It was a flavor choice. Capcom is designing a competetive game based on ‘flavor’. Why does Sak have more health though? Perhaps because she’s Japanese. I know, sounds ridiculous.
…doesn’t it?
But Capcom decided on this early in development. Flavor is important to them. Any designer could tell you they knew they had a choice to simply make everyone 1000 health and then balance the damage around that. There would be hurdles there too, but they would be infinitesimally easier to leap over than what they currently chose instead.
However this is their game, and developers are human. Humans are prone to artistic desire and the want to have fun in their projects. An artist may paint the sky green and the grass blue in a landscape portrait and nobody would ask him why, because it is an artistic interpretation.
Art and Practicality collide however because games are, by design a medium of Logic. I’m not talking about realistic logic like “Mario shouldn’t be able to jump that high because that’s impossible.” more that “Mario can jump over that pipe, because he CAN jump that high.” the gamer has been presented with Logic and that logic cannot be refuted. Anytime the player sees a challenge requiring him to jump, he can apply the designers logic to defeat the challenge.
Capcom is telling us, in their artistic interpretation that regardless of the overall rules of their game and the ultimate purpose of balanced, head to head competition that women are weaker because they are women. That Sagat has more health because he is tall and that Gen with his ancient skills and technique has less survivability than a high school girl in a sailor uniform.
This is ridiculous from a logical viewpoint, but we must respect the artistic license. This in itself is fine, the problem is they want us to meet challenges, with faulty logic that isn’t even across the board.
This is like Mario being able to jump very high…sometimes. Not all the time.
How could you ever, truly meet the challenges laid out ahead? That is my biggest gripe with Street Fighter game design. It fails one of the very key things a video game asks a gamer to do.
To apply personal skill to meet the challenges ahead. A player, depending on his choice in SF may have to be substantially better than another to win, even if that player is a lesser opponent simply because he chose an artistically stronger character. It’s difficult to respect or acknowledge.
…but that’s what we’re demanded to do.