the idea was around earlier and they slow played it, but I'd say that is at least the less likely explanation, based on the evidence.
 
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