The Inevitable Street Fighter V Story Thread: ARCADE EDITION!

Street Fighter V
3988

Yes, this, a thousand times this. Although DBZ has used character deaths several times as the plot devices (like Goku turning SSJ because Killin was killed, or Gohan turning SSJ2 because Android 16 was killed) - DBZ is also suffering from one simple thing

Deaths don’t matter

I feel like in the very beginning of the series, I was kind of a big deal. Like, it’s the very first major fight (Goku vs Raditz) and Goku DIES. What the fuck? There was this long and awesome adventurous Dragon Ball series and now we get our main character DEAD!?
It must’ve been a shocker, even though he was revived via the dragon balls, there’s still a rule of “One revival per character”, so Goku could die again and be forever lost

The issue is that later they’ve found other shit, like the Namek Dragon balls, or Kai sacrificing himself to revive Goku, etc, and eventually character deaths started to mean absolutely fucking nothing. Yeah it was kind of dangerous when Piccolo fused with Kami which essentially disabled Dragon Balls temporarily until Dende became the new Kami, but still, with all these resurrections - nobody gave a shit about people dying in DBZ anymore, even when Vegeta did a suicide attack to kill Majin Buu, and later came from Hell to fight Buu/fuse with Goku

3989

from Alpha series, SF3 and SF4. It was the alpha series that made the best and well written plots that bring numerous interesting new characters(eg sakura) and that gives a new or brighten up the personalities of many from SF2 and SF1 brings new ideas.

Ken, Guile and Chun li before alpha was the same their personality never change from what many understood from SF2 and numerous different media interpretation in the 90’s… the same with the rest from boxer, claw, honda and etc

SF Alpha redefined the personality of Sagat, Cammy, Blanka, Dictator, Thawk and Ryu,

  • Dan was revise from his SFA2 appearance to his comedic persona in SFA2, The same with Blanka in SFA3 was slightly more revised from his Sf2 persona that is more beastly now more comedic.

  • Introduce to us Satsu no Hadou and the nature of Ryu and Ken martial arts,

  • The mystery of Akuma

  • Revise Ryu way of beating Sagat (Dan’s existence to set a new Sagat persona)

  • Redefined Cammy and brings the existence of the Dolls in SFA3 that changes Thawk.

  • Brings in cloning and body possessing in SFA3?

  • Connects to Final Fight, Gives a new twist for Cody.

  • Introduce some other media(manga inspired characters like Juli, Juni and Karin)

  • Existence of Rose with a complicated bond with Dictator

  • New Birdie

  • Deepen understanding of the persona of Adon and Gen( connects to akuma ).

  • Change Sagat connection in Shadaloo in Sf2

While SF4

  • Still leave the mystery whoever wons the 2nd tournament

  • Toned down the impression on Shun Goko Satsu due to the re appearance of Dictator and Gouken

  • The series shown that Ryu is still haunted by that Satsu Hadou power

  • Defined Gouki’s last form Oni

  • Connects Sf3 to SF2 proving they co exist in a new or a certain universe/reality unlike SFex series… (Is SFA3 max is a different reality?)

  • Redefined many thoughts of fans of Gouken’s personality and fighting style that is not similar to Akuma, Ryu and Ken.

  • Gives light on Decapre’s strong emotion of hate towards cammy.

  • The appearance of C Viper, Seth, Decapre and Juri never changed or revised much of the characters connected with them.

  • Confirms Alot from SFA establised revision of SF universe

While Sf3 was the last among SF4 and SFAlpha

  • It was first designed without Ryu and Ken

  • It was to justify and cut the connection of the rest of SF2 and SFA

  • Sf3 bring new interesting characters with good gameplay designs which is OKAY.

  • It was designed to go with a new set, by hype in late 90s the many franchise show a new generation trend.

In Sf 5

  • Nash is Alive

  • Ken battle suit…

…

I hope Sf5 fixed SF3 like SF4 and SFA fixed and redefined SF2.

3990

O.k., this might be an argument.

Let me rephrase it then: Is there any indication that SF1 is a tournament? Anything?
Does any story book, any cutscene, anything refer to the plot of this game as “Sagat’s tournament” or “The first Street Fighter tournament”? Or does any story book refer to SF2 as “The second Street Fighter tournament”?
Or does any source say: “After losing in the last tournament, Sagat takes part in the current one to get a rematch against Ryu”?

I guess the only reason why people think it’s a tournament is because they apply the plot of SF2 to SF1. Furthermore, the American Super Nintendo manual made it sound like Ryu took Sagat’s champion title, implying SF2 to be just the next one in a whole row of tournaments.

But if we have a look at it with a neutral mind: Is there any indication anywhere that SF1 is a tournament?

3991

I would say they made it pretty obvious how the SF2 tournament ended within the SF4 canon.

3992

None of the tournaments are ever referred to as “The Street Fighter” tournament, because unlike, say, the “King of Fighters” tournaments or the “King of Iron Fist” tournaments, the tournaments in SF are not a single series of recurring tournaments. Each tournament is an individual tournament held by a single individual.

Ah yes. Two of the worst plot threads in all of SF…

3993

I get what he’s getting at. SFIV references that SFII was a tournament. NG/2I was a tournament within those games. The only thing that’s ever reference for SF1 is Ryu’s fight with Sagat and it’s never been verified if it was a tournament fight.

3994

I think Bison’s body swapping is great. I love sci-fi stuff in these settings. It’s why I consider the NESTs clone saga the best story arc in a fighting game.

Also…I am believing SF3 might get retcon’d as well…and…meh…so be it

3995

NESTs was badass highfive also, it gave great focus on the new characters and included the Ikari warriors in a prevalent role, it wasn’t Kyo at front and centre for the whole thing.

With SF3, I don’t think an entire retcon, but some major streamlining and tweaking is possible. I really think they want to keep things orderly and not have many significant time gaps. If they have a chunk of the cast as we know missing for SF3 they’re gonna want to ease people out of the story or have people like Guile focusing on a B-Plot.

3996

I am sure there will be a few retcons here and there, but I sincerely doubt we will get a complete retcon like what Alpha 3 and SF4 did for SF2. SF2 was made at a time before story had any weight or developed identity, so the retelling of events was much needed. SF3’s story was decent and more in line with the modern SF universe (Post-SF2 Animated Movie).

The Illuminati tournament (SF3) will begin 130 days after the end of SF5 IMO. There is no indication whatsoever of an overwrite or overlap.

3997

@YagamiFire @Shockdingo can you guys give a quick rundown of KOF story sagas for someone who never played those games and is completely oblivious to their narrative?

3998

high five NESTs was what brought me into KOF all-together. I loved EVERYTHING about the art design and flavor of KOF99. Krizalid is one of the baddest-ass bosses ever. Then in 2000 we got fighting-game-homage-to-Han Zero?! Awesome! Then K9999 in 2001?? Awesome. And there was like…an actual arc to the story and events actually occurring and LOTS of stuff for the various teams and characters to do without it being (really at all) the Kyo/Iori show but those two didn’t get totally back-burner’d either.

Add on top of that the fact that the Hong Kong NESTs era comics are just AMAZING and it was a great time.

3999

Sure, I’ll give a summary a shot.

4000

Also…I guess today is the day of me throwing stuff out there…but…

NESTs saga was Shadaloo done right. Everything about NESTs is > Shadaloo in pretty much every way except for Shadaloo having Bison. They are more intimidating, they have WAY better and more threatening fodder, they feel absolutely massive in scope, reach & influence, and they have awesome characters working for them.

prepares for hate lol

4001

re: plot, game, perma-death, etc

A couple of things to point out here and some things I believe people are missing.

First of all, as Darth mentioned, Street Fighter is a game (or well, a series of games). One that is not plot-focused. We study the plot intensely, but we’re an anomaly. There’s usually just enough plot to give you an excuse to fight a bunch of characters in arcade mode (they better add that back in SFV, and sooner rather than later) and get a character ending, and that’s it. That they’ve created additional lore is to our benefit, but is of little use to the actual game itself.

Because of the fact that SF is a game, with the plot being secondary, the game’s primary developmental focus typically revolves around the gameplay (as redundant as that sounds), and not around the plot. That is, when they came up with SFV, they probably came up with the whole V-system stuff first, then filled in characters to match that system, then started filling in the plot around the characters. I imagine in an RPG, or any game that is plot-heavy, would likely be the reverse.

As a fighting game, the characters who appear in the game are arguably the most important component of the game (I’d argue that system stuff is more important, since bad systems can drag down otherwise good characters - see also: all SF3 games, but characters are what give you the most exposure). Thus, even if for story reasons you would and could and I’d even say should get rid of M.Bison (and note that Bison is my favourite SF character who I’ve mained since 1992), as a character i.e. as part of the game, M.Bison is an important lynchpin that is not easily replaced.

I suppose you could just replace M.Bison with G.Buffalo who plays exactly the same, but eh. It’s unnecessary IMO.

The thing is, I agree that you can move on from M.Bison story-wise. You can kill him off, and end his (direct) involvement in the story for good, and let someone new take his place. Let SFV be his grand finale. Fine. But because SF is primarily a game, that does not mean he should never appear in an SF game again. Kill him off in the story, but you can still bring him back as a hidden “Nightmare Bison” or something similar after that. The whole game doesn’t have to be a dream match, just his appearance and interactions with other characters could easily be explained as non-canon. Make it explicit so that there’s no confusion, like Nightmare Geese’s halo.

This can also apply to characters are already dead. Bringing Gouken in as a playable character is fine (as is Goutetsu, BTW). Making him part of the story and bringing back to life in the process? Completely unnecessary. Nobody would have batted an eye if Gouken had a halo around his head while punching fools just because.

Depending on final cast size, there’s nothing stopping Capcom from killing any number of characters and regaling them to “dead playable character” status. No one other than the most hardcore of storyline scrubs would care. That doesn’t mean that they should kill characters willy-nilly, but unlike in, say, comics, videogames have the luxury of being able to adhere to storyline precedent on one hand while completely ignoring it in another. They can kill characters for the sake of story, but still keep them for gameplay purposes.

BTW, I think comics are a bad comparison to make here in general, despite what I said above. Unlike comics, which are not only story-focused but have periodic updates that allow you to tell things in a much more elaborate manner, video games in general, and fighting games in particular, don’t have those advantages. They lack both frequency of update speed as well as ease with which you can incorporate new stuff (no one who wants to, say, make Dr. Doom’s son a new FF villain will ever have to worry about what his moveset will be like or worry about voice actor to cast for him; well, not unless the character gets really popular and gets translated to another medium, but that’s well outside the scope of this discussion). You can tell two years of FF stories without Doom, for example, and go back to him after and it will seem like a relatively long time has passed (when it hasn’t). If SF were to skip Bison in story, you would end up with, well, a ten year gap (SFA3 -> SF4, counting the last chronological appearance of Bison in an SF game). That’s way too long for a character as iconic/important as M.Bison in a series where story is not the focus like SF.

4002

So just passing by to say that I got to see T.Hawk’s SF4 ending for the first time, I was curious to see it after someone here mentioned how sad it was.

Wow, whoever said that you weren’t kidding at all, got chills just from the elders describing Juli the way she is now… damn ._.

4003

KoF Sagas. Been a while since I played the series, so totally open to corrections. :slight_smile:

I unfortunately missed out on KoF after 2003 so, I only have vague ideas on what happened.

Rugal Saga:
KoF 94
Kof 95

This is the intro. A mysterious benefactor hosts the latest King of Fighters and invites fighters from all over the world to compete. This is in a different continuity, but it unites Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, revamps Athena and the Ikari warriors.

The Hero team is made of Benimaru, Goro and our resident hero Kyo. Kyo is from the fabled Kusanagi bloodline that helped to banish the powerful creature (god?) Orochi. They hold a seal within their bloodline that allows them to create fire , not ki-infused fire, but totes for real scorchy scorchy fire.

Their rivals were the Yagami clan which partnered with Orochi for power in exchange for a curse. They received powerful purple flames. Iori’s Maiden Masher is referencing the 8 maidens they had to sacrifice to Orochi to appease it.

Anyways, Rugal Bernstein is a legendary arms dealer and fighter. He has a reputation for dipping defeated enemies in molten steel/bronze WHILE THEY’RE STILL ALIVE to cultivate a collection. Rugal is a natural talent and has an ability to copy other fighter’s styles with little effort. He has copied and utilized Krauser’s Kaiser Wave and Geese Howard’s reppuken.

Before the events of KoF 94 he made a discovery of a powerful source of energy and went to investigate, finding Gonitz. Goenitz literally yanked out his eye, but was surprised how resilient Rugal was. Rugal wanted more power and was given some of the orochi power despite warnings that it would destroy him.

The finalists of the 94 tournament were taken to the BlackNoah, Rugal’s personal airship and were engaged in an intense battle which culminated with Rugal detonating the whole thing since he was a sore loser.

More invites went out the next year. It turned out that Rugal was quite alive and still burning with revenge. Kyo’s father was captured and brainwashed by Rugal’s secretary in KoF 95. I think it was Vice, but anyways his two secretaries - Vice and Mature were in reality Orochi spies working for Goenitz.

A new team arrive headed by Iori Yagami, Billy Kane, and Eiji. Iori is Kyo’s rival and slowly, the main plot points of the series begin to emerge. Canonically the hero team makes it to Rugal once more, amazed that he survived an exploding Airship. The only evidence of his injury is a bionic hand that replaced the one he lost in the blast. He mocks and toys with the team by first having Kyo’s brainwashed father Saisyu, fight the team. Kyo eventually wins much to Rugal’s amusement.

He then reveals he has the power of Orochi and taps into it’s ancient wellsprings. His hair becomes white, his skin grey and his overall demeanor demonic. He’s ludicrously powerful but eventually gets beaten. Trying to utilize all of the Orochi power Rugal begins to break apart. Before his death, Iori pops in and calls him a fool.

Rugal was able to utilize the power of Orochi because he was a powerful fighter, but since he did not possess the bloodline of the Yagami’s or be born as a lord of Orochi, he would be consumed by it’s power.

Orochi Saga:
96
97

Here’s were things really take off. Goenitz is the host of the 96 tournament. We see more new faces and the return of some old enemies. Rugal is gone and Iori is joined with Vice and Mature. To make a long story short. Goenitz reveals more about the orochi bloodline and upon his defeat Iori and newcomer for the Ikari team, Leona are tainted. Both being tied to Orochi have had their Riot of Blood unlocked. It wont fully come into play for Leona, but Iori is driven mad and kills Vice and Mature. The Riot of Blood affects those connected to Orochi and drives them into a state of incredible power but feral madness. The horrifying thing is that Ryuji Yamazaki is a Lord of Orochi but doesn’t seem at all different because his default state is so blood thirsty, insane and sadistic.

In 97 the New Face team, a young group of musical rivals to Iori’s band show up. Something seems off about them, but then it turns out that they’re lords of Orochi and are tasked with reviving him once more. The tournament erupts into absolute chaos. Leona, to her horror completely loses control of herself and becomes feral in the Riot of Blood stage as does Iori. It’s implied that she kills quite a bit of innocent bystanders.

Kyo’s girlfriend, Yuki is saved from being sacrificed. It turns out she’s a descendant of the last sacrificed maiden.

-98 First Dream Match, a break for the new saga

Nests Saga:
KoF 99
KoF 2000
KoF 2001

-KoF 2002 Dream Match, saga break

KoF 2003
KoF XI
KoF XIII

will post more later

4004

One thing I’d mention about the Riot of the Blood…Iori & Leona lack control because they are half-bloods. They are tainted by Orochi but not truly one with its power, so that contact drives them mad. The Orochi clan (Goenitz, Yashiro, Chris, Shermie, Yamazaki, etc) are…kind of inhuman. They even get serpentine eyes when utilizing power (as shown by Goenitz). They basically act as proxies for the Orochi’s will while maintaining their personalities. Since Orochi is a creature of absolute void/nothingness, humanity does NOT deal with its power well…hence the madness of RoTB Iori/Leona. Orochi straight-up wants to wipe out humanity and rule the new world it creates afterwards. It might be some kind of god but a lot about it seems more akin to like a Cthulhu monster.

And, funny thing about Yamazaki, though he’s an Orochi lord he gives NO FUCKS about Orochi and can’t be dominated by the powerful being. Instead of becoming fanatical thralls like Yashiro, Chris or Shermie, Yamazaki straight-up ignores Orochi. The dudes willpower is IMMENSE…and that is definitely tied into the fact that he’s absolutely mental. Oddly enough, it might also tie into his lordship/elemental power of Orochi which ties him to the Mountain (Goenitz is wind, Chris is fire, Shermie is lightning, Yashiro is earth) element which, of course, represents sturdiness. So…basically, is Yamazaki so amazingly crazy and bad-ass that he flips the proverbial middle finger to the ancient, unknowable creature that tries to thrall him to its will? Yes. Yes he is THAT amazingly bad-ass.

Cheers, Yamazaki!

A true pimp among pimps.

4005

And to reiterate my earlier point about Krizalid…

Holy crap he is awesome. What a bad-ass boss design.

It is kind of crazy how good KOF became at cranking out decent bosses year after year. Their list of bosses is SUPER impressive including Rugal, Goenitz, Krizalid, Zero and Mukai. Those are some REALLY solid designs ranging from “good” to “holy crap awesomesauce”. Their bosses also do an awesome job of representing the story arc/era that they’re from.

4006

Excellent additions man. Despite the issues with KoF14 so far, the new ownership’s desire to expand the universe of KoF by making an anime kinda makes me excited. It could tank, but it could be awesome. As a kid I was sad to see the only thing other than the Fatal Fury animes was a AoF oneshot :confused: I always kept hunting for a KoF anime but nothing really existed.

Agreed on the bosses. As much as I love Bison, I’d love to see a new character pop onto the scene for a new story arc. They don’t and shouldn’t try to replace Bison, but be a new threat in their own way. I cannot even describe how hyped I was when Slasher Zero started playing for the first time and I saw Zero utilize that bladed outfit. Sigh, I wanna boot up NESTs again

4007

Slasher Zero is legitimately some of the coolest boss music ever. I also like that they go the “Shin Bison” route with bosses in KOF. Playable characters?!! LMAO! Noooo! How about max priority, invulnerable blade-skirt uppercuts into full-screen 50% damage supers where the boss rips open a blackhole in the palm of his hand? Yeah deal with THAT