My favorite thing about Q is the official art where they show him being interviewed by a woman and they don’t ever bring it up or explain it ever,
Didn’t Arcade mode used to be the Story mode back then?
I watched a bit of one of the SF4 animes recently. There was a scene where Guile and Chun Li turn up to some SWAT team standoff, in their fighting costumes.
I kept wishing for one of the policemen to yell out, “Who let these cosplayers onto a crime scene!?!.”
SF can never have a good story because the character designs don’t fit in with the world. Plus Blanka and Dhalsim (and a lot of the 3S cast, and now that SF4 Turkish guy) are just silly.
That’s one reason I really like BB story-wise, and that Persona FG when it comes out. (and one reason why I hate most crossover games, story-wise.) The characters and settings (and stories) in those games fit together properly.
KOF is good too, because most of the characters are in street or exercise clothes. Except for Mai 
Maybe SF characters would work in a silly world where everyone is in stupid costumes, like a superhero style world. But the story in SF is usually stupidly serious. Chun Li is a policewoman?! Her clothing, mannerisms, and backstory don’t fit together at all. It would be better if she was a martial-arts actress or something.
You might know fighting games but I’m willing to bet you know nothing on storytelling.
Story telling does not need
-dialogue
-cinematic
-to be long
-convoluted plot
Storytelling does need
-character development
-tough choices made by characters to speak to who they are.
-intro
-climax
-resolution
That said Fighting games can easily tell a story AS WELL if not better than an RPG. The RPG is just more immersive, but an RPG is not the end all of storytelling. Look at Portal 2, and the main character doesn’t even speak or show emotion or reaction.
What do you mean Chun-Li’s backstory doesn’t fit? Chun-Li isn’t some random policewoman, she’s an Interpol officer whose father was killed by Bison. What does it matter what she wears into a fighting tournament? I can understand your perspective when dealing with actual story content in games such as openings/endings.
Simple fix - go UDON style and put her in a damn police uniform during those points.
The thing is that fighting games as a genre are specifically tailored to being multiplayer experiences. To use a Valve analogy, they’re more like Counter-Strike or Team Fortress than Portal or HL2.
How about an actor!
I like making up my own story for fighting games.
So back in the day ryu and ken were lovers, they shared a deep connection because they were adopted and sexually abused by gouken. When they turned 18 they ran off together and started training for some reason, actually training to be better lovers which somehow involved shotokan karate.
They got so good that an evil dictator raised by hitler Mike Bison took interest, he was spurned by his lover Vega ( also the most beautiful man in the world ) and needed to get over him by getting involved in a freaky as hell three way.
Thats how I made SF in my head, all the other characters are just stupid filler to me.
At the end of the day, especially for this site, the “stories” in these games aren’t the ones that matter.
The real stories, the ones that matter are those of the community.
Stories like Daigo’s amazing parry against Justin at EVO2k4 (EVO Moment #37)
Stories like Fanatiq making 40,000 in one of the largest money matches in history.
Stories like Rockefeller, travelling to Japan with next to no money an sleeping in an arcade storage room just to be able to play 3rd Strike with the best.
Stories like Latif coming out of losers bracket in EVO2k11 beating out 2 of the top players in the world (Daigo and Poongko) in the process.
Stories like Kusoru beating out every other Marvel 3 player at Final Round with a team no one expected to win.
These stories, and the many more like them, being told in arcades, pool halls, bars, living rooms, etc. around the world. Stories that could be unfolding at this very moment. Stories involving not just pixels on the screen, but real people, just like you and me or maybe even involving you or me. Stories like these, are the ones that matter most.
J1n has awesome stories…
Well on the other side of this coin, if the game play in these titles wasn’t consistently good throughout the years, then nobody would give a damn about these characters or their back story to begin with.
So priority wise: great gameplay > great storymode. Wouldn’t and shouldn’t compromise the experience of the fighters themselves to bring out the story. Such a thing would only really please the casuals, who wouldn’t be sticking with the game in the long run anyway.
As soon as they played through it and got their fill of the story, they’d jump ship back to whatever other games they were playing previously(FPS, RPGs, etc). And we the FG community would just be left with a forgettable, mediocre fighter.
I agree that a NamcoXCapcom full-fledged RPG on the side would be welcome. I’d probably give the first game a shot if they gave it a proper translation and made available for download.
Actually Ideally I believe story builds gameplay. It helps you be creative, when you ask yourself how does this new character play, his personality, history, interests, and style help you form those decisions.
Oh but they do, from a design perspective they are imperative. If you try to make a fighting game with no story and no thought on the characters, only the few players will play who strictly care about math of a game and nothing else.
Although I admire your passion for fighting games, it’s given you tunnel vision on the matter. Yes those stories are the heart of the FGC, but it’s kind of a chicken or the egg argument going on here, except we clearly know which came first. It’s not JUST the gameplay that ropes in people, it’s the total experience. The characters, the world, how they interact, this stuff gets people into it, and after it THEN they start caring about the math of the game. Without caring about casuals and the rest of the world you can easily miss out on a lot of potential new players and slowly age your fanbase, look at the republican party and American mainstream comic books…You list Team Fortress, and counterstrike but they are 2 totally different games. Team Fortress is actually popular because there IS a story, there are character interactions, friendships (heavy + medic, Solider _+ Demoman) it inspires the humor, moveset, weapons, world, and objective in the game. Team Fortress has more female players than say counterstrike, because it’s an experience based on more than just efficiently killing. Hell if you want more female gamers on the scene start there.
I seriously doubt you’d be talking about “competitive stories” if it was a hello kitty fighting game, because no matter how or who won it you simply wouldn’t be interested in the subject material or characters. I’m worried that people like you will let companies flatten out future games and deaden the soul by saying “only the gameplay/ math matters” When without considering the story of the game, you make artless, soulless games.
That’s not a belief. That’s an approach to design.