The Capcom Unity blog says this happened after Ryu overcame the SnH’s temptation.
@Darc_Requiem You’re wrong, this is the true face of darkness:
It is said in legend that her soul was so dark, Bison cried himself to sleep, true story.
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Well I’M calling that him and Phantom Bison are going to fight over Shadaloo’s Ryu clone!
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I would say Kage’s story is part of the Ryu “overcoming” SNH experience… The language in the character story implies that Kage was still part of Ryu during and only at the end of it did Ryu release him to be free. This means that when Ryu fought Necalli, Kage was out of there.
Akuma’s comment to Kage about Ryu’s path is connected his realization in his own story mode that Ryu chose another path altogether.
Speaking of Akuma, what are his “precious laws of heaven”? Do they come from the teachings of Goutetsu? Are they the rules that they think could save him from losing himself to the SNH?
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Interestingly, Kage, Bison, and Akuma are the only characters with a story costume that focuses on a possible future rather than the present or past of SF5.
Also, some of you will likely disagree with me here but I’ll be honest, I really warmed up to Kage.
Capcom won me over with great gameplay and animation. Evil Ryu is a very popular character, so I understand the need to bring him back to appeal to his fanbase. Lore-wise, they wrote it off nicely and within the realm of possibility that was already set up in previous games. Nothing Kage brings to the table contradicts established canon or is out there relative to existing lore.
Kage’s character story introduces him, expands the story of ASF (“Special training”) and the character stories of Ryu, Akuma and Sagat. It also brings an end to the character in the same breath, but leaving it open ended enough that Capcom can bring back Evil Ryu for his fans at any time without compromising the integrity of the lore any further. As a Bison player, I appreciate the gesture because I always want my character in even though villains always “lose” or get “killed” in the story. You can’t replace characters because they are MORE than functions. Kage will make the Evil Ryu fanbase happy.
As far as releasing Kage first of the season, hate it all you want, but shotos are popular and hype. I think Rose is hype af, but I don’t believe she can headline a season from a business standpoint. Few characters have that kind of appeal.
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I think the real issue here is that S4 was just one character revealed.
Kage may complicate things now but his more storywise and gameplay wise better choice than the recurring Evil Ryu in future games.
His probably the best solution for fan request and demand problem for Evil Ryu for every SF game.
His an Evil Ryu clone but not a Ryu clone. His a Evil Ryu without the projectile game a Evil Ryu without Ryu’s core gameplay.
The problem here is that if fans would accept him over Evil Ryu in future SF or the future SF dev team would create another version of Evil Ryu or Purity Ryu rather than reusing him, which would complicate things.
Last year was the exception because the season was riding the AE wave and the second cinematic trailer revealed everyone.
Capcom said they are doing things different this coming year, and EVO Japan isn’t that far off.
My only concern as a season pass buyer, is they are forcing me to buy Kage now even though I want a Season Pass. This can only mean that either Kage is not part of the next season pass, or they are doing away with the season passes altogether.
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Capcom is going downhill… again. This reskin of a reskin given a new name is a terrible idea. And I thought they initially stated they wanted every character in the game to play as differently as possible. And seeing as how different Ken played to Ryu, I was hopeful. Not the case anymore with reskinman’s B&B being the exact same as that of Akuma from previous SF games.
This is really sad. At least Decapre had a unique special moveset and an intriguing story. The dynamics between her, Cammy, Bison and Shadaloo in general were interesting. She is clearly the one that took the hit from Shadaloo the hardest as can be seen from her deranged/emotioanlly unstable personality and let’s be honest, USFIV was a nice expansion of her otherwise shallow story.
I guess what I hate about post-90’s Capcom is the fact that they love messing up the stories I came to love, Alpha 3 plot tools being the most notable. After seeing Sagat and Ryu reconcile (and Sagat understanding Ryu) in Alpha 3, I always thought they would fight one more time and conclude their rivalry. But no, Sagat is still butthurt over his loss against Ryu from decades ago and only now “realizes” what Ryu is (or more like “was”) dealing with. Same with the whole Satsui no Hado plot. It was already concluded in 3S. We just had to see how it happened and we already got that explanation with ASF, albeit a poorly-narrated one. Why, oh why, would they go on adding more and more to an already-concluded story arc? And Rose? Y’know, the one character who HAD TO BE THERE to witness/take part in Bison’s downfall, as she’s the first character historically to be a direct opposition to Bison? No, instead we get Mika and Ibuki, who had ZERO to do with Bison --especially Ibuki–, in the Shadaloo base… Don’t even get me started on the whole Nash-Guile plot again. You all already know my thoughts on how Capcom butchered it.
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I mostly agree, but I feel like we needed Kage’s Char Story as it shows what Ryu was doing during the special training, and we get to see more of Ryu’s growth and Akuma’s philosophy.
The main problem is, they showed and released ONLY him aka a character who isn’t even a part of the Season 4 Pass.
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It’s not truly a problem though. Capcom did not deceive us. We created an expectation because last year all the characters were revealed, but last year they were re-releasing the game! Again, not a problem, but it doesn’t feel good for sure. But I’m over that salt.
We have a new character with an actually relevant story and a new patch. This is only the beginning. SF5 has never been better.
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And because there have been no big reveals since August. But I do hope they impress us at EVO Japan.
Agreed.
Until then, let us take a moment to appreciate this brilliant theme song:
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That’s another problem I have with this reskin of a reskin. They could have shown us Sagat, Necalli, Akuma, Gouken, Dhalsim, Gen or even Evil Ryu during his special training. Instead, we got a completely irrelevant and unnecessary addition. Kage only lessened the impact of the aforementioned on Ryu’s story, which is yet another hit at existing stories.
Honestly I prefer Maki, Rose, Viper and Elena too.
The problem is that the trends is waifu and shotos. DBFZ fully embraced those concepts multiple version, which is meh.
And yes they pretty messed up with Nash fate. Returning him then killing him. Not a good idea.
Im still hoping for an Alpha retold game someday.
The clear area here of SFV in the beginning is to discourage projectile gameplay for shoto. Even in remembering the earlier beta trailer it was Chun li doing the spamming against Ryu kinda ironic to look at.
Capcom only gave what casual fans wants. Even looking to the reaction and feedbacks as if the character is Daigo’s revenge thing. lol
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This
evil ryu is classic character that’s hype for his fans and crap for everyone else
Hopefully they will release S4 info as soon as possible
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Yeah plenty of guys are hype - Max says this is exactly the character he wanted 
Shit as he is, I understand that Kage has wow factor to headline a Season and I can get that some people like him. The problem is they didn’t announce anything else. They should have said “look, we have this spectacular and badass piece of garbage to kick off and then these legit good characters are coming”. But no, we are left with him and no more news.
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Kage is just making me think… do I actually want Rose in this game? Like we could get her in 2019 and have like 1 or 2 years with her, and eventually everyone moves on to the next SF game and we start all over again.
I think I might prefer her to be asbent her and on SF6’s launch roster.
Your mistake is that you think SF5 will last another 1-2 years. What if SF5 lasts 3? 4? What if there is no SF6? What if she isn’t in the launch roster?
Take what you can when you can and don’t count on the future to turn out the way you want.
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I dont think SF5 will last more than 2 years cause its such a big flop. Plus there’s the whole 2022 big announcement for Capcom, that makes me think new SF.
She might not be on the initial roster but she has higher chances to be there or in the first couple of DLC seasons after being absent in SFV, than coming in for 1 or 2 years in SF5 and returning right away for SF6.
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