“Fleshed out” and “developed” aren’t words that belong anywhere in the same zip code as a Street Fighter game.
Good to see people still read topics before responding.
Nobody in the discussion yet has said that the storyline is the point of a fighting game, or that fighting game characters are as developed as literary characters.
Not that I think that you’re serious, but isn’t that just MK + Eternal Champions?
Of course fighting game characters aren’t as developed as literary characters. Most of them aren’t developed even slightly beyond their initial premise (“so-and-so killed his brother and he’s out for revenge!”). To consider it “fleshed out” or “developed” in any sense assumes a lot more than what your typical fighting game attempts to do or achieves.
Tacking perfunctory shit onto a story doesn’t automatically mean development. Guile is the same one-dimensional character in every game he’s in. This should give people an indication of just how much importance Capcom places on the stories when they develop the games.
That’s why I didn’t mention Guile. A better example of characters who actually change over the series would be Sagat or Chun. Not to say they’re WELL-developed or they change that much, but they do change.
Rival Schools and the Vampire series actually have significant plots and backstories, although Capcom USA never bothered to translate much of it.
I’m sure if all you’ve played is SF though then your viewpoint is very understandable.
I think it’s just that fighting games are a really limited(See: Bad) story telling medium.
It only becomes more apparent with each sequel that the story is never really going to go anywhere.
Which is why I think they made the jump to progressing the plot in an action game.
on guilty gear:
i’ll say this right now, i’m a total storyline scrub for guilty gear. i love the thing to death. and i LIKE the story in GG2.
before hating on it too much, read those summaries on dustloop of the AC+ story mode (which came out after GG2), as some serious shit goes down there. (Dizzy leaves the pirates to live with Ky (complete with Johnny fearing Ky’s hands will be all over her lol), Ky & Sol have a resolution of their rivalry, and some other stuff for other characters too like Aba’s lol-tastic journey, Millia is slowly dying from her beast taking over just like Zato, May finding out she’s Japanese, etc etc)
The storyline should be focused at the expense of all else, including graphics, audio, and gameplay mechanics. All aspects of a fighting game should be subservient to the story. This is why RPGs continue to flourish as a genre while the fighting game genre has stagnated for so many years. There’s a reason why The Ultimate Fighter is compelling television: it’s not because we get to see wannabes fight each other for a chance at the bigs, but because we get to see intense, believable drama between compelling characters with the ring serving as a linchpin for each saga.
Man, after writing that I think I need to go wash my hands.
The only storylines I wonder about in a fighting game is Tekken. Been into it ever since Tekken 2. Any other fighter, I can care less.
Street Fighter series (with the exception of Alpha 3) does it right with a correct balance with a little ending and win quotes (with some rivals). Nothing too heavy, enough to give the characters their own personalities
Virtua Fighter is too extreme on the omission of story or ending,
Story is not the problem with VF’s cast, but it’s their lack of identity and personality. They just need a little more “oomf” and characterization to sell the character’s personality (like SF2 did)
Tekken takes itself way too seriously with the main serious drama characters and ironically makes a parody of itself with the rest of the cast. This puts Tekken in an awkward place to rate it for its story since it makes no sense but is visually cool to look at.
Tekken series has one of the best stories because they realize what a silly story they have when they’re being serious, and thus the console ending cutscenes are always wonderful.
I wish that more fighting games could have ending cutscenes as entertaining as the Tekken ones.
I enjoy the comedic endings in Tekken but I do not like Devil Gene driven endings because they are outrightl rediculous
Shiki:
> It wasn’t for the plotholes and the fact that Capcom completely ignored all the plot development from A3 when making 3rd Strike and SF4, I’d Alpha 3 was actually quite good.
Uhm, what? 3S I’ll grant you, because Sf3 series is completely divorced from the rest of the series. BUt SFIV is heavily steeped in the canon established by SFA3/SF2. In terms of story, SFIV is very much like SFA3 in that Capcom is making a serious attempt at making one cohesive story, rather than the laughable vague nonsense (laughable even for SF) they did for SF3.
re: story
A good story can enhance my enjoyment of a series, but as others have said it’s not a deal breaker. Actually, it very much depends on how much I like the game in question: If I really like the game, then a good story is just icing on the cake. If I don’t like the game, then I don’t give a shit how good the story is. I can also play a game that I like that has shit or no story (e.g. Versus series), but no amount of story will get me to play a game or series I don’t like.
SF’s story, while not great, is underrated, mainly because so little of it has been translated properly into english, and even less has been shown in the actual games themselves. SFIV, hopefully, looks to be a change from that.
I recall reading some plot guides to things like Fatal Fury, KOF and GG and getting quite into it. Too bad fighting games typically do a very poor job of conveying story to you while actually playing.
One thing I enjoy is to see how Siegfried seems to be the main character of Soul Blade/Calibur. His ending is always the true one (his bad ending in Soul Blade makes him into Nightmare and so on) and he changes a lot in character (Madman, Monster, Reclaiming himself and fighting for redemption and finally some sort of crystal paladin or whatever).