Soulcalibur VI DLC Discussion Thread

Fun Fact: Daishi Odashima stated that Shura was one of the most requested female characters to return in SC 5, being the first character to be disconfirmed by him on his Twitter.
Shura is a great design but she needs her own moveset that doesn't take anything from Cervantes for her to come back properly. In fact SC7 should bring Shura back as just that. Even though she wouldn't be a truly new character she would be new mechanically which is what really matters and you have the bonus of her being popular already.
 
I doubt Shura will return. I think Hiroya Oku owns the rights to her and they would have to negotiate to get her in, and it would cost money, especially if she's to be a regular. A little too much trouble when they could just create their own characters without such hassle.

At best, I think they'll make an expy of her.
 
I doubt Shura will return. I think Hiroya Oku owns the rights to her and they would have to negotiate to get her in, and it would cost money, especially if she's to be a regular. A little too much trouble when they could just create their own characters without such hassle.

At best, I think they'll make an expy of her.
True, but the arcane Knight and the hentai armors made it in. I'm not sure if this counts, but Ashlotte is present in lore. Though I'm not exactly savvy with copyright laws, does a mention count, I'm not really sure of Ito owns Ashlotte's name or just design. Either way I still doubt we'll get any of the Sciv guests. Shira would be the most likely though.
 
True, but the arcane Knight and the hentai armors made it in. I'm not sure if this counts, but Ashlotte is present in lore. Though I'm not exactly savvy with copyright laws, does a mention count, I'm not really sure of Ito owns Ashlotte's name or just design. Either way I still doubt we'll get any of the Sciv guests. Shira would be the most likely though.
I think customization pieces are in a different boat. I remember the reason why Necrid never returned was because Todd McFarlane retained the rights.

Also, Ashlotte wasn't mentioned by name in Astaroth's SCV bio. I mean, the obvious implication is that it's her, but they only referred to her as a "mechanical woman". With automatons already existing in the lore, it's entirely possible she could've been substituted for an original character if needed.

That's why I don't think we'll see any third party bonus character promoted to main cast, too many issues to make it happen.
 
Also, Ashlotte wasn't mentioned by name in Astaroth's SCV bio. I mean, the obvious implication is that it's her, but they only referred to her as a "mechanical woman".
While true, elsewhere in New Legends of Project Soul, she is directly named:
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@Ukkesh @DanteSC3 @Nyte :

This is a very complicated area of IP law and no one here wants a course, so I'll try to keep it short and sweet. Basically we are talking about two different types of intellectual property here: the rights to the character and the rights to the image submitted by an artist upon which that character is based. It is not an altogether unheard of practice in the games industry to have a respected artist supply such artwork for a new original character and to reserve some rights in that image even though the character itself ends up copyrighted to the commissioning party. In fact, we know this is exactly what happened with Necrid, because the Soul Calibur II title screen tells us as much ('TMP'=Todd McFarlane Productions). This makes for a mixed rights kind of situation that the party with the copyright could try to get around without paying further licensing fees, but it's the type of thing that a smart company just wants to avoid, because the damages for willfully infringing someone else's intellectual property can be ludicrous at times. Basically the conversations is going to go something like this:

Namco legal department: Couldn't you just make a brand new character or use someone we have full rights in?​
Developer: Well, yeah...​
Legal department: Then just do that.​
Developer: ...but we really wanted to bring this guy back.​
Legal department: [is already writing a memo to the VP or executve to whom they both report, about the meeting].​
Developer: Fine.​
Now, if you are Nintendo making Smash Bros. Ultimate, and you have great, comprehensive integrated IP aggreements with all your partners/have your software partners by the short-hairs, you just power through that stuff. But if you're Namco working with a third party you've only partnered with once, you stay clear of any headaches--especially if you are talking about Necrid, who was not exactly a fan favourite to begin with. Now I don't know for a fact that the SCIV bonus characters came about from similar arrangments--it's actually perfectly possible to contract in such a way that the commissioning party owns the resulting character and all of their image free and clear--but I suspect, given the profile of the artists involved, that this is exactly what happened. It would also explain why these characters are sometimes mentioned, but not seen, since.
 
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It's also possible for the party receiving the licensed design (Namco in this case) to have ownership of the character while the original designer retains ownership of the design upon which the character is based.

Under these circumstances, Namco could continue using the name and story of the character, but with a drastically different design -- at which point they probably would choose to just go with designing a new character altogether, especially when the original design is likely a big part of the appeal of that other character anyway.
 
It's also possible for the party receiving the licensed design (Namco in this case) to have ownership of the character while the original designer retains ownership of the design upon which the character is based.

Under these circumstances, Namco could continue using the name and story of the character, but with a drastically different design -- at which point they probably would choose to just go with designing a new character altogether, especially when the original design is likely a big part of the appeal of that other character anyway.

Yup, that's essentially what I meant when I said you can try to work around these issues. But, as you correctly observe, the issue is that you end up doing so much work to avoid the conflict that there's really no reason not to just start again from scratch with a new character and avoid the risk of litigation altogether, especially in today's legal/IP climate, where courts and statutes allow for pretty subsantial damages if there is any hint that you tried to use someone else's IP in an impermissible manner. Even if you do it perfectly, you're still going to be vulnerable to a complaint in a way that your parent company just is not going to be happy with, and even reviewing the original licesnsing documents to try to suss out the situation is a not-insubstantial cost, since that's lawyer work hours. Basically, the only safe way to do it is to enter into another licensing agreement with the artist, which is not a cost the developer is going to want to consider unless the demand really makes it profitable. And Namco doesn't even like to keep using guests in Soulcalibur games that they own outright: other than Yoshimitsu, the Tekken guest characters never return.
 
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I just looked at the Twitter and couldn't find anything related to Samurai Shodown. Am I missing something?

Though I'd love Taki in that game, damn.
This one is a small banter between Bandai Namco and Samurai Shodown Twitter.

This link shows that Samurai Shodown is following SoulCalibur. I mistook it for being the other way around so there is now less meaning to my point since Samurai Shodown is also following other fighting games.

The developers of Samurai Shodown were also asked if the game will feature guests characters in which the producer jokingly mentioned "I'm waiting, Harada-san!".

Later down the line, Harada made this tweet about Samurai Shodown.

Harada isn't only involved in Tekken, he is promoted as the general manager of Bandai Namco IP and overseers not only Tekken but also the Tales Of, Dark Souls, and the SoulCalibur series. I personally see this as a lot of hints being dropped that would lead to a guest character for one or both of the series.
 
This one is a small banter between Bandai Namco and Samurai Shodown Twitter.

This link shows that Samurai Shodown is following SoulCalibur. I mistook it for being the other way around so there is now less meaning to my point since Samurai Shodown is also following other fighting games.

The developers of Samurai Shodown were also asked if the game will feature guests characters in which the producer jokingly mentioned "I'm waiting, Harada-san!".

Later down the line, Harada made this tweet about Samurai Shodown.

Harada isn't only involved in Tekken, he is promoted as the general manager of Bandai Namco IP and overseers not only Tekken but also the Tales Of, Dark Souls, and the SoulCalibur series. I personally see this as a lot of hints being dropped that would lead to a guest character for one or both of the series.
Fingers crossed; I haven't followed Samurai Showdown in I don't know how long, but the prospect of a guest character would suggest even more continuing support, possibly even beyond season two. I wouldn't say there's anything here thus far that strongly suggests anything in motion at present, but chummy relationships between developers sometimes lead to good things!
 
They really just need to bring Noctis over. He was more suited to SC than Tekken in the first place, and having whatever assets in place for him for "Tekken 7" should make that easier than starting from the ground.
 
They really just need to bring Noctis over. He was more suited to SC than Tekken in the first place, and having whatever assets in place for him for "Tekken 7" should make that easier than starting from the ground.
This is something they absolutely should have planned to do two years ago, but I'm afraid that ship has long sailed now; I just don't see a licensing agreement for Noctis in a second Namco fighter coming about, and now we have Azwel, the knock-off Noctis (Nocoftis?). I am close to 100% certain that Azwel came about because Project soul's senior devs were frustrated that a character like Noctis was actually licensed for use by Namco, and then stuck into the fighter that, by far, least suited him. He would have been such a good fit for Soulcalibur and would have made an awesome trio with 2B and Geralt. So Project Soul got jealous and made a variation on the theme, but had to make their character substantially different enough not to make the transplant -too- obvious. Unfortunately, the result was Azwel, who looks like a former 1950's stage magician now better known as a registered sex offender, with an English voice actor who emotes like he thinks he is a principal actor in the filming of the original Wizard of Oz. I mean, honestly, there have been some missteps in original character designs in the last few games, but has a goofier, lamer character ever been produced by this series? Oh yeah...Groh. And Z..W..E..I.. (I added extra punctuation to demonstrate his name literally can't get more stupid).

Anyway, I got off on a tangent there. Long-story short, not only do I not see Namco buying the rights to Noctis twice, but putting him in Soulcalibur VI alongside Azwel would A) make it pretty obvious that PS decided to take a second bite at that apple already without paying said fees, and B) Hilight what a mediocre job they did when riffing on that theme. In other words, too sticky a situation / nevah gonna happen.
 
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This is something they absolutely should have planned to do two years ago, but I'm afraid that ship has long sailed now; I just don't see a licensing agreement for Noctis in a second Namco fighter coming about, and now we have Azwel, the knock-off Noctis (Nocoftis?). I am close to 100% certaint hat Azwel came about because Project soul's senior devs were frustrated that a character like Noctis was actually licensed for use by Namco, and then stuck into the fighter that, by far, least suited him. He would have been such a good fit for Soulcalibur and would have made an awesome trio with 2B and Geralt. So Project Soul got jealous and made a variation on the theme, but had to make their character substantially different enough not to make the transplant -too- obvious. Unfortunately, the result was Azwel, who looks like a former 1950's stage magician now better known as a registered sex offender, with an English voice actor who emotes like he thinks he is a principal actor in the filming of the original Wizard of Oz. I mean, honestly, there have been some missteps in original character designs in the last few games, but has a goofier, lamer character ever been produced by this series? Oh yeah...Groh. And Z..W..E..I.. (I added extra punctuation to demonstrate his name literally can't get more stupid).

Anyway, I got off on a tangent there. Long-story short, not only do I not see Namco buying the rights to Noctis twice, but putting him in Soulcalibur VI alongside Azwel would A) make it pretty obvious that PS decided to take a second bite at that apple already without paying said fees, and B) Hilight what a mediocre job they did when riffing on that theme. In other words, too sticky a situation / nevah gonna happen.

Fair points, sadly enough.

Now that you shine a light on it like that, it does seem obvious. You're probably right about Azwel's power set being lifted from Noct. For that matter, Azwel's showy gestures and speech mannerisms are highly reminiscent of Ardyn, also from FFXV -- and also an owner of the power to conjure weapons, Ardyn's power signature being red while Noct's is blue ...
 
Fair points, sadly enough.

Now that you shine a light on it like that, it does seem obvious. You're probably right about Azwel's power set being lifted from Noct. For that matter, Azwel's showy gestures and speech mannerisms are highly reminiscent of Ardyn, also from FFXV -- and also an owner of the power to conjure weapons, Ardyn's power signature being red while Noct's is blue ...
Oh, I didn't realize there were other characters like Noctis in that world with the same abilities, though I always got the impression that his female counterpart (Stella?) had something similar going on. As you can probably tell, I still haven't played FFXV; back in the day when my life/the demands on my time were a little more relaxed, I played all of the mainline entries in the series--from the original release of the first game up until around FFXI, when the quality of the games precipitously fell off (though I did actually enjoy FFXII, the last one I played through, in many respects). Up until that point, I played them all, even if I came to some of them a few years after their release, but by that point the quality had declined and around the same time it developed that I had time for only a handful of games, so they always have to be good if they were long-form story-centric games. When FFXV (still known as FFXIII Versus at the time) revealed its first trailer and it was known that Tetsuya Nomura was directing, I was pretty psyched about the direction that the animation, particularly the fight animation, was going to take, and Noctis' introduction was a big part of it. It really seemed that the game was likely to rejuvenate the franchise.

However, the game slogged in development hell year after year after year, and I became more busier still. Finally it was released, and though it looks like an alright package, I got the feeling it didn't quite live up to expectations after Nomura left. I was also left a little disappointed that the game has only four main protagonists who were all a group of bros that look like they could be models for Axe body spray, when one of the appeals of the franchise for me was always that the games had rich and large casts composed of varied and interesting characters. Between time constraints and the lackluster launch, I never got around to playing it, though I will say that, at a minimum, it still looks like maybe it is the best Final fantasy game in a decade or more (bearing in mind that, aside from a few moments trialing a game here and there, the last one I played that wasn't a remake was released in 2006!). Want to make a pitch for it being worth the time investment?
 
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@Rusted Blade
Well, it's my favorite of the series, and I've been playing them usually right as each new one comes out since FFVII came along in 1997. I've also played the first six and a good number of the spin-offs.

There is a lot to love about FFXV, though there's undoubtedly a lot that could have been executed better.

The open-world exploration is a joy most of the time, but it comes with some annoyances as well in falling into the usual traps open-world games do (e g. series of fetch quests that don't have immediate relevance).

The magic system is largely superfluous, but combat overall is wonderful. It takes some getting used to, but becomes a lot of fun once you familiarize yourself.

The plot is excellent but isn't presented in the most easily digestible fashion. There's the CG prologue movie "Kingsglaive" (required viewing); the anime prologue "Brotherhood" (definitely a good idea to watch this too, but not as vital); a short text-only prologue (can be skipped, but it's so short, there's no reason to); the main game itself; and multiple DLC set before and throughout the main game (though most carry the expectation that you've already finished the main game before playing them).

Even as you play, much of the world-building, characterization, and even more than a few critical plot points require you, as the player, to really delve into the world and experience it. Talk to people. Do side-quests (even the fetchy ones). Read newspapers. Listen to radio broadcasts.

However, should you actually do all this, and take your time rather than proceed from one plot hot spot to the next, you get a cumulative experience of some of the best characterization this series has ever seen; and what is unquestionably the closest, most convincing team dynamics and sense of ... well, brotherhood (like in the anime prologue's title lol) ... that the series has ever offered.

It's definitely a great game, but one with inarguable flaws every bit as much as virtues. It's just that it's a product truly better than the sum of its parts.

EDIT: Oh, and the English voice acting is fucking amazing.
 
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@Rusted Blade
Well, it's my favorite of the series, and I've been playing them usually right as each new one comes out since FFVII came along in 1997. I've also played the first six and a good number of the spin-offs.

There is a lot to love about FFXV, though there's undoubtedly a lot that could have been executed better.

The open world exploration is a joy most of the time, but it comes with some annoyances as well in falling into the usual traps open world games do (e g. series of fetch quests that don't have immediate relevance).

The magic system is largely superfluous, but combat overall is wonderful. It takes some getting used to, but becomes a lot of fun once you familiarize yourself.

The plot is excellent but isn't presented in the most easily digestible fashion. There's the CG prologue movie "Kingsglaive" (required viewing); the anime prologue "Brotherhood" (definitely a good idea to watch this too, but not as vital); a short text-only prologue (can be skipped, but it's so short, there's no reason to); the main game itself; and multiple DLC set before and throughout the main game (though most carry the expectation that you've already finished the main game before playing them).

Even as you play, much of the world-building, characterization, and even more than a few critical plot points require you, as the player, to really delve into the world and experience it. Talk to people. Do side-quests (even the fetchy ones). Read newspapers. Listen to radio broadcasts.

However, should you actually do all this, and take your time rather than proceed from one plot hot spot to the next, you get a cumulative experience of some of the best characterization this series has ever seen; and what is unquestionably the closest, most convincing team dynamics and sense of ... well, brotherhood (like in the anime prologue's title lol) ... that the series has ever offered.

It's definitely a great game, but one with inarguable flaws every bit as much as virtues. It's just that it's a product truly better than the sum of its parts.

That's some well-worded advocacy. I definitely have no issue with meticulously exploring an open world game--actually, my typical approach to such games is usually to max out every available side-quest and objective (no matter how many hundred of them there are, spread out throughout the world) before doing the next available main story quest, a remnant of my completionist tendencies from back when I was a more voracious gamer. By the same token, I absolutely know what you mean when you reference the tedium/padding that this can sometimes engender in a game; I can see how that kind of formula could be particularly in tension with a Final Fantasy game and it's traditional focus on the trials of the main cast. Though at the same time, arguably square was always a bit ahead of the curve in this regard, having the original iterations on open worlds filled with NPCs with something to say. In any event, it's good to hear that they've threaded the needle pretty well on those elements and that the world feels cohesive and that the small interactions feel relevant and not like filler.

In a similar vein, I ended up liking FFXII quite a bit, but it also was a departure from the traditional formula; that story is enjoyable, but you have to give up very early on expecting it to play out like a typical Final Fantasy game: the focus is on the world and the toll of the war, not upon the principle cast. Those protagonists are all likeable enough (Balthier and Fran in particular are charming as all get-out), but other than Ash, they aren't given the typical FF sob-fest backstories and you just kind of root for them because they are good people trying to do the right thing, not because you are particularly emotionally invested in what they've been through; again, it's more that the world around them feels sincere and lived-in and you feel like the stakes are very high for their success. It sounds though as if FFXV made an attempt to fuse the best of both approaches together, with some success, by your description.

I've heard about the multi-media aspect of the story and its incredibly confusing to me that they chose to tell the story in that way without really adequately preparing their audience, but anyway, I'll follow your proscribed approach to the material. I have to say, and maybe it sounds a bit nitpicky, but I'm a little put off by the boy band aspect of the playable characters: having strong female leads since pretty much as soon as the stories in the franchise began to get nuanced (FFIV) was always a big selling point for me. I understand that Noctis and his three friends are meant to be a unit of exceptionally close friends, forged into a family by circumstance, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt that this sausage fest is in service to a greater narrative end, but I know there's going to be moments driving around in that car where I'm going to be saying "Good lord, please throw anyone into their path right now who is not another twenty-something bro--this is like Final Fantasy meets Entourage!".

I do think I'll enjoy the combat system from what I've seen, and the CGI. I'm a big fan of martial arts epics and any kind of art that explores the human body in motion, including in film making. One of my favourite young artists of recent decades was Monty Oum, who tragically died quite young a few years back. As an animator, Monty found a way to combine elements of traditional wuxia and Hong Kong action fair with the kind of fantasy/sci-fi action that he had observed in anime and (most centrally, I think) the in-game and cutscene animations from his contemporaries working in the games industry--there are particularly obvious influences in his work from franchises like Final Fantasy, Dead or Alive and yes, especially Soulcalibur. He just had a natural gift for telling a story through fight sequences that had natural rythym and flow, that kept the heart pumping and the mind and soul engaged.

Other than the Avatar:The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra team and a few select works of animation out of Japan, I don't think anyone has yet caught up to him for creating visual poetry in motion with a fight sequence in animation. Virtually every fight scene that Marvel Studios has produced feels flat to me, because its obviously trying to reproduce the same kind of feeling and flair, but has never captured the same level of style and ingenuity. I don't know how much of that is that it requires a unique genius and how much it is their focusing too much on the adolescent power fantasies those characters represent, but it just feels clumsy by comparison. Monty ended up at Rooster Teeth where injected action sequences into Red vs. Blue for the first time, before spearheading the first couple seasons of his own show that many will be familiar with, RWBY, before his unexpected death. Anyway, the point of this diatribe/sidetrack within a sidetrack, is that there is something decidedly Monty Oum-ish about FFXV's approach to action, particularly in its trailers and what I've seen of the cut-scenes; Noctis would have looked quite at home in Dead Fantasy, had it continued beyond where Monty left it. That alone is reason to give FFXV a try, I suppose.

Anyway, thanks for the info--I'll give the game a crack as soon as I can find time for such an undertaking (presently looking to be 2025, but we'll see!) [/SPOLIER]
 
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