Before you leave, consider reading this thread: The Inevitable Street Fighter V Story Thread: ARCADE EDITION!
We’ve worked on a new plot guide that contains translations from various guidebooks, Capcom’s own websites. There’s also all sorts of other information there. Hopefully you’ll give it a read before you leave.
This thread actually exists? Why didn’t @“Doctrine Dark” forward me to this?
Ya, brand new plot guide is in the works, after how many years (4 maybe?)? Thanks to @Chunli2k for pointing out the flaws in the old plot guide as well as this thread, picking out differences between Japanese and English translations is now going to be a thing of the past with the new plot guide coming afoot. I’m adding the Japanese text ripped right from the guides for anyone to copy and translate themselves, for a better understanding of the series (and overall a better plot guide).
I still need a bunch of help with it. I’m not a professional translator/ writer/ or anything really (I’m just an ordinary man), just an avid fan of the Street Fighter series. I’m asking for anyone’s help who’s a fan of Street Fighter to come forth and contribute to the guide. So far I’ve managed to translate some of the new character profiles from the CFN SFV site, but also guides from SF2 complete guide, All About Capcom 1987-2000, and some of the All About Street Fighter EX. I still need a bunch of material, and I’d like to translate as much (and more) as the (old) plot guide provides.
Thanks to all the people who have provided me content for the new plot guide, and I also thank @vasili10 (and others like @TiamatRoar, and @Saiki ) for providing the framework and basis for how a “fighting game plot guide” should function, look like, and be overall.
I want to provide a coherent story for the SF series, and I’d love to continue the legacy of the plot guide, but just like the old plot guide, this is a collaborative experience. Anyone who contributes to this “new plot guide” is an automatic author.
Street Fighter story is as much as about the competitors from every fold of life (from casual to expert), to fans of the older series( SF- SFIII), as much as the newer series (SFIV-SFV). The new plot guide is as mandible and flexible as the current story is itself. While still retaining the all of the canon story points which are relevant, and in some ways irrelevant.
Overall, it’s a plot guide for the hardcore fans of the series, and I welcome all to the experience.
Link To The Plot Guide
Welcome to the forums, @Chunli2k . Please, stay with us and visit the SFV story thread at the SFV subforum as suggested. It’s always nice to discuss about the Street Fighter story.
I think this is justified. For the longest time Capcom has cared very little about the story (and while they care about it much more now and we’ve got a story mode they still don’t care about its quality), so in order to understand the story it is important to accept that Capcom gives zero fucks about it. Not sure about the part about naysayers; if you mean one of the opening statements in the guide you have to keep in mind that Tiamat probably received lots of dumb comments, so it worked as a first deterrent.
I agree wholeheartedly with the concerns about readability. It is in my opinion one of the most important things to work on. Especially the Plot Guide II is currently a big dump of info which is even harder to read than Tiamat/Vasili’s.
That said, it is a difficult task, as a streamlined guide would be at risk of becoming a dogmatic one. There has to be some reasoning as to why things are canon or why they are not. It might be a good idea to make a guide in two layers: one layer telling only what we think happened in a readable manner and another layer explaining why we think so and dumping all the information.
One thing to keep in mind about limiting ourselves to list character profiles and game manual information is that they usually don’t explain anything: For example, the SFII official text reads: A few years after wandering warrior Ryu defeated Sagat; Fighters from each country around the world fight to aim for the top, each with a hidden purpose in their hearts. Who will be the true Street Fighter, and who is the man wrapped in an evil aura, Bison…? . The explanation to what happened must be gathered from lots of sources and discussed.
The thing about removing the retconned stuff is that apparently many parts are not fully retconned. A lot of SFA1 scenes probably happened together with SFA2. It also seems that Charlie’s SFA2 ending is kinda canon now. A lot of things have apparently blended and mixed (like SFA3 and SFII as a whole?! :o ), so it is important to list all outcomes and discuss why they may or may not be canon. You’ll also find a lot of people who, for example, will claim things like Chun Li beating Juri in SF4 because she has a rival battle against her and the player wins, so the guide has to try and explicitly make sense of all those what-if battles and endings to point which ones probably didn’t happen or how they might have.
IMO the guide lost readability when it added full [poorly translated] character backstories. Before that happened each character’s entry was small enough to be read quickly and get an undestanding of the character. With the backstories added Vasili tried to order character’s information chronologically, but it was still hard to read. It’s not an easy task.
I think Final Fight is important, as we’ve got a lot of characters from that series in Street Fighter. Slammasters may be more unnecessary, but there’s always the choice of not reading it. I welcome having info of those series included.
And yeah, fan theories were the downfall of the old guide.