Crash X
[14] Master
Earthworm Calibur. Sounds like a legit crossover.we are getting earthworm jim in season 2 no normie shit like cloud or sephiroth get outa here
Soul Calibur VI: General discussion
- Thread starter SSfox
- Start date
Angrel-San
[10] Knight
All this talk about guests is depressing.
NO MORE GUESTS, NOOOO....
Give me the regs.
Soon, if possible.
NO MORE GUESTS, NOOOO....
Give me the regs.
Soon, if possible.
HogisGuy
[12] Conqueror
No more guests, please (And certainly no FF characters for the love of GOD). We have two already. That's good enough. Old favorites and new characters from now on.
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
Yes, but there are a number of differences there: 1) Cloud had already previously appeared in that franchise previously, and B) Nintendo was dead set on re-compositing its entire cast for the franchise and was willing to spend Nintendo money / throw around Nintendo licensing leverage to get it done. That's something that Namco cannot do at the same level, even if it felt inspired to do so. More to the point, Nintendo had a reason to want to have Cloud integrated into that game regardless of timing; Namco's only going to negotiate that licensing fee, if at all, when FFVII remake anticipation hits a fevered pitch.
Well, except Cloud is already licensed to another fighter right now and it's possible, if not probable, that said licensing agreement included provisions expressly locking him out of explicitly enumerated competitor's products for a time. Tifa, meanwhile, is an untapped resource and the second most recognizable protagonist of the FFVIII sub-franchise (Aeris doesn't command the same loyalty from fans, I don't think, and anyway is the least ideal fit for a SC game out of all of FFVII's protagonists. I still don't think anyone is likely from FFVII (aside from the timing not being right, there's already as licensed Square Enix character in the game), but if there was, I'd bet on Tifa. Then again, i will admit to a little bit of bias in this: I'd really love to see her in a modern fighter, any fighter, aside from Dissidia.
Yes, but that's precisely the point, really: not all E3 announcements are created equal. And individual characters/season pass content for fighters being announced at E3 are a relatively new occurence because...well, those products simply never existed in the market until recent years: it's only been in the last two years or so that fighter developers have started to dip their toes into the idea of ongoing DLC support for a game at this level, such that marketting pushes for such products are worthwhile. Up until about 2015 (and into the last year for most franchises) you could expect maybe one or two characters at best as post-release content for a game. That's changing and so will marketing priorities, with time, if companies are finally making some headway in getting consumers to adopt that model.
But all of the debate about rules of thumb and exceptions (and exceptions to the exceptions) and the reasons for the reasons behind this or that decision only underscores the original point: there are no hard and fast principles. E3 is not exclsuviely (or even foremost) about new IP--nor ongoing support/DLC for previous releases, or major new expansions for previous releases, or news about previously announced but as yet unreleased IP; none of those categories defines the tradeshow or the press and floor releases at the event. Rather each company, each year, has an idiosyncratic set of promotional needs based on its current product line-up, and those priorities are not consistent across companies--nor are they even consistent for a given company from year to year. It's all a matter of that year's marketing and business model for that particular point in that particular year. There's really no firm rules. Its not for "main games" or "DLC", as even a shallow review of any given year's press conferences, floor content, and open forums demonstrate.
I mean, I personally think Noctis fits like a glove (or at the very least, Noctis fits better into SC than do most other FF headliners--and without question is a better aesthetic match for SC than Tekken). But even if we stipulated that he's a bad fit, the bullet was most assuredly not dodged, because we just ended up (as a consequence of developer's remorse) with a shitty off-brand version of the same basic concept (Azwel, or Knock-off-tis as I like to call him in this context).
First off, they are remastering FFVIII!? Fucking-aye, that's great news: that's arguably the best game in the franchise, even with all its game-able flaws in the battle and leveling systems. But at the same time, no way anyone has any interest in licensing Squall for anything, lol--there couldn't be less buzz around that character if he was the main protagonist from Mystic Quest, lol. Which is a pity--that game deserves so much more love-- but very much a reality.
I'm pretty sure you're going to get your wish. I'm as confident as I can be, given how long we've gone without official confirmation on anything pertaining to the supposed "leaks" (which I think were plants for the purpose of free viral marketing), that our six Season 2 characters are likely to be the six remaining classic era SC characters: Aeon/Lizardman, Hwang, Li long, Rock, Setsuka, and Yun-Seong.
On a side-note, is your name a reference to Arthurian legend, or to another fantasy franchise that has borrowed the term? WoT? I bet there's at least one anime that has borrowed the word sanangreal.
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Valid considerations all around, of course.
Rusted said:
Also a possibility. Though I can't imagine such an agreement extending beyond this December.
Rusted said:
Aerith certainly is a less ideal fit, I agree, but for the record, she absolutely commands the same loyalty -- and I would argue is the more recognizable of the two. She is definitely -- inarguably even -- utilized more in promotional and commemorative material, merchandise, and whatever other iconography.
Sephiroth trumps either of them in these regards, of course, but I don't see him as a likely choice for multiple reasons. I'm happy to be wrong about that, though!
It remains one of my favorites (along with X and XV).Rusted said:
Thylacine492
[10] Knight
Honestly, the weaponless guest styles never particularly interested me (to be fair I’ve never been much of a fan of guest characters in general and I dislike the Mishima/Kazama styles from Tekken).
While I haven’t played much in the way of FF (IV and the beginning of VI only), in terms of a character fitting aesthetically into the setting, some of the designs from IV seem like they’d work well. Even though it would never happen, Edge would be a cool addition.
Though overall I’d prefer the rest of the SE-IV roster.
While I haven’t played much in the way of FF (IV and the beginning of VI only), in terms of a character fitting aesthetically into the setting, some of the designs from IV seem like they’d work well. Even though it would never happen, Edge would be a cool addition.
Though overall I’d prefer the rest of the SE-IV roster.
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
Yeah, but i think Aerith's use in the marketing materials is somewhat an artifact of how the remake is being presented, more than anything else. Aerith only survives the first half of that game, and though her death was a kind of watershed moment for storytelling in games, as consequence, she barely plays a part in the broader FFVII sub-franchise, aside from Crisis Core. She shows up so heavily in marketing materials for FFVII Remake so often because she is heavily featured in the (at the time, extremely eye-catching) cinematics towards the beginning of the original game and, unsurprisingly, it is remakes of those moments that Square Enix has focused on for promotion to date--both because those moments are so very iconic and because they have (very obviously from what they have revealed so far) mostly only made headway on the earlier portions of the game in terms of development on the remake, so it's what they have at hand to build marketing assets out of.
And don't get me wrong, I love Aerith, I thinks she's a great character in her own right; one of the themes that the classic Final Fantasy games really liked to lean, and which infused so many of the story arcs for particular characters with emotion, was the notion of self-sacrafice, and Aerith's story is almost completely about that concept. But at the end of the day, Tifa is in the plot of the games and movies that are more recognizable to most players/fans for much longer and she's a much more active protagonist. I mean, I know one major problem I had with Advent Children was how repetitious it was of the original games plot (which other successor games also riffed on), and that extends to the quasi-love triangle between Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith (who I think, once we see the whole story, probably had more affectionate love than romantic love for Cloud, who just kind of reminded her of a younger version of Zack): I just could not get over that Cloud was mopping around about the same shit all over again, and Tifa was still waiting patiently in the wings for him. Anyway, all of that nostalgia-wrangling aside, I'm sure we agree that as a fight-mechanic/style matter, Tifa's infinitely better positioned to be a guest in a fighter than Aerith.
The problem with Sephiroth (and to a large extent this applies to Cloud as well) is that they don't fit the mold for SC guests, whose abilities have to scale to the realities of Soulcalibur's game mechanics. At this point of his representation in his "native" universe, Sephiroth can fly like superman and each swipe of his ten foot sword hits with the force of about 10,000 kilonewtons--if he's not really putting much muscle behind it. That means one of two things happens if you put him (or Cloud, who is two up on him in personal combat at this point) in a Soulcalibur game: either he looks like he is fighting at one one-thousandth of his usual capabilities (which will make him look silly, particularly to fans) or he completely annihilates everything in his path, given nobody native to SC has anything approach his strength and capabilities. Obviously neither option is really viable for a fighter like SC. It's much less a problem for a game that is both 2D and more fantastical/catering to OP characters, like Smash Bros. or even games like DBZF or Marvel vs. Capcom. Their story, visuals, and particularly their game engines just cater much more towards that over-the-top, high-flying action presented from more of a distance.
Similar and related, all characters in SC evidence a kind of rock-paper-scissors dynamic of damage-per-attack, speed/mobility, and range, and because balance is so fundamental to the basic functions of the gameplay, characters fit into these niches (or combinations thereof), with corresponding weaknesses. Characters like Cloud and Sephiroth don't work that way, because they come from games with very different gameplay and story demands. Instead, both Cloud and Sephiroth are more like Superman characters: massively strong, inhumanly fast, and with truly insane reach for their weapons (not only are they ridiculousness oversized to begin with, but there's a clear representation, from the Compilation of FFVII games/movies and onward, that their sword strokes send out massive cutting shockwaves--which makes no sense, but let's not even begin to try to reconcile these characters with actual physics or we'll be here all day without accomplishing anything that truly adds up). If you accurately translated them into SC, they would be all strength and no weakness (unlike all of the other characters) and their laziest attacks would have to destroy half the stage. It just doesn't work.
Now, compare Tifa's most badass fight against a battle between Cloud and Sephiroth; Tifa's abilities are clearly much more in the range of what works for a Soulcalibur game. What's more, her attack range (if you give her no materia/magic abilities) is the extent of her limbs (that is, as limited as it gets in SC terms), meaning you can power up her speed/rushdown capabilities and DPS, and she works as a SC fighter, while still being roughly faithful to her FF appearances. These are the kinds of things that the Project Soul developers will be thinking about when they consider possible guests.
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Starringrole
[09] Warrior
I'm on board...
Just get us the last main old characters, pretty please.
I do still fear "STAR" will be a guest though.
I would say Season 3 should happen, I really want it. But I doubt it, makes me sad.
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Maxxus
[09] Warrior
Sorry but I want more guest and too much, epecially FF or samurai shodown chars.
sytus
[14] Master
LisaK
[14] Master
but cestus could never top this...
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I_Love_Aogami
[12] Conqueror
I miss her and the rest of the bonus characters from SCIII. Project Soul and Bandai Namco have to really bring those characters back and/or their styles. The latter needs some tinkering to be complete, balanced fighting styles.but cestus could never top this...
I would of course want the bonus characters from SCIV to come back with unigue fighting styles like Astaroth, Kilik, Cassandra, Yun-Seong, etc did. Though, seeing how they were designed by guest artists the chances are sadly slim of them ever making it back.
wondersophitia
[07] Duelist
More like someone from Soulcalibur should be a guest character in other fighting games. Currently I'm only playing this game. But I'd buy DoA6 or SamSho instantly if Sophitia become guest. Like I did with Orochi Warriors.
I'm not talking about the remake, though. I'm referring to the past 22 years of everything from guidebook, soundtrack, and game packaging design; to promotional art by Yoshitaka Amano; to statuettes, restaurant desserts, and Pepsi promo cups.
Don't get me wrong, all four of FFVII's most recognizable characters (Cloud, Sephiroth, Aerith and Tifa) have had a ton of presence in a ton of places -- but their visibility is in the order I listed their names in this paragraph. Which frankly makes sense: Cloud is the primary main character; Sephiroth is the (popular to an unmatched extent) main villain with a freakishly cool design; and of the two heroines, Aerith is the one more central to the overall plot while Tifa is more central to Cloud's personal story.
There's also the not-insignificant matters of the game beginning and ending with memorable shots of Aerith's face, and her being the one who made a generation of gamers cry. It's just to be expected that she would be more iconic.
Rusted said:
This is mostly an academic quibble, but Aerith's memorable moment was actually conceived as the opposite of that notion: as something awful that happened for no good reason. It was meant to be a subversion of the dramatic self-sacrifice trope because it didn't need to happen and she didn't know it was going to.
Rusted said:
He doesn't deal with survivor's guilt or a terminal illness in the original game, though. These were very much new problems.
Yes.Rusted said:
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
Much as the hyper-fan in me would like to see every style return eventually, I have to say that not all of those styles are ripe for return. Arthur I feel is the character who most deserves a full moveset in a forthcoming game; of the four bonus characters in SCIII who had existed in the plot previously, only Arthur didn't get a full moveset for SCIII:AE. I've always felt that was a shame, as I think SC could accommodate another katana moveset. So he goes to the top of my list. After that, if we put Arthur, Amy, Hwang, and Li Long to the side, there were really only a few movesets that showed real potential, if you consider weapons that weren't too terribly goofy or redundant on those of other characters: Valeria, Miser, and Greed. I think Abelia, Luna, Aurelia, and Strife have some great moves and potential over-all, but they are pretty redundant on weapon/moveset themes that already have multiple characters representing them in most entries. Hualin and Giradot, on the flip side, have interesting qualities and unique weapons to say the least, but their moves are just too gimmicky and I don't see them translating well to a full moveset in a contemporary SC game. And I could give or take the remaining four bonus characters: Chester, Demuth, Revenant, and Lynette.
I agree, and for largely the same reasons, and you're right, insofar as FFVII is concerned, Aerith is arguably the more central character. But Tifa's just dominated much more of the story since the original game. I think at the end of the day, people remember her as the primary FFVII female protagonist. She certainly seems to make her way into a lot more games, movies and such (both within the FFVII franchise and outside it).
Really? That's interesting: do you recall where you read/heard that? If that was their goal, it wasn't well realized. I mean almost any meaningful sacrifice in a story is avoidable to some extent, if you just backed up from a certain point of time. But Aerith is killed making an attempt to counter Sephiroth (an attempt he couldn't allow if his plans were to succeed), so I don't see how her opposing him was and dying in the effort was framed as pointless as a story matter, particularly in that her original plan almost worked and her death ultimately put her in a position to stop mitigate the meteor disaster. And if her death was meaningless, its worth noting that it happened largely because she didn't wait for everyone to come along with her to watch her back, so that's...kind of weird message to send/ point to emphasize if the pointlessness of her death was intentional.
Of course, that whole cluster of plot points depends on awkward timing and plot conveniences, so it's hard to keep the emotional tone in tact if you look at it too closely--it was mostly a tear-jerker because you weren't used to seeing the main female protagonist go out like that and...well, because we were a lot younger and less exposed to well-told stories, frankly! :D And of course, very forgiving of the limitations of the media at the time. That and Squaresoft just had a real talent back then for making genuinely likeable protagonists that you really cared about, no matter what was happening in their crazy-ass fantasy world.
Ehh, the thing is...survivor's guilt is a real and relatable psychological condition here in the real world when someone is dead and just gone as a person. Less so, when you consider that Cloud saw that Aerith is still alive in some sense in the lifestream. Alive and kinda-sorta godlike, and still acting to protect the world she loved. I'd have more appreciation for that aspect of Cloud's story in AC, if it weren't for the fact that we saw him battle those emotions throughout the last act of the original game, only to have that triumphant moment at the end where the lifestream saves the whole world and its heavily implied that Aerith is a part of it. Watching him reset to square one for AC seems artificial and forced; so much of AC feels like they couldn't figure out what to do to move these characters forward, so they just had them re-live the last disc of FFVII, complete with a showdown against the same exact villain. Shit, Rufus and the Turks are the only ones who have shown any character growth before the very end of that movie!!
Likewise, Cloud's terminal disease is just disposed of, deus ex mechanima style, for that picture perfect ending, so it's hard to feel like he was ever in any real danger. Don't get me wrong, there are some nice story beats in that movie. But honestly, I feel worse for Tifa, who's still following that mopey little emo around, perfectly loyal and unwilling to rush his grief even years later, even though Aerith herself wouldn't have blamed Cloud, she's in a better place (in a literal rather than figurative sense), and is with the man she actually loved, rather than the twerpy little doofus that stole his identity! Aerith may have given her life, but Tifa, more so than anyone else, is the rock that the living characters rely upon, Cloud especially. And all while holding a flame for that guy, and following him around the world watching his back whatever crazy shit he gets into, for years upon years. If I were her, being cock-blocked (or is it 'c**t-blocked', in gender-equitable terms? Ok, nevermind that can of worms) by the memory of a dead girl who probably wasn't even all that in to him, I'd have given up coddling him much sooner than that.
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Jerk
[09] Warrior
Hahaha! Kind of wish they'd do some kind of crazy hand powered melee berserker dude. Their armor could be all close range bludgeoning tools and they upset the magical long ranged characters.
But I still want Algol back!
And Dampierre...
And Hilde
Haha...
JohnMcKee
[14] Master
Can we keep fighting FF characters for Dissidia?
SC doesn't need more guests, we just need legacy characters and new ones. Though I like the idea of having characters from franchises I like in the game, I'd choose a more fleshed out SCIII bonus character over "famous" characters.
SC doesn't need more guests, we just need legacy characters and new ones. Though I like the idea of having characters from franchises I like in the game, I'd choose a more fleshed out SCIII bonus character over "famous" characters.
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
Sounds like you are making an argument for Jack as the next Tekken guest character. ;)
But that rather begs the question, which guest and which bonus character are we comparing? Because if the choice is between Demuth and Tifa or an updated Kratos, or Kazuma, or an updated Link or...well, some of these are more realistic than others, but you take my point. Some of those SCIII bonus styles are real duds and just about any guest would probably prove to be a more worthwhile addition to the roster.
(Amy>Hwang>Li long)>Arthur>Valeria>Greed>Miser>Abelia>Strife>Luna>Aurelia>Giradot>Hualin>Chester>Revenant>Demuth>Lynette.
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Nyte
Fu-ma's Shadow
Starringrole
[09] Warrior
I'd much rather someone like Valeria came back with a huge revamp/redesign etc and in the future we can look forward to her return as a possibility. Not Geralt who will probably never even be seen again.
I do honestly think more than 2 guests (especially from unique franchises) is slightly overkill and unnecessary.
Though I guess this is just me.
If we assumed (which I doubt and most people probably do doubt as well) that the game would have DLC past Season 2 then perhaps more guests are logical if its going to be a very long running supported game. It makes sense in that capacity, but if that does not turn out to be the circumstance then I just think it'd be silly to waste the chance on a guest when we can get a returning character we can actually see again.
We have our guests for now and we should move on to SC characters. I don't think at this point in time guests will push as much and we are looking towards Season 2 earliest if more are coming. I think the momentum for something like that wouldn't be there anymore at that time.
It worked out better for Tekken I assume due to the general attention it has in comparison to Soulcalibur (if I'm not mistaken?)
In a dream land where this game was supported for a long time I would have loved a guest like Count Waltz or Claves from Eternal Sonata, but they're obscure and not very big or popular sadly. That and with Amy's SC6 incarnation they seemed to have already mimicked some animations from these characters already so I suppose it wouldn't happen at all. That game has lovely design design though, I'd love SC to perhaps get a male character with a demeanor akin to Count Waltz. The closest we have is Raphael or Azwel and I'd still say they're rather different. A selfish/vain/sadist male character would make me quite happy, we don't really have it nor do we have a particularly old or young male. (Edge Master/Amy, no older females to my knowledge either?)
I have zero hope that any character will come. That being said, I dread this patch.
Dread is all I feel.