Soulcalibur V Says Middle-Aged Women Can’t Fight (Also: Some Assassin Dude)

You didn’t
hear a peep of news from SoulCalibur V
out of the New York Comic-Con last weekend, which is pretty bizarre…

 

…until you
realize they were saving their reveals for a press event that happened in San
Francisco Monday. The news was embargoed until today, though some of the news
leaked out by an anonymous source who thinks they’re far too good to uphold any
NDAs they had to sign.

 

For the
additions to the normal roster, Namco Bandai revealed Nightmare and Leixia,
along with reintroducing Raphael. Nightmare was originally confirmed when the
game was announced,  but we’re now seeing
him for the first time. The question being raised by fans had what form he would
take since he was quite clearly fading from existence in SoulCalibur IV — some thought Sophitia would be the new Nightmare,
for instance. SCV takes place 17 years after IV, and hey, he’s still alive! How
are they going to explain this one in
the story mode? People who like Nightmare and don’t care about the story don’t
mind his return, though. We’re bound to get more cheesy lines about “Darkness”
again.

 

Leixia’s
existence was confirmed at Evo 2011, and yes, she’s yet another younger replacement for a woman who’s obviously too old to
be competing in any kind of fighting game. Leixia is the 15-year-old daughter
of veteran SoulCalibur character
Xianghua, who would be an old woman at 37 in this game’s timeline. Namco Bandai
had a chance to do something different and include some older women in a
fighting game for a change, but decided to take the same route they did with Tekken 3. it won’t have any bearing on
the gameplay, but it’s unfortunate to see them pandering to certain portions of
the fanbase.

 

Meanwhile,
human/vampire hybrid Raphael Sorel is returning, and he’s taken a few design
cues from D (of Vampire Hunter D
fame) and Hellsing‘s Alucard for his
new outfit. The current theory is that Viola, the assistant to newcomer
Z.W.E.I., is an amnesiac version of his previous companion Amy, albeit with a
different fighting style. That’s probably because Namco Bandai wanted to make
Raphael and Amy distinct in terms of fighting style.

 

The guest
character for this game was revealed on GameTrailers TV last night, and it’s
Ezio Auditore from the Assassin’s Creed
franchise. He’s the first guest character to actually fit in this world well, even
though he predates the SC world by about a century. His gameplay style is also
a perfect fit for this game, though he might
have a few of Setsuka’s moves, which could be worrying (clearly she’s also too old to be fighting!). Ezio has
a remix of the theme from the opening of Assassin’s
Creed II as his music for this game, which can be heard in the trailer.

 

SCV is also adding
Dampierre from SoulCalibur: Broken
Destiny…as a preorder bonus, at least for Europe — and it would be
surprising if this wasn’t the case for Japan and America. With that, they also
announced a release date: January 31st and February 3rd for America and Europe,
respectively — the latter of which is getting a
spiffy limited edition that Americans probably won’t see. That’s rather
worrying, because that means it’s releasing in a rather crowded time. It’s also
the same day Final Fantasy XIII-2,
which could be problematic for some of us.

 

Considering
it was only around 10% complete when it was announced in May, this game was completed
awfully quickly. Maybe a little too
quickly, which could be a cause for concern in terms of the game’s possible
quality — the
comments from director Daishi Odashima also weren’t comforting. Cross your
fingers and hope the game turns out well.