The information isn’t complete, but on it’s recent book “Beyond the World”, Capcom published a timeline placing Nash saving Abel after the events of SFZ3:
-Psycho Drive gets destroyed;
-Shadaloo initiates the “Living Incubator Project” to provide Vega/Bison a new body (possibly, Vega’s body got destroyed and he started the project inside Rose’s body. However, as shown in Rose’s Vanilla SF4 ending, he was already in his new body when Seth was being finished);
-The details are unknown, but possibly, the Shadaloo base was discovered and attacked. While everything was burning, Nash found Abel and helped him to get out. Nash left Abel under the care of the leader of a french mercenary group;
-Nash meets his end after fighting Vega and being “betrayed” by his comrades;
-The exact moment is unknown, but Nash’s corpse was found by the Secret Society;
-SF2 happens;
-Abel, researching about his past, joins Chun-Li and, later on, Guile;
-SF4 happens;
-According with Urien’s Story Mode in SFV, possibly during or right after SF4, Kolin asks Urien to use one of the empty vessels, Eleven, as a last attempt to ressurrect Nash;
-SF5 happens.
And that’s it.
Sources:
SF Beyond The World Timeline
SFZ1-2 story
SFZ3 story
SF4 Abel japanese backstory
SF4 Character Relations chart from SF4/SSF4 Complete Works
SF4 Rose prologue and ending
SF5 story modes
Beautiful stuff, thanks so much for sharing! oooh, I hope this comes out to the west. I really wanna know what G’s page says when he’s with the Alphabet Company dudes. Also, that armored concept, whoa! Never saw that before!
Also I’ll add that it makes me sad how much better the concept art style is than the finished in-game art stye.
Characters are WAY too bulky. Ed should be a quick, well-built boxer…but ends up looking chunky as hell…then bigger characters just look like awkward fat asses.
Thanks for the detailed info. It’s really disappointing how poorly SFV treated Nash, though. With SFIV and Abel’s story, we were led to believe Nash was alive and saving people from Shadaloo’s grasp, even though many (everyone except Guile?) thought he was dead. His reveal trailer for SFV further solidified the idea that Nash was indeed alive somehow after his showdown with Bison during the events of SFA2. Then came A Shadow Falls and reduced the amount of time Nash was alive to, what, the duration of A Shadow Falls? It not only completely destroyed everything about Nash’s previously estabslihed story but also did NOT add anything new to it.
If it had been so that Gill’s organization revived Nash right/some time after his death (and not just before the events of A Shadow Falls) and had him wander the globe to regain his memories during that period, the whole Abel story would make sense (because, in the current story no one can explain why on earth Guile doesn’t know about Nash saving Abel back in the day, considering they were pals) and that would add to the mystery of what Nash was doing during that time.
Making Nash’s Alpha 2 death the canon one over the Alpha 3 one was also an act of idiocy. In Alpha 3, we saw Nash’s humanitarian side with him being willing to sacrifice himself for his friend(s?), whereas in Alpha 2 he was nothing more than a workaholic soldier who didn’t give a shit about anything other than his self-assigned “mission”. And don’t tell me he sacrificed himself in A Shadow Falls as well. It doesn’t mean anything if you’re already going to die after a short while or if you are already dead. Why not make it meaningful (even though he still didn’t make any visible impact)?
SFIV put things on the right track only for SFV to mess things up again. SFIV kept most of the plot elements that Alpha 3 gave us going, thus developing the lore. SFV destroyed all that and went with whatever DLC policies the game was/is on. Rest in peace, Nash. You’ll always be remembered as the self-sacrifical hero of Alpha 3 even if the dumbasses at Capcom want to wipe the good memories off our brains.
