I think I’ve read somewhere that this is going to be the best SF game story-wise.
That could mean Transformers 3 though.
I agree with d3v on this that more vital assets should be prioritized over special intros. Looking at how rival battles worked in SF4, I’m a little skeptical of how evenly they would be distributed where Chun-Li and Ryu ended up as half the cast’s rival character in arcade mode.
Anything that adds more time in between selecting characters, fighting, and exiting a finished match is a negative to me. As long as all of this is exclusive to arcade, and I can immediately exit a finished match or skip the intro to a match online then its fine. I’m all for flavor and story, but between super long ultra cutscenes (hundreds of tons of pure uncut HATE for these) and having to sit in front of an outro animation, stat screen, and admittedly short (but still frustrating) loading screen before I can even try to find another game is number 1 on the list of things SF4 makes me want to throw my fightstick out the window over. Win or lose, I will have to tolerate these things and that isn’t okay. 
This is just part 1, there are EIGHT parts, each 20-30 minutes long, of MK special intros between characters. This might not directly impact gameplay but it directly impacts your gaming experience, adding value to it. Capcom need to step up.
Special intros should fit under “cinematics” and therefore there should be a way of turning them off in options. If that was the case, I’m all for special intros. And in the case of 3S it had really good loading times between character select and the match, so those quick rival animations have never bothered me at all. They’re pretty fun.
I’d be amazed if SF5’s story mode starts you off from alpha story and gets you up to date for SF5’s story.
From Alpha onwards, SF storyline became retard-level, so it shouldn’t matter.
It bothers me how all the characters seem to know each other in these intros. How does Ferra/Torr know anybody?
The dialogue between the characters references events that happened before, during, and after story mode. So Ferra/Torr met a lot of these characters during story mode. Also, I believe the official MKX comic that was being released by DC leading up to MKX is partially or completely canon.
Also many MK characters have history together (MK9’s story mode makes this abundantly clear).
It’s mainly just dialogue not action. Granted some of them are humorous and it takes a great deal of work to make sure it will actually apply to the person or creature they are about to fight but I think SFIV actually got this right in terms of the rival fight leading up to AE. I was severely disappointed that this was absent with the new cast and it was the only thing to look forward to in Arcade Mode.
Dudley vs. Balrog was something I never imagined and words aren’t cutting.
Ferra/Torr shows up twice in story mode and each time it’s completely random. I’m genuinely confused how anyone would even know their names. I’m most impressed with the mirror match dialogue. I like how there’s at least one that has the characters believe that their mirror is Shang Tsung.
[quote=“Will_Diesel, post:31, topic:174155”]
It’s mainly just dialogue not action. Granted some of them are humorous and it takes a great deal of work to make sure it will actually apply to the person or creature they are about to fight/quote]
Note how the lips match the dialogue.
Hawkingbird, yeah Reptile’s mirror match where he references Chameleon and Tsung is my favorite by far. [details=Spoiler] Shang Tsung also appears in Ermac’s ending[/details]
Chameleon reference threw me for a loop. I didn’t think NRS remembered him/her. I favorite mirror match dialogue is Raiden. I like how it’s Raiden fighting against himself from an alternate timeline.
NRS seems to have found an interesting way to do this. All they’re doing is changing the dialogue depending on the characters that are facing each other, which means that they don’t need to animate anything (as the old Capcom intros did). Interestingly enough however, MvC3 actually did this first.
That reminds me of the ending to Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2. Man that game was awful.
I would love to the intros return, not only just for the rival matches but for every character match in the game because it would bring personality…it’s like cheese on a double whopper, how can you not have the cheese…lol
Maybe they know of of Ferra/Torr, due to reputation as being Khan’s muscle, their overall brutality, or just their nature as a symbiote makes the rounds.
Of course. So long as they can be immediately skipped with the press of any button from either player.
would absolutely love these to return in SF5. Capcom had so many possibilities to do it like MK9 and MKX, considering the character roster and how each and every one of them could interact with others, even if it’s just a short one line of dialogue at the beginning / end of a match or even at the end of a round when a character enters a pose and says something (which always was a part of SF, but it was a general phrase, not related to a specific character you were in a match against)
Here’s hoping SF5 will not let down in this department, seeing how it gives a some kind of a third strike vibe to me for some reason