So long as they stick the landing, seems like they have a winner so far. The initial mystery will of course be done, but there's plenty of crime thriller plots they could explore. I was actually thinking maybe they could bring in Jo from AGL and do a new age Green Arrow/Green Lantern book with Dinah.
I'm trying to remember a time where a character that wasn't essentially guaranteed had a dev team actually come through and reveal them on the base roster. I was so worried what the discourse would be if Blade hadn't made base even despite how many years of DLC we could get, but there were just so many people demanding he get in that Arcsys deserves all the credit in the world for having that in the pocket (and not letting it leak!)
Also, looks like he not only has an iaido type moveset, but has a limited supply projectile to open up the opponent that he can refill. I called the Johnny comp!
My one worry about having DLC teams formed around a theme with some sort of in-game lore attached is the idea of separating heroes and villains. I think considering how many more relevant heroes there are than villains they'd likely want to fit in, waiting for all-villains teams would be a bit harder to swallow than there just being a loose theme (eg silver age, street level, etc.) and having the flexibility to incorporate the two together within a year's time. I do hope there's a mix of trying to get in more characters that have never been in fighting games and overall have low representation in games overall. I'd love to see their take on characters like Kang, Kingpin, and Mr. Sinister.
I think starting from the OG on, they have a history of not slow rolling it and really putting significant events that set the tone right away.
I remember Zeta's hooked me instantly. It was just so absurd and funny but also made me curious.
Gundam X's just felt like we were going to embark on a special adventure and had such a 90s feel to it.
Turn A's is so good, everything about Turn A is great.
"THE QUEST FOR THOR BEGINS!
Sigurd Jarlson is an ordinary man — but he alone can call Asgard’s greatest hero back to life.
But to rebuild the bridge between humanity and the gods, he must begin his quest in the worst place of all. Somewhere in Hel, a man with a hammer begins a journey into mystery…"
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Mortal\_Thor\_Vol\_1\_15
Not sure why it got removed before, but anyway, here is the preview for the Mortal Thor issue that will feature a Tokon variant cover. 'Journey into mystery' is an old comic line that could reference Loki. Enchantress has been in other issues prior to this, and Hela of course relates to Hel. That person that had the theory about colors would probably be correct with any of them as all three could take up the green slot.
I was going through old comic storylines and I had not realized Ned's character was made to be the Hobgoblin back then. With them getting closer to comic accuracy with Spidey and also pushing Jacob more in promotion, would it be insane if they went with the heel turn?
Back in an interview earlier in the cycle, they had noted that their game is unlikely to do updates in the same way many fighting games are with yearly passes just centered around 4-6 characters. From the history of RGG as they've come to blossom, we have gotten new releases on a very fast cycle compared to the rest of the industry (save for the yearly sports/FPS titles.) Even though they have the same base engine, the games feel quite different and fleshed out.
​
I think that's what might happen here, which might be more similar to how older title releases used to go. It is pretty clear so far they are emphasizing the full game package and focusing on content replayability. The yearly DLC passes rip us off in that regard, treating every new character as "content for all" when that's hardly the case -- and some franchises are even skimping out on accompanying stages!
​
A big boon to going back to this model would be future archival purposes, allowing people to revisit certain iterations of balance, mechanics, etc. You can give current owners an upgrade path, and the rest get a full new game, and it can still keep the playerbase under one roof. But most of all, we could then get larger scale additions to all the content surrounding gameplay, which would be in line with how they've treated the Yakuza series.
I did not at all expect Cole "Cole Young" Young to actually be Cole "Stefon Diggs" Young (Minnesota days, if you know the locker room interview) haha. I thought he was the well-mannered innocent guy but he's a true player undercover? Real fun interview from the GOAT!
Let's run with the assumption from the character select screen that there are 16 characters in the game. Four are the new protagonists. Considering Akira, Wolf, and Pai have all appeared so far, I think it would be a fair bet that Jacky from the mural is also a given. Whether it's the character next to Cisco that was clearly highlighted in a way of having a level of importance or it's someone else, I think there would be a fair bet that there is at least one new antagonist character.
So let's think about 7 possibilities of returning characters. There are 15 characters outside of the others mentioned:
* Sarah
* Kage
* Lau
* Jean
* Lion
* Vanessa
* Jeffry
* Taka
* Brad
* Lei-Fei
* Goh
* El Blaze
* Aoi
* Eileen
* Shun-Di
A separate thing is that on twitter, Yamada has basically hinted at everything happening in the future in QTs with emojis, not just about characters but reveals and other aspects too. Generally, he uses an emoji with a hand over the mouth for hints, but one time he used a "shh" one for a question about if Taka is coming back or if Wolf is the "big bad" which I guess could mean anything. He also used a scratching chin emoji for when someone asked about having a boxing inspired character and Yamada also included a silhouette of Cielo. And he used the hand over mouth emoji for someone thinking there would be a Philippines inspired area. But looking at the other semi-character hints with the emoji...
- Used it when asked if there will be a TKD character
- Used it when asked about either a drunken fist character or wing chun or selat
- Used for asking about Jacky
- Used about the green woman having connections to Eileen or about if all the old styles will be repped
- Spoke about the beauty of Aoi's martial art style as his favorite
- Used for either PH area or PH character, which could possibly be the green woman
- And Jeffry we of course saw that bit in the story tease, and he has straight up said "It might be time to settle Jeffry's Satan Shark story, but I guess that could just be a thing you find out...though unlikely they make the whole model and take him out
- Characters Yamada has gone out if his way to highlight or name: Sarah, Akira, Pai, Jacky, Wolf, Jeffry, Eileen, Aoi
So I would expect Jeffry, Sarah, Shun Di, Aoi, Jean/Kage/Goh/Vanessa/Lau/Eileen/Taka/Lei-Fei.
FWIW they ran a character popularity poll about a year ago which ended up as:
- Akira
- Aoi
- Vanessa
- Sarah
- Goh
- Jacky
- Kage
- Pai
- Wolf
- Jean
- Lei-Fei
- Brad
- Lion
- El Blaze
- Shun Di
- Jeffry
- Eileen
- Lau
- Taka
Nevermind, no need to shoehorn the black male or someone else in, Cielo has a boxing background incorporated into his MMA. This is probably a more reasonable compromise considering all of VF's holds and ground work and all that. It's funny, in that trailer at the mural part where he shadow boxes with Wolf, I was like wow that footwork and the punch flurry is so captivating, it reminds me of something, but it didn't cross my mind he was the boxer.
From the latest Famitsu article interview with Riichiro Yamada (keep in mind this is translated, so don't focus on word choice semantics):
> What kind of fighting style does Cielo, who is featured in this video, have? >> His character is primarily MMA-based. However, he has a background as a boxer, so he incorporates many boxing-based techniques. He participates in anything-goes matches, so he does use MMA-style moves as well.
> In the video, his attacks were mainly punches, right? >> The footwork is also boxing-like. The Virtua Fighter series has historically been heavily influenced by kung fu movies. When we considered what kind of person would be suitable as the new protagonist, we thought a character with a more modern fighting style as their background would be good.
> Because if you mention kung fu movies to young people these days, they might not understand it very well. >> So I was vaguely thinking, "Should he be a boxer or an MMA fighter?" That's partly because I like boxing. There was an MMA character named Vanessa, but actually, there haven't been any boxing-focused characters in Virtua Fighter before. That was one of the reasons I decided on Cielo's background. After all, if we're starting fresh as Virtua Fighter, I think we need a new style of star. There are many different fighting styles in the world, but the protagonist's fighting style can't be just anything. I chose from among those that have a certain level of realism and background. Of course, I was also thinking about how to use past characters at the same time.
> To be more precise, the silver-haired woman who appeared briefly in the scene where they were fighting with the Chinese mafia in the arena, and who seemed to be an important character, made me think for a moment, "Is that Vanessa?!".... but it wasn't. Existing characters have also changed quite a bit in appearance, like what I thought was Sarah turned out to be Stella, and Wolf had a bushy beard, so everyone who appears looks suspicious. >> (laughs) For the existing characters whose designs have changed, we imagined "what they would look like after some time has passed." I think you can see the "direction of the answer" to that question in this video.
Tha Crossroads
Bone bone bone bone, bone, bone, bone, bone, bone
Now tell me whatcha gonna do
When there ain't nowhere to run (tell me what)
(When judgment comes for you, when judgment comes for you)
And whatcha gonna do?
When there ain't nowhere to hide (tell me what)
When judgment comes for you ('cause it's gonna come for you)
Not sure how many have leagues where people have it, but if not, what's been what you always figured would be yours?
Recent interview with 4Gamer. Some translated excerpts below.
"4Gamer: Among the characters that have been revealed so far, Wolverine looks pretty much the same as before, right?
Yamanaka: We're considering the fans' preferences and discussing with the design team whether to drastically change the design or stick to it.
Sekine: Even if the default costume is a familiar one, there are cases where innovative alternative costumes are used, so I hope you'll pay attention to those as well. Because the alternative costumes allow for adventure, the default costume was sometimes decided to be basic, keeping the episode mode (story mode) in mind.
Yamanaka: We made various suggestions to the Marvel side, and they were happy to accept them, saying, "I see, so that's how you interpreted it." They don't supervise every single design and move in detail; rather, they provide supervision and reviews once we've produced it to a certain level. We receive materials that serve as the concept for each character's action, and then we have to figure out how to incorporate that. There was room for us to think. Of course, there are also parts, such as cutscenes and signature super special moves, that are checked in detail from the storyboard stage."
Seeing as someone like Iron Man who has a DLC outfit would not be considered a "basic" design for their new look, I am taking this as saying we will see other outfits revealed in story mode for other characters.
"4Gamer: Was the selection of playable characters also largely left to Arc System Works' discretion?
Yamanaka: We had thorough discussions among the three companies regarding the characters. However, they also left a lot of decisions to us, and most of our suggestions for characters we wanted to include were approved. We subdivided the list and decided based on things like characters needed to add variety to the fighting game, female characters, and characters that absolutely had to be included as it was a Marvel game.
Sekine: Conversely, there were times when we told the Marvel side that we wanted a character that matched a certain type, and they suggested, "How about this character?"
4Gamer: Are there any characters that haven't been revealed yet that have abilities that are typical of Arc System Works? Like characters with their own unique gauges or systems?
Sekine: Among the characters that have been revealed, Storm and Ghost Rider have their own unique systems and gauges. We decided to include those elements based on whether or not they were necessary to recreate the character's actions as seen in the original work in Marvel Fighting Spirit.
For example, with Storm, it started with the idea of recreating her ability to control the weather as an ability that affects the entire field. However, if that ability could be used without limit, it would be too powerful, so we've implemented a Tempest Gauge to impose a limit."
So the "Marvel musts" is probably going to be a point of contention on if we're considering Marvel fighting game, Marvel overall, or Marvel comic representatives. But I imagine most of what they meant by that has already been covered by who is revealed, but we'll see.
So there's a clear focus to balance the roster with female characters and archetype diversity. It sounds like they sought out playstyles and then found characters to match, either by their idea or Marvel's. Seems like it was a back and forth.
"4Gamer: Arc System Works' fighting games seem to have substantial story modes. What about Marvel Fighting Spirit?
Yamanaka: It's difficult to directly compare the volume of content to the story modes in other titles because the format is different, but in Marvel Fighting Spirit, you can enjoy a story using a motion comics style in a game mode called "Episode Mode." We had a manga artist draw the base manga, and then we added movement to each panel to advance the story, which is a fairly time-consuming way to present it. We have prepared five teams, and it has enough content to provide nearly 10 hours of gameplay in total.
4Gamer: So there's a new way to present the story mode. I'm looking forward to the content.
Yamanaka: From the beginning of the project, we decided that a story mode was absolutely necessary for casual players, and the only thing left to discuss was what form it should take. Marvel is all about comics, so we thought about how to make it interactively enjoyable, and that's how the idea of making comics move came about. By adding sound and movement to motion comics, we can also make use of the PS5's vibration function.
4Gamer: In episode mode, will there be any matches where the player controls the game in between?
Yamanaka: No. Basically, once you start episode mode, the story will progress even if you leave it alone. You can fast-forward by pressing a button, or pause and enjoy the illustrations at your leisure, but it's designed to be enjoyed in the same way as reading a comic book.
As an aside, recording the voices for episode mode was a challenge. In previous Arc System Works titles, we usually recorded about three languages, but this time we needed to record ten languages.
However, I think being able to enjoy a fighting game in one's native language is a wonderful experience, so I would like to do my best to support it, with the help of SIE regarding localization.
4Gamer: I understand that there are five teams in Episode Mode, but is it correct to assume that in addition to the teams that have been announced so far, there will be a team prepared for each team that will be announced in the future?
Yamanaka: That's right. The default teams that have been officially announced have member compositions that are mindful of the story of Episode Mode.
The main storyline of Episode Mode is that a villain called the Promoter attacks, and superheroes team up to fight against the Promoter. The story depicts how each hero assembled their team in an ensemble drama."
So no gameplay in-between, we have 10 hours of full story in 10 languages fully drawn by a manga artist then given animation? That's a crazy amount of work! Pretty cool for people that may have not often had things translated to their languages. I wonder who the manga artist is. So sounds like it will be pretty stylized. I know some want to interact, but for people concerned with canon, this is nice. And 10 hours of it is a wild amount. Old Arc back?
I have to say, it would certainly do well for both if maybe a fighting game was coming out around the same time that helped promote some of the characters that would be in this...
"The light had its turn.
Marvel Comics presents MIDNIGHT, a terrifying new universe coming this fall.
Stay tuned next week for more information on this all-new publishing line, including series and creative team reveals."