Logic's Afterword: The Future of the Soul Series

At the San Diego Comic-Con, Namco Bandai officially announced "Soul Calibur 2 HD Online" which is essentially a current generation port of the Second Soul Series game released ten years ago.

The game will feature most if not all of the single-player offerings, characters and other goodies from the original game, but apart from the enhanced graphics, the game will also include an online component so that you can battle people around the world.  So far, the only guest character confirmed is Heihachi from the original PS2 with no word on the other two guest characters Link and Spawn.  The game will be released for the Xbox 360/PS3 at some point in the Fall.  

In addition, Masaaki Hoshino will be replacing Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada as producer for the Soulcalibur series regarding future games.

I'd say that by now, Project Soul sees that Soul Calibur V was a huge disappointment to most of it's fanbase.  The only people who genuinely liked the package as it was shipped out were hardcore gamers and apologists who think that it's wrong to be critical of stuff.  

Want to know why? Here's a link to my insight on that game: thaeonblade.deviantart.com/gal…

But for brevity, I'll give you the short summary. The game was rushed out the door as admitted by it's director; It's storyline was incomplete again from the words of it's director and had multiple inconsistencies with the established canon of the series, not to mention the bad writing and poor execution from said-storyline; the gameplay was decent, but was needlessly complicated and geared more for hardcore gamers to the point of selling out it's soul and unique identity; multiple characters had disappeared from the roster without explanation and took their combat styles with them; most of the new characters were rarely showcased and focus was placed on the least likable of the newbies that had screentime; It pointlessly sacrificed character space to add in two half-assed mimic characters for a grand total of three mimic characters; two character slots were given to alternate versions of existing characters when they could've been merged into the same slot (Think Shiek/Zelda and Samus/Zero Suit Samus from Super Smash Bros) and the game was overall unrecognizable as a Soul Series game.

With this in mind, the Soul Series team seems to be really analyzing what it is that this current crowd of fans and gamers expect from the next Soul Series game.  First, they're starting at the roots.  They're going to remake the best Soul Series game within the last two generations that everyone loves and not even change it.  They won't take out any characters, all of the single player stuff is going to stay like Team Battle, Weapon Master Mode, Time Attack, Arcade, Character Endings, Theater, the Art Gallery, and all that they're going to change are the character models and adding online.  Then, they're going to see how the fanbase in general receives the games and use the feedback in preparing the next game in the series.  Which is obviously being developed for the next generation consoles.

Thankfully, this seems like an admittance to a mistake.  By going through this approach, the Team is acknowledging that they made heavy mistakes with SCV and they're using this HD remake as a testing ground to see how they can keep from repeating those mistakes.  They made assumptions in SCV and that bit them in the ass.

If this is what they're actually doing, what kind of feedback will they be looking for? Let's make a few educated guesses, shall we?

Everyone was mad about their favorite character not being in the game.

As I said in my review, I'd understand if most Soul Blade Veterans didn't return or replaced my successors since their character arcs had already been resolved by SCIV. As a brief recap: Cervantes was killed by Ivy; Sophitia died; Li-Long quit after nearly dying to Cervantes in Soul Blade; Siegfried achieved his redemption; Voldo was getting old; Rock only wanted to kill Astaroth and return home; Seong Mina and Hwang wanted to find Yun-Seong and bring him home; Taki didn't have to kill Siegfried because he destroyed Soul Edge without being controlled by Soul Calibur and Mitsurugi had found the answer to the Riddle of Steel. The fact that Siegfried and Mitsurugi are around can only be explained by how iconic they are for the series. But Taki and Seong Mina were excluded for being too old even though Cervantes and Voldo are way older and they're still around.

An obvious double-standard.

It's not just that some favorites didn't return, it's that they vanished without a trace or an explanation.  Hell! We only learned about Xianghua through Leixia's online profile! The game didn't tell us about what happened to the characters who had been our main fighter since before SCII for some. Seong Mina? Taki? Rock? Cassandra? Talim? Yunseong? Zasalamel? Setsuka? What happened to these characters that prevented them from returning to the series?

So SCII HD is probably an attempt to gauge this little asset.  SCII had five new characters and only one of them returned in SCV, now the HD remake will try to measure how well-received the new characters were and compare them to the SCI/SB cast and to latter additions from SCIII/SCIV. If the reception is high, then they'll return in the upcoming SCVI with a lenghty and plausible explanation to why they weren't around in SCV if that story mode is kept intact.

Lets not lie here, Talim is easily one of the most popular and well-received fighters in the series.  Her cute physique hid a quick damage dealing monster with her unique elbow blade style and she also had a pure personality that a lot of players gravitated towards.  Her absence in SCV was amongst the biggest among fans and for good reason.  Not only was her character absent for no reason, but her weapon style was gone too.

So lets say that feedback from SC II HD confirms what we the fans have already known regarding Talim.  This will push Project Soul to ensure that Talim is in the next game, probably older and with an updated play style.  They'll also add in an explanation about how she underwent a decades-long meditation as a wind priestess and only awoke in the middle of SCV's storyline and it took her awhile to get to the main stage of battle.

Cassandra's absence was a real asspull, namely how she was thrown into the Astral Chaos during Siegfried and Nightmare's duel and is stuck there for the past 17 years while Patroklos was given a free pass in time.  It's plainly obvious that the writers couldn't find a justifiable reason to get rid of her outside of the Astral Chaos or killing her off and the latter would be too much considering that Sophitia is already dead.

So once SCII HD's feedback shows how many fans want Cassandra back, they'll put her in the next game.  She'll have an updated costume and will probably ditch the shield altogether and it'll explained that she found a rift in the AC that she ran through and then she'll pop up close by someone she would've met like Hilde or Raphael and learn about everything that happened in the past 17 years.

They're pretty much using this opportunity to gauge which old character will be returning and which one won't.  Let's be realistic, we can't always have all of our characters in one game or it'll just end up as a generic boring fighting game like Mortal Kombat: Armageddon.  

So what would ideally happen is that we should have a balanced cast this time. 

We'll have 4 veterans from SB (Likely Mitsurugi, Taki, Siegfried and Seong Mina); 

6 vets from SCI (Maxi, Nightmare, Astaroth, Yoshimitsu, Lizardman and Ivy); 

And all of the new characters that joined from SCII to SCV so that the roster will have 20 past characters. Half of whom will be veterans and the other half still being relatively new to the stage.  Then we can add in about 7 to 10 new characters with weapon styles that will either succeed past characters or have entirely new styles.

Does anyone still think that the SP stuff in SCV was good?

Ha! You're funny!

Ignoring anyone whose delusional, apologetic or sucking up to Namco Bandai by saying that they liked what they got in the SP area of SCV, just about everyone was dissatisfied.

With SCII, we can put all of that stuff in and then the developers will be able to gauge how much fans truly missed those features. How many people played team battle online? How many people went through Survival? Arcade Mode? Extra Mode? A SP mode that didn't suck?

Online is something that SC fans have all wanted and there haven't been any major complaints.  All this will do is gauge how many SC fans are active online and that's about it.

Now here's the real kicker.  While I'll admit that the gameplay in SCV is good, I still feel as though it was heavily unbalanced and geared towards the hardcore gamers.  Hell! Every hardcore gamer that bitched about my review pretty much agreed with me and one of them even flatly stated that SCV was a hardcore gamer's game.

Which really should endear me to this game shouldn't it?

Myself and many others will still swear that the mechanics in SCII were much better because they were simpler and the game actually taught them to you rather then throw you into the deep end of the pool and yell at you for drowning before you even taught how to swim.  So this game is a way of testing whether that is true.

So if we're more receptive to the fighting mechanics in SCII, then chances are that the mechanics in SCVI will be more similar to this while still adding something new.

Due to numerous design decisions and needless changes, SCV feels out of place as a Soul Calibur Game

Now it is true that the nature of what makes a game feel like it belongs in a series is somewhat subjective. But when you compare V to previous games then it simply feels out of place, there's a giant disconnect between IV and V.  Say what you will about IV or even III or II but at least they were recognizable as Soul Calibur games and retained a consistent feel from game to game.

So this Remake will be Project Soul's chance to figure out where that disconnect came from and how they can fix it.

What is the spark that made Soul Calibur II into one of the most beloved fighting games in video game history? Where did it's soul come from? How did these things largely stick around for III and IV? What was SCV missing? What can SCVI do to reclaim the soul of the series? What does it need to have in order to be a Soul Calibur game?

Whether you liked ME3's Ending or not, the rest of the game was recognizable as being part of the Mass Effect Trilogy.

The Mortal Kombat Reboot added new features and twists to an otherwise stagnant series while returning to it's roots and revitalizing the franchise.

Incarnation after Incarnation and character redesign after character redesign, each Scooby Doo Show is still recognized as a show about a group of meddling kids and their dog who solve mysteries involving monsters and ghosts.

Despite having completely different characters and a new setting, The Legend of Korra is accepted as a worthy successor to the original Avatar: Last Airbender series because it had the same spirit and energy as the former.

The settings change, the characters change, the weapons change, the technology changes, and the tactics change, but each installment in the Call of Duty series can be called a Call of Duty Game.

Up until XIII, each Final Fantasy game had various unique features and storylines while still retaining distinct qualities expected from Final Fantasy.

SCV couldn't do that and this HD remake could be a chance for Project Soul to see for themselves about what SCII had that SV didn't and how to put that into SCVI.

It's still a business and since everyone loved SCII...why not make some money and satisfy nostalgia at the same time? Maybe they're using the profit from this remake as a kickstarter for SCVI, who knows.

And that's about all I can say about that.

There's always a chance that I'm reading too much into the news and that would lead to the Worst Case Scenario. Perhaps the ugly truth is that Project Soul doesn't care about what the fans want and they'll just keep doing what they want. Maybe Namco knows that the Soul Series is sinking after SCV and they just want to squeeze out as much money as they can before it fades into obscurity.

For instance, just stop the SCV story at Chapter 16 of the single-player mode, take out the deus ex bullshit time-travel gimmick and go from there.

Make Soul Calibur less villainous and have it ditch Patroklos. It makes no sense for the sword to allow itself to be wielded by a malfested brat whose constantly feeding that dark power with his own negative emotions. Then let someone else have it like Pyrrha, ZWEI, Leixia, Ivy, or even Yoshimitsu! Considering what Patroklos has done, justifying him having Soul Calibur is too troublesome and complicated, not to mention retconing all of his horrific actions would seem too much like a "writer's asspull".

Patroklos killed defenseless innocent people in cold blood of his own free will a day or so ago based on a desire for vengeance and prejudice against malfested which he ironically would be. That should not be a description for the next person chosen to wield Soul Calibur.

This speaks for itself.

Treat us like we're customers in Hell's Kitchen.  If we like your food then we'll buy more and give you money as a reward for your hard work and the care that is seen in your work.  Otherwise, Chef Ramsey will yell and insult you until you cry like a little girl.  Then he'll take your jacket and kick you out of your own restaurant while calling you a donkey.

Do you want Chef Ramsey to kick you out of your own restaurant? I didn't think so.