Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

my only consolation is knowing that the "SC Shop" will probably have all of Amy's erotic costumes from Lost Swords available for players to buy while I can save my money for when my Korean characters will be available as DLC.
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// hi non~besties!!
 
after they sold a CaS pack with several stickers they saw that fans would buy any crap, so I fear what will happen in SC7, they kinda always manage to ruin the sc in some way trying to improve, I'm afraid this time it's the microtransactions. I can accept / understand exclusive costumes designed by guest artists and collaboration items with other franchises being sold T8 style, but imagine having to pay again for something like the french maid dress, which was sold in 5, LS and 6, this is almost an insult to the fandom, anyway, for me I would continue with the DLC packs, but they could do something better like separate the outfits by "classic costumes", "modern costumes"..:sc5se:
 
after they sold a CaS pack with several stickers they saw that fans would buy any crap, so I fear what will happen in SC7, they kinda always manage to ruin the sc in some way trying to improve, I'm afraid this time it's the microtransactions. I can accept / understand exclusive costumes designed by guest artists and collaboration items with other franchises being sold T8 style, but imagine having to pay again for something like the french maid dress, which was sold in 5, LS and 6, this is almost an insult to the fandom, anyway, for me I would continue with the DLC packs, but they could do something better like separate the outfits by "classic costumes", "modern costumes"..:sc5se:
That's very true. It sucks but I am expecting more monetization this time around. I don't like em but I hope it'll rake in more. Hope it's not egregious and we get the only big coverage being a Tira sc6 situation again.

Unrelated but I hope the graphical leap is more than before, yes things are updated in 6 but still 4 assets being used, want a bigger push. But I doubt it, making new models for much is probably out of the team's budget :(
 
Does nobody find these strange 'consumer attitudes' that formed into a kind of monstrous, top-heavy, overgrown abomination in the rise of the internet backwards? Especially in these areas with 'fans' as if it were their 'job' to support such nonsense by buying whether they like it or not. With infighting about billion dollar companies as if whether or not you or I choose to buy a few odd bits and bobs we like or not makes any material difference to the health of said business?

Is this concept not patently absurd? Why do 'fans' not just of this series, anything in particular, so readily allow the buyer seller relationship to be so subverted to the point it would seem there is no longer any onus on the seller to provide what the buyer actually asks and in fact is become more or the less the opposite somehow in actual fact?

Almost as if it's turned into some extremely weird, unhealthy, not just physically or mentally but economically unhealthy BDSM game?

Now I hear myself say it while talking about a series with a more or less actual dominatrix as one of it's most well-known characters it does indeed sound a little silly but the point remains in general and really...

Wasn't that the whole point of the preposterous level of the stupidity of this situation even just in general even needing to be pointed out all along come to think of it? Sad really that it could even get to this point which tells me it's certainly not going to shuffle away quietly but it remains something I believe people should be thinking about. For themselves.

As opposed to this perversely insidious system now spread far and wide that rewards favoured 'opinions' and perceived 'attitudes' with so-called 'likes' as if people were dogs to be 'trained'.

Good times.
 
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Interesting and weird also

Didn't knew there was competition between them, feels weird to me as I love both Tekken and SC. I feel some kid that love both his parents, but the last two keep fighting and competing each other, sometimes in not healthy way.

Now I understand more why Harada mention rarely SC during his interviews, which was weird to me cause he was a guy that mention often any other franchise, specially Street Fighter. But rarely or almost never mention an IP from the company he works on? That make more sense now

Soul Calibur is a super iconic franchise, they may have done weird things specially after 2, this Yotoriyama guy may been one of the main factors. It's a know thing any big fan of SC we all felt something was off the first second we played sc3 after the glorious years of SC2, the feeling of the game was just very different.

Also Itagaki calling Harada to show him that he implemented guard button in his fighting game like it's a revolutionary thing? Dude is even dumb retarded than I thought.
 
I think that the fact that the number of members who had the drive to keep the title alive, even if they had to jump through all kinds of pressure, decreased as the organization changed, and that is one of the aspects that weakened Project Soul little by little. I am not saying that is all But it was a big factor. Happened due to organizational policy, not individual problems. But from my point of view, I don't think the fire of Project Soul has been extinguished. There are still a few people in the company who have the will to do it. I would like to believe that they are just not united now.
I'm going to leave my CV at SP, If I got the job, now instead of 10, we will have 11 employees.. :sc2min2:
 
I just noticed that Yoshinori Takahashi (Director of SC6) has "TEKKEN 8 Ingame Design Director & Story Chief Director" in his X Twitter bio. Remembering that the current producer and director of T8 is Kohei Ikeda.
 
Thanks for posting this, SSfox. What a wealth of insights; after decades of following such industry press and interviews as could be found on the series over the years, I don't think I've ever seen anything that, in a single source, provides so many direct observations about the development team culture at the company, even providing something of a timeline for when particular priorities changed, identifying key players in maintaining continuity for the franchise, and providing edifying details about the corporate culture and project governance at Namco. So much to unpack!

Well maybe he was just that proud of it??
I just enjoy the idea that the lead developers of three of the four largest 3D fighter franchises of the time were actively talking shop and cross-pollinating. A shame there was not some random connection to Virtua Fighter dropped in there somewhere. ;) But I have often found it interesting (indeed, was thinking about it just the other day after reading something relating to the industry) that each major player in the subgenre adopted such a radically (well, relatively radical anyway) different approach to it's basic attack and defense mechanics. Not that there weren't a dozen other 3D fighters of note at the time (it was kind of a the heyday for experimentation in the genre), but when you consider what were undoubtedly the four most successful franchises in the longterm and arguably at the time too (VF, Tekken, SC, and DOA)--they all went out of their way to diversify the control schemes. So to hear Harada talking about his first hand experiences debating whether SC and Tekken should have forked in this or that way, is a real treat. If I read his side in recollection correctly though, I have to agree more with Yotoriyama: I don't see why different games from the same publisher can't diverge on just about any mechanic.
 
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EVO SCVI pools day 1



EVO SCVI pools day 2


 
weapon demonstration >
I'd love to see this feature return, but doing a combination of mo-cap and animation and editing the final work product into a couple of minutes of demo for each character is a lot more work than adding a photo mode that is already a fairly easy feature to code and which they have already developed for one of their fighters anyway. It's not going to be a whole lot of cost for them to port that feature over. With all the corners they have cut in terms of content and modes, in order to make Soulcalibur economically feasible in the new industry reality of current market forces and production costs, I don't think that we can have much hope for the minor frills that we used to be able to count on, such as weapon demonstrations and similar featurettes.

I'd love to be wrong about that, but then even if they did bring it back, it would probably be at the cost of some other bit of content we'd rather have (roster, stage selection, some minor mode or other), and that's not exactly a worthwhile trade either. Mind you, all bets would be off if they just stopped channeling significant portions of their budget into thoroughly underwhelming single player modes full to the brim with lame visual novel content to titillate the lore nerds. Make some substantial cuts to that nonsense, and suddenly you have a lot more room to bring back some fun legacy features and bells and whistles. But unless there is a major change in directorial priorities going into the next game, that seems unlikely.
 
Well SC4 and 5 didn't have a museum, but even with a small budget SC6 recovered that, not as iconic as the others, but it fulfilled its purpose, bringing canonical information to the game, for me who likes it is useful.. returning to wd, I don't have much hope that this mode will return any time soon, I think the most we'll have back are the alternative costumes and I pray a lot that they don't end up being stuck in a possible "sc shop". If wd comes back, I hope they differentiate Kilik/Seong Mina, since it's the same animation, although some moves match Mina a lot, and canonically she knows some of "Kilik's moves", since she trained with Kong (SC1) and Edge Master (SC3), I would like something original, I'm also curious about what the ones of characters that never had them would be like, like Amy, Hilde, Groh.. :sc2min2:
 
Well SC4 and 5 didn't have a museum, but even with a small budget SC6 recovered that, not as iconic as the others, but it fulfilled its purpose, bringing canonical information to the game, for me who likes it is useful.. returning to wd, I don't have much hope that this mode will return any time soon, I think the most we'll have back are the alternative costumes and I pray a lot that they don't end up being stuck in a possible "sc shop". If wd comes back, I hope they differentiate Kilik/Seong Mina, since it's the same animation, although some moves match Mina a lot, and canonically she knows some of "Kilik's moves", since she trained with Kong (SC1) and Edge Master (SC3), I would like something original, I'm also curious about what the ones of characters that never had them would be like, like Amy, Hilde, Groh.. :sc2min2:
I would expect something like the museum to show up in every entry. I think it has been since at least Soulcalibur I. Maybe the Playstation port of Soul Edge as well? Anyway, even I (as someone who wants them to take the preoccupation with low-quality story content down a few notches) recognize the value of having a story primer and art gallery feature. And it costs them so little effort to build it, compared against the overall development costs. They basically just have create a minimalist menu/ui and then port media into it. At this point in time, simple story summaries are probably already mostly written in the development documents, and you can repurpose concept, storyboarding, and promotional art. I think you're safe in hoping that feature sticks around.

And again, I for one celebrate that kind of story content. It's the story modes (individual story lines and libra) with their unending hour upon hour of terribly voice-acted, cringely scripted, inane, meandering dialogue accompanied by nothing but cut rate visual-novel talking head psuedo-animations....that I could personally do without, and which are particularly obnoxious when you consider core features of SCVI that were underbaked, like stage selection. Personally, I'd have them go back to the balance between storymode content, core features, competitive qualities, and supplemental modes that was prevalent in what I would consider the two most successful entries: SCII and SCIV. But that would leave room for both a museum and weapons demonstration, among numerous other modes.

But you know what I want? And mind you, this would be even less work than anything we have discussed thus far: fucking team battle!! Where did it go? Why wouldn't you put the trivial amount of work into setting up this mode, which was so much fun as a party game for vet players looking to shake things up? And a good match-up practice mode. I swear I can't make sense of the development team's choices any more.

Edit: Incidentally, Groh's concept is so simultaneously emo and nerdy that the only fair demonstration for him would be filling in as the front-man for My Chemical Romance.
 
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And again, I for one celebrate that kind of story content. It's the story modes (individual story lines and libra) with their unending hour upon hour of terribly voice-acted, cringely scripted, inane, meandering dialogue accompanied by nothing but cut rate visual-novel talking head psuedo-animations....that I could personally do without, and which are particularly obnoxious when you consider core features of SCVI that were underbaked, like stage selection. Personally, I'd have them go back to the balance between storymode content, core features, competitive qualities, and supplemental modes that was prevalent in what I would consider the two most successful entries: SCII and SCIV. But that would leave room for both a museum and weapons demonstration, among numerous other modes.
I literally avoided talking about the story mode because we are very different, but okay, since you mentioned it again I will try to clarify my point of view. I can understand why many people didn't like Soul Chronicle, I say that I was disappointed with, for example, them not making a cut-scene showing Xianglian - Kilik, which would be something epic, but wasting time animating a battle between Groh and Kilik, okay I got the idea, that they are both the protagonists, but it was totally unnecessary, Maxi didn't even have an animation even though he spent more time with Kilik and far from has a story as sad as his, Xianghua had two pseudo rivalries with Taki and Ivy that are as memorable as Tira and Talim's participation in this game (I'm talking about the plot, not the gameplay). It's no secret that 5 was a failure and the result was the little money that Okubo must have received to make this reboot, since he himself said in an interview that if 6 didn't have an impact it could be the last game in the franchise, and if you're curious, look for the interview in this thread that will be on one of these pages, anyway, I don't feel good about criticizing Soul Chronicle in detail knowing how difficult it must have been for them to produce it, something that had already happened in SC5 where Daishi himself spoke openly about the story mode not having been finished, with only 3/4 of the story present in the game, but in his case I would say that the problem was time and not budget, returning to Soul Chronicle, even agreeing with the questionable choices of the concept of this story mode and some stories being poorly elaborated to the point of characters being just characters versus random extras (siegmare), characters that are at point a and go to d and then to point x, without having the slightest narrative logic (ivy) and the worst of all a story mode so long (hilde) / so short (kilik), I'm happy the game has a canonical story mode, being the SC5 was the first to do this, until then you had tutorials, arcade and a random mode that gives you several possibilities but none of these possibilities actually happen, that's why you see people here complaining about the existence of YS and Mina due to the plot but they believe that Cassandra was important when she has done absolutely nothing important since her debut, characters immune to Soul Edge like Talim and Voldo, Kilik and Xianghua fighting Nightmare more than once, in short, several false information being posted as absolute truth because the game never had a canonical story mode, when everything that happened was informed in the next game, information present in the characters' bios in this case. I would also like to mention that they had mistakes, but they knew how to do something decent with Setsuka and Hwang, both They managed to have a balanced Soul Chronicle, without being exhausting or boring, having supporting characters and rivals that really will/have/had relevance to their narrative.
As I said above, there are several questionable choices about SC6, but with all the problems involved in the creation of this title, I kind of feel bad judging it so strictly. Some will say, "But Lisa, aren't you the one who "constantly" makes jokes about the impact of SC6?" Yes, I do. In the same way that you'll see me praising how good Ivy's costume is in SC6, but you'll also see me comparing her to Mrs. Moore. It's all a matter of point of view. SC6 is a simple game that tries to give the player the best it can offer with few resources. It gave me moments of joy and anguish, and the only thing I can do as a fan is say what I liked or didn't like, try to understand, and hope that the next title will be better.

Incidentally, Groh's concept is so simultaneously emo and nerdy that the only fair demonstration for him would be filling in as the front-man for My Chemical Romance.
Well, as for Groh, I'm not going to say that I LOVE his design, but I think the disproportionate hate he gets is exaggerated, considering that the worst characters, Seong Mina doesn't even look Korean, just like Talim for some reason is dressing like a Turkish prostitute for no reason, I won't even mention the drastic changes of some characters, or characters with the same crappy design since their debut. Groh was created by a guest artist, maybe when he passes through the hands of the PS artists he will have a VERY different design, we also have to remember that taste is subjective, there are people who like Setsuka's design from SC4, I prefer the one from SC3, and there are people who will think that the design they took from Baiken for SC6 is the juice of the designs.
 
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