Agree it’s eastern style, yes it might be a titanic labour not just in the writing field but the whole game.
True, for the purpose of diverse cast. I always wanted them to create a game with relevant characters from SF1 -alpha- SF2 retelling the story.
Yeah. A reboot is probably the way to go.
I don’t think because there are hardly any story arcs for the characters. Their storylines are practically reset at the beginning of each chapter/game.
The general plot has some intricacies, yeah, but they’re sometimes so high concept that I actually prefer them not to be explained because they can be so overly complicated (refer to the Guilty Gear/BlazBlue examples).
What’s most important, I think, it’s that any attempt to “tell the whole story in a canon” would end up being nothing but a version of the Street Fighter canon. A lot of different storytellers have given their take and they all seem to have different visions.
The idea of the Street Fighter storyline being a universe of “multiple possibilities” between match-ups, which character ends up “winning”, and multiple different resolutions to the main conflict (see Street Fighter III) is in some way what makes Street Fighter rich and interesting.
‘A Shadow Falls’ tried to be very straightforward on its storytelling and ended up being letting a lot people dissatisfied. I think it did a good work with some characters, particularly new ones (Rashid), otherwise it felt disjointed because of the overlapping of some guys (Bison and Necalli being the ‘villains’, with the latter ending as totally irrelevant), repeating of the same plot (because they game tried to do fans some service by bringing back fan favourites) and many people didn’t agree with the resolution (some people think Chun-Li should have destroyed Bison).
It’s simply way too hard to create a storyline that satisfied everyone, and it would end as… just one version of the story.
Otherwise, I agree Street Fighter 1, 2 and Alpha could be adapted into a single storyline, for the most part. Sadly, Street Fighter III, IV and V failed to pick up some missing pieces: Dark Hadou has never been resolved, in favour of brining ‘alternate Ryu’ to the gameplay once and again; Charlie’s resurrection was very badly managed; Bison keeps reviving; most of the characters retain the exact same motivation after decades… A reboot would be necessary after that.
If I had the chance to remake the canon, I would combine Street Fighter IV and V into a single storyline mixing them both, with Seth being Shadaloo’s leader instead of Bison (who is permanently dead at this point), or who knows, maybe even having the Neo Shadaloo guys instead of Shadaloo, with the eclipse storyline.
While at the same time introducing the Illuminati overshadowing to set up for Street Fighter III (Urien and Kolin being the only Street Fighter III characters present in the storyline). Mosty like not featuring Charlie’s resurrection at all (and if he’s back, he’s not as “Franken-Charlie”).
Oni and Kage being non-existent at all, Necalli being Ryu’s challenge and bringing a definitive resolution to the Dark Hadou conflict (with Akuma probably never resurfacing again).
Fuck that.
We just only now finally have 1 continuous story from SF1 all the way to 3S. The time for reboots is done. Now we must look to the future, a post-3S future.
No, I actually think Capcom will be eager for a reboot. It all depends what happens with the company; I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re absorbed by some China enterprise and they want to go into a totally different direction.
You are delusional. Capcom are owning in the gaming industry right now.
The series was revitalized, re-simplified, with Street Fighter IV. But I don’t think with Street Fighter V everything looks so cluttered again nowadays.
New generations were introduced to Street Fighter with IV, but after that maybe they want them to give them their own Street Fighter version, because we got to face, we old dogs are going away very soon, and new generations mostly don’t care about the old lore…
The simple fact right now we (who know and care about the franchise) are arguing about “wanting the story to be re-presented in more streamlined way” is a sign that they have to do something to make it more accessible next time.
The SFV’s Arcade mode helped of sorts, but for new generations it was a chore.
Capcom just had their strongest financial yr ever. Remake 2 crossed 3 million on its opening weekend. The company itself is perfectly fine.
As for Akuma, the idea for him to be effective was to introduce him later in the storyline. In release order it made sense, because we already had 2 games to get familiar with our main character in the series before revealing his “dark side” and some richer lore of his “martial arts” philosophy.
But if the story’s retold in a chronological order, it loses its purpose. The sole idea of retconning his Street Fighter I victory to being influenced by the Dark Hadou, is probably rushing character development too much.
SFIV’s story is too different from SFV to combine well. This becomes even more true if you want to expand Necalli into a meaningful figure, rather than act like Capcom by trying to sweep him under the rug.
You can’t just remove Bison from SFV, as he’s too important. This is currently the “true death” of Bison, making way for the rise of the Illuminati. It is the collapse of Shadaloo, with the big members leaving because Bison appears to be gone for good. It is the creation of Neo Shadaloo, again because Bison appears to be gone for good. None of these would work as well if you instead claim Bison died in SF2, with everyone just staying around for Seth’s rule before deciding to go on with their lives.
I’d argue the most unnecessary game in the series is actually SF2. While it was the big game that started almost everything, everything it “started” was ultimately taken by the Alpha series. It would take almost zero effort to remove SF2 from continuity without causing any problems. You’d just have SF1 (for Ryu vs Sagat), SFA, SF4, SF5, SF3.
We get into a bigger problem there, as Street Fighter Alpha was a big ‘high-scale action’ escalation compared to Bison’s “modest tournament” from Street Fighter II… but it happened before.
In the end, the biggest problem is Bison resurrecting once and again, and I simply would like to stop that.
I kind of like the idea of having a ‘mortal’, ‘slightly superhuman’ Bison, fighting head to head with the champion in equal conditions, in a faraway Thailand island, without all those high tech machines around. I would like to keep that.
Goodluck with that. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAA!!!
As annoying as Bison can be in SFV, the idea of a Bisonless SF going forward…isn’t something I wanna think about. Even if he’s relegated to the shadows (I believe one of the SF3 guides from way back said Bison and Shadaloo were fine despite not being in the spotlight. ) for another main villain.
That may be part true, but at same time i find it big minimizing of SF way
SF characters live of design, and that character design (and eventually the thin story attached to it) usually have tons of inspirations behind
Each concept tend to have good amount of inspirations from various fields:
martial arts/real life champions
traditional culture/real life peoples
anime/manga
pop culture/movies/music
For the storylines i agree, but on characters themselves it’s a different thing
They just value concept of the character essence over his biography
I say to them as long the concept is strong, the “story” strings are just additional links to connect a character to another
We essentially don’t know shit about good part of Ryu’s life, but we know a lot of his essence
Ryu seem the most plain char ever, and still i can tell idk 10? 20? +? inspirations that gradually built him up as the character we know
And unlike for his story, whe it comes to his concept/essence most of the “empty” space is because capcom’s character development keep a lot untold… it does’nt name the sources, you got the final result and eventually is up to you go all the way back to the multiple origins
Many times Capcom “tell” things that can be understood (or even seen) only whe you got the knowledge to recognize the source origin
Otherwise lot of stuff can feel random or even pass unnoticed
As fan it’s a cool sea to dive into, specially o chars that game after game got layers of evolution under that pov
But even for most recent stuff, first stupid example i can think
G whole Earth Charge/Presidential meter came from the ancient greek myth of the half-giant Antaeus (son of Gaia, Mother Earth)
Hercules weakened and killed him by cut his link from earth(Gaia) by lifting him, to weaken G you have to cut his link from earth(Gaia, even G use the greek name) by knocking him off his feet
That kind of work show just the kind of thought and cure they put in they character building work, both as designs and concept.
SF ones are full of hidden gems, many are not even in the wikis “trivia” sections
When i see a character that got that deep roots, i find them much more interessing (to me) than a char that got long ass fantasy biography but the character/concept/design itself feel (to me) deep as a pee puddle
SF character development just shine moving the light from another angle
The Shadaloo part was most likely retconned into Neo Shadaloo, but yeah, Bison should be still alive at the time of SFIII and after that.
Capcom just need the important segments and significant events if that would be compiled in a single title for SF1-SF2 no need for the recent establish games like SF4 and SF5.
Most recent establish stuff and relevant events that have been cleared recently cannot be removed and change.
Yeah it’s impossible, Everyone of us had different version and preference that had been discuss before on how we think shadow falls would have been better.
A directors cut wouldn’t be bad for the recent SFV.
That’s why I don’t expect anything new or want anything new that would just complicate thing other than something that would clear the confusion and fix loose ends.
SF4-SFV story progression is now in a more better situation, all it needs is just to fix the loose ends from SF1-SF2.
No need to touch SF4 and SF5.
We don’t need something radically change again in the recent establish that’s were the problem always came from. When they try to do something weird to be unexpected instead of fixing stuff.
What we need is to less complicate and simply things to a more manageable story progression for a video game, not something surprising and unexpected like many movies.
Bison and Shadaloo are around during SF3 but they’re seen as destroyed as Urien points out to Chun Li in their rivalry quote. I’m pretty sure they’re seen as destroyed in the public eye ever since the end of SF2 as their revitalization during SF4 and 5 is more or less in secret except for the people who actually keep tabs on them like Chun or Guile.