It’s just a symbol to denote an upgrade. Like how SF EX became SF EX +@.
That’s worse than keeping him unknown because it robs us of the opportunity of a true Scandinavian fighter for example.
The clone characters Cammy and Abel IMO became naturalized citizens of their listed countries after escaping Shadaloo. Their contacts in Interpol and the Military along with their background likely helped secure them citizenships.
Falke, Decapre and Ed are more iffy. Were Decapre/Falke designed in a Shadaloo lab in Russia/Germany? Were they trained to be sleeper agents in said countries so they taught them the language? I think both are likely scenarios.
I ever took Is as a way to make fun of him being naive/ignorant on cultural level
Also as somebody said It could be more about his chinese being “outdated” rather than being foreign mispelling
I think Capcom wanted to show outside specific competence in science field (likely wanted by his mafia clan) he’s of poor/ignorant background… wich Is compatible with his story tbh, see his childhood
Btw these are the 3 main influences of Fang, 2 chinese 1 sci-fi
Last one is hinted in story alt too
Tbh for SF i take Laura over Ed (and Sean lol) any day, and usually i prefer get male characters
She rep brasilian jujitsu in SF and she rep Brazil much better than Blanka
They could have developed her personality a bit more though, have her straight play on being hot, seductive and an highly sexualized design (a Poison without trap lol)… they play on It during her intro, some animations and some win quotes, but in ASF she’s just another full retard bimbo with tits like Mika
But isn’t this the case with majority of the Street Fighter universe?
Viper, Decapre, Remy, Urien, Gill, Abel, Adon, Falke, Zeku, Akuma, Gouken, Oro are the only characters who don’t really have a connection to their nationality, neither via their design nor (at least in some cases) via their martial arts
The rest are either guest characters (e.g. Guy, Cody, Poison, Rolento, Sodom) to whom the nationality was completely irrelevant in the design process, or are those with no defined nationality in the first place (Q, Ed, Necalli)
I’d say for everybody else there definitely is a connection, be it the character’s design, fighting style, or both
From his outfit alone, it’s extremely obvious that he’s from the UAE. Yemen and the Levant region (Lebanon, Israel etc) don’t wear this outfit. Besides, most of the Levant except Lebanon aren’t exactly safe places as of 2019.
They either:
-don’t want to name a particular country in a region where countries can quickly turn into massive shitholes and/or hot spots. Imagine they had made a Syrian character for SF4; it wouldn’t be any kind or disaster or anything, sure, but it would be an unnecessary pain in the ass to juggle his story with current politics and people asking Capcom what the stance of the character was in the matter or whatever. Middle East and that’s it.
-figured they didn’t have any other character from the Middle East area, probably they don’t have immediate plans to make others, and so they want Rashid to be a catch-all for all those countries. Middle East and that’s it, again.
That’s makes no sense because we already have several characters from countries with less than ideal reputation, be it present or past. Like Hakan from Turkey, and Turkey isn’t exactly heaven these last few years, mostly via pres. Erdogan’s efforts
Considering outrage culture and the too-PC-for-me times we live in, perhaps Capcom is wise to avoid nationalities. It gives them license to stay true to their stereotypical design style.
Things that are more concerning to me are:
Mika and Poison CA censorship.
FANG execution scene censorship.
Bison’s toned down Psycho Punisher against Nash in ASF.
Rashid and his “friend’s” forced-platonic relationship (it’s clear they were meant to be more than friends).
Tekken has a character from Saudi Arabia and that country has been committing human rights violations for years. No one got outraged over it. Lucky Chole was the character that pissed off American fans.
I think the reason they don’t give Rashid a nationality is the good old fact that the japanese are a pretty racist nation. So a buisness exec is all like, “what, Rashid? Well, we got a Middle-East guy in there. He represents all!!! Aren’t they the same anyway?”
