It’s unclear whether ‘Helen’ was just a false identity or whether she is Kolin’s original self, and the Kolin of SFIII is a new identity she adopts at the end of SFV.
I’m leaning more and more towards the latter interpretation, though, because of Liam O’Brien’s line delivery as Gill in the mid-credits sequence. He calls her Kolin as though it’s a new name, like he’s baptizing her or something. “Come and follow me… Kolin!” Like Saul at Damascus. It fits the Illuminati’s cult vibe. And with the butterfly zooming around, it’s clearly a scene in part about metamorphosis and rebirth.
The only real evidence for Helen being a false persona is the ‘I am really…’ bit in Act II, but she could have been about to say ‘I am really an agent of the Illuminati’ or something like that.
My guess is Helen just didn’t feel all that comfortable talking in front of Urien. He quickly called her out on making secret plans right as soon as he found them, so it seems like she’s trying to do things her own way. When Urien left, Helen made it clear that there was “another man more suitable to lead the world”, which seemed to be the part she was keeping to herself more so than some other alias.
Having said that, the idea of it being an illusion or not can honestly go either way. Helen could’ve just been someone working in the Secret Society that happened to end up secretly reporting to Gill without it actually being a physical disguise. I prefer the idea of her being given a new starting point as Kolin after completing her mission as Helen.
You keep saying this. How do you explain her teleporting or charging Nash’s ‘battery’ gem if she doesn’t have powers of any kind? She may not be a fighter, but she’s clearly been gifted abilities by Gill. She even says so.
I find it hard to believe Gill *wouldn’t *grant Helen any special abilities when he’s tasked her to rid the world of Bison. I doubt he’d send her into it totally empty handed.
It seemed pretty obvious to me that Helen was not Kolin’s real identity before. Because there’s that scene where Rashid asks who she really is, and she’s about to tell them, when Urien interrupts her.
If she was just Helen before, then there’s no secret identity for her to reveal in the first place.
Helen is just a disguise that is removed from Kolin at the end in a scene that, frankly, would make no sense to anyone except hardcore lore nerds.
The game acts like Helen being Kolin is some big important reveal, but we’re talking about a character that only ever showed up in, like, 1 character ending and in Gill’s intro animation, and I don’t think is even referenced by name in any SF game ever. No normal person is going to know who the fuck that is, so the impact is going to go completely over their head.
She didn’t teleport when she concluded her first meeting with Nash she pulled a Batman. Also, if the gem is some sort of Illuminati technology she could simply be interacting with it and not charging it like you claim.
Like I said above, though, the fact that she’s the emissary of an ancient cult serving a god who will reshape the world is in of itself a secret identity, especially since she initially positions herself as this sweet altruist helping people save the world.
I don’t think it means Helen is fake necessarily. But it could definitely go either way.
I don’t think someone with no power would be in her position in an organization like the Illuminati in the first place. Like PK said, she may or may not be a fighter, but she’d have powers.
Juri seem to think otherwise, judging the way she speak to her in the Urien/Juri chapter… it make even seem that she consider her potentially a better challenge than Rashid/Nash (even if i doubt she’s stronger than Nash)
The known members of the Illuminati who have ‘powers’ went through a lifetime of rigorous training in their secret arts. They went through this training to mold them into eligible candidates to possibly lead the organization someday. Kolin isn’t that type of member, so there is no reason to believe that she has such powers innately. What she has is most likely “a gift from the lord” and nothing else.
I don’t think Capcom would make us wait for another story expansion for like 7 years. While I do agree that they’ll probably do SOME sort of an additional story mode to finish up the SFV arc and move the lore into the Next Generation arc (or whereever SF6 will be in the timeline), I think we’ll get more than one story expansions down the line
I also don’t think they’ll release them on a yearly basis, since that would take away too much development time and resources, but in 2018 I can see them doing that to expand upon where the “A Shadow Falls” ended and continue on.
Heck, it would be pretty cool if they did retellings of previous Street Fighter universe events with Cinematic Expansions. It’s not like they’re obligated to move the current story arc forward right away, and it would help the new generation of players to get into the Lore of the series
Anyways we’re celebrating 30th anniversary of the series next year, so hopefully Capcom delivers something special
We will continue getting more stories so long as we are getting DLC characters. The character stories can serve as prologues, epilogues, or fill in gaps in the cinematic story.
For example, we don’t know what the hell Ryu was doing during his “special training” as the bulk of it happened off screen. Capcom could reveal that Ryu was with Rose or Sagat or Gouken even for some of that time through their character stories.
If Kolin is added as a DLC character for example, Capcom could use her character story to flesh out some gaps in our knowledge like Gill’s motive or the prophecy. They could even set her character story after the cinematic story and use it as a soft prologue for New Generation.
So you see, there are many ways to expand the SF5 story material without making a commitment to another cinematic story. Having said this, if we are to get another cinematic story, I would bet on 2018 and not any time sooner.