try searching "endless eight haruhi suzumiya" if you can handle some hardcore nerd raging--the fact that the salt is completely undeserved in that instance doesn't change the fact
I'm more than aware of Haruhi and the infamous Endless Eight. I watched it live as it was airing. I'm allll over that. But I loved Endless Eight, so yeah.
I also love time travel stories, and the different ways it can / has been done. And I vastly prefer a realistic interpretation, or at least, an interpretation that is within the bounds of some sort of rational structure of ideas, than one that is just pure fantasy, for no other reason than mindless nonsense. But you probably figured that out already.
we probably agree on more than that we disagree
Generally, yes, but I'm just saying put aside our back and forth about how the future is going to be, because it's not really getting anywhere. There's nothing that will change my mind other than it actually happening, which means I won't be swayed until we get SoulCalibur VII. It's rather pointless to keep at it.
If we get a SCVII (increasingly likely at this point), then yes, it's unarguable that they will revisit certain plot elements of V. Well, more likely they would be more prevalent in VIII, but Amy's chronicle suggested to me Viola might be popping up sooner that we would have expected. Retelling it in its entirety though? That would be a terrible business decision for them. Patroklos, Pyrrha, Natsu, Leixia and Xiba are all wildly unpopular characters in comparison to their predecessors, so unless they were to include all of these characters in the game along with Sophitia/Taki/Xianghua/Kilik etc, it's not happening. Every choice they've made with SC6 shows to me they learned from the massive mistakes they made with 5. And sure, you could say since we're in the era of singular fighting games lasting for years due to DLC characters and season passes, but I just don't see a game where they're able to fit all of these characters in together in the way you want them to, Dante. It screams unrealistic to me.
SoulCalibur VII could either be SoulCalibur II, SoulCalibur III, and SoulCalibur IV rolled into one game, setting up SoulCalibur V events, so that SoulCalibur VIII would be the 17 years that follow leading up to and including SoulCalibur V, along with SoulCalibur V events, or SoulCalibur VII could split some of the inbetween. Though as
@Rusted Blade says, it's possible that this may not be able to stand the test of three games, unless Okubo directs all three and enforces this with an iron fist worthy of Harada-senpai. Amy's foreshadowing doesn't really put a concrete date on when she'll become Viola, I don't think. That depends on how quickly Raphael's story moves, and what exactly Azwel is doing, so we'll find out in SoulCalibur VII for sure, what our expectations should be. The alternative is that SoulCalibur VII will utilize SoulCalibur V events interwoven in with the other games' events.
Even though I do like Natsu a lot, and I don't hate Patroklos and Pyrrha as much as a lot of people do, I do agree that overall, the kids and the time skip were a mistake, that they didn't establish it correctly, and there's a lot of problems with cutting out beloved characters for copy replacements that aren't all that interesting, or if they were interesting, not explaining them well enough where they could be interesting. That's why the A model I mentioned above would be better, if they did contextualize and ease into the new generation, and keep both old and new, getting over their fear of older women.
As for too many characters and not being able to fit them all in, I just point to Tekken and say if they can do it, there's no reason SoulCalibur can't either. SoulCalibur VI is definitely a revival, mechanics-wise, so these characters had a lot more work put into them, but if SoulCalibur VII is mostly the same, then there should be no problems porting everyone over to SoulCalibur VII, and only adding more without taking away.
If I may ask, what exactly is it about the original story that is so important to you? I mean, I always enjoyed reading up about the lore as a kid too, but the narrative as a whole is just a mess; to be expected, for a fighting game. I think changes from the original timeline would do better if they wish to tell any kind of comprehensive story. There's a lot of untapped potential in certain characters and I feel like just doing a retelling would do a disservice to characters like Talim, Mina, Yun Seong etc...because they were underused in the previous narrative, and completely irrelevant to the overarching plot line. Surely changes to accommodate all characters within their untapped potential would be better than just a flat out retelling?
I don't think you understand me fully if you have this concern with what I'm saying. They have given characters who didn't have spotlight in SoulCalibur I their moments of importance and cohesion in the narrative with SoulCalibur VI, so if they continue this trend for SoulCalibur VII, then they will do the same for the rest of the characters through the rest of the stories, it's an expectation that they will continue to offer the same level of support. Meaning people aren't going to be left out, they will be all-inclusive, given new development that works with the canon, just like was done in this game. It's not "just a retelling", it's a retelling doing justice to the story and giving it its full realized potential.
As for why it's important to me, it's because I love this series for many reasons, and the story and characters are among those reasons. I've come to understand that a lot of the intricacies of these characters were ignored by a more than sizeable portion of the fanbase, who took the games at face value, didn't do the lore deep diving, and all that, and it's my wish for everyone to share the love and admiration for the characters as I do, and this form of narrative storytelling introduced in SoulCalibur VI is allowing that to happen, for everyone to be included. It's my favorite thing about SoulCalibur VI.
And yes, I'm aware SCVI has for the most part been a complete retelling, just with more detail and context. MK9 was very close to the story of MK1-3 in its story mode too; didn't stop MKX from moving extremely far from MK4. I personally feel that SCVI was just them paying homage to the original stories of the early Soul Calibur games before they begin going down the route of drastic changes.
I just don't know why it has to be that way, or why people even want it to be that way. SoulCalibur II and beyond have memorable stories and characters, and giving the underdeveloped like Setsuka a second chance to actually be developed and relevant to the story is a great opportunity that shouldn't be squandered. If they have to write a brand new story, that's extra effort that isn't necessarily warranted, when they already have a skeleton for a story that's already written, just needing to fill in the gaps, like SoulCalibur VI did, seems like it would be the way to go, to make development smooth.
