Bandai Namco has elaborated a bit on the overall post-launch outlook for Soulcalibur VI.
While most fighting games have been focusing on hopping aboard the eSports bandwagon, game producer Motohiro Okubo said they’re focusing on fan-feedback instead to produce a great title.
“Our priority when developing the game first and foremost is creating something that’s fun and engaging for the player to experience,” Okubo said in an interview with VG247.
He continued: “We want to make a solid game, […] I think the esports scene is a very community-driven group, especially in fighting games. […] Even now, a lot of the big tournaments and competitions are run by the community. If by making a great game there’s then a voice from the scene that says ‘hey, we could use this as a good, very competitive game,’ then that might be the trigger for us thinking about and talking about what kind of support we can offer.”
Okubo was naturally asked how long the game will be supported post-launch, even beyond its planned Season Pass downloadable content. “It really depends on the demand. […] We’re always on the track and always want to do more if the community so requests it – and we can tell from the feedback what the community is looking for,” Okubo said.
“The plans aren’t solidified, but I’d really like to do more story elements and I’d also like to do more creation parts. There’s going to be over 100 creation parts for the character creator already. Of course, that’s just my plan, my roadmap – but it’ll be a real dialogue with fans and the community to see where they want it to go.Once the game is out, we really want to see what people want. There’s plenty of desire on our side to want to do more.”
Okubo explains how the team at Namco wanted to “get back to the essence of the series”, and went into the differences between Soulcalibur and Tekken series. “Tekken is a very mainstream feeling fighting game, and I think there’s a place for that,” he said. “I think in that sense Soulcalibur is… well, it’s a weapon-driven fighting game, and so you want to have that satisfaction of swinging around these massive weapons, moving around far more freely with the 8-way-run mechanic in a 3D space.”
The Soulcalibur boss went further into what went into the game’s roster selection process, as well as its balancing:
“So it’s a unique-playing game. […] Weapon variety, weapon portfolio – that really became a very important part of the roster selection process. […] In terms of the volume, of course, there’s always resources and development cycle considerations that we have to abide by – but I don’t actually think more is necessarily better. […] I feel pretty confident it’s going to be balanced. [laughs] We spent a lot of time developing and thinking about the battle mechanics for that. A very long time.”
In case you missed it, our 30+ minutes of hands-on direct-feed footage with the game at E3 can be found here.
Soulcalibur VI is launching across Windows PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on October 19th.
