Fighting Games Friday: Become as Gods on the Stage of History

This week was a little different than usual for fighting game news, thanks to Nintendo’s valiant efforts to throw my schedule off. The biggest upcoming fighting game is Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Nintendo aired its final Direct for the game yesterday — at least, the final one before its release. (There’s still intense debate over whether Smash Bros. counts as a fighting game, which I’ll happily stay out of.) But there’s other fighting game news I that will be fun to write (and read!) about this week, so I couldn’t pass up on posting a “normal” entry too. If you want info about the Smash Direct, make sure you read my summation.

Even if you don’t think Smash counts as a fighting game, it’s worth highlighting here because Street Fighter’s Ken is one of the newest characters. He’s mainly based on his Street Fighter II series renditions, back when he and Ryu had very similar move sets, but the developers also included moves from other SF games. It’s why he’s an Echo character of Ryu here. But enough of that; let’s move on to your regularly-scheduled content.

Guest characters have become a tradition for the Soulcalibur franchise since Soulcalibur II included three different console-exclusive characters. They had no choice after how disappointed fans were when Soulcalibur III released without one — though rumors suggest Dante from the Devil May Cry™ series and Xenosaga’s Kos-Mos were planned at one point. But guests returned in full force in Soulcalibur IV with Star Wars characters, whose PSP version swapped them out for God of War’s Kratos. This continued in Soulcalibur V with Ezio from the Assassin’s Creed series, and Soulcalibur VI with Geralt from The Witcher series. You could say Soulcalibur popularized the trend of guest characters in fighting games.

That’s why they’re adding another one as the first DLC character for SCVI: 2B from NieR: Automata. Her inclusion isn’t entirely surprising because she’s made a lot of appearances in several games since Automata released in early 2017. This includes being in several Square Enix mobile games like Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius and Valkyrie Anatomia: The Origin, to her outfits being in non-Square Enix games like Gravity Rush 2 and Phantasy Star Online 2. But this is her first appearance in a game outside Square Enix’s properties, and fans couldn’t be happier.

2B’s move set is slightly more robust than the average SC character’s, meaning the team had to get a little picky in choosing which maneuvers to include, while balancing her so she’s doesn’t break this game’s balance in half. 2B comes with her dual blades, Virtuous Contract and Virtuous Treaty, and her Pod, but other combat options will also be included. She’ll also come with a stage based on one of Automata’s locations, which will include its own theme, though whether it will be ripped directly from the game or remixed remains to be seen. She’ll also come with an extra outfit based of Kaine’s from the first NieR title. Whether her move set can be used for a created character is unknown, but it would be surprising if that wasn’t the case considering Geralt’s can be.

No date was given for when 2B will arrive, but the wait shouldn’t be too long. She’ll be the second of four additional characters coming as part of the $29.99 Season Pass, the first of which was returning character Tira, and the others should be revealed soon. There’s no way to tell whether they could be guests or returning characters, but given how there are SC legacy characters still missing, I’m leaning towards the latter.

Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo will release Dead or Alive 6 in mid-February, and they’re continuing to reveal characters returning from previous installments. The newest is Christie, a British assassin who previously debuted in Dead or Alive 3. She’s a former associate and rival of Bayman, the man she’s fighting in the trailer and screenshot above, and was responsible for monitoring Helena for him while serving as an assistant. She now works for Victor Donovan, a man she was previously instructed to assassinate, so she doesn’t seem that good at her job.

Like several (but not all) returning female characters, Christie has been given a new default outfit. Her previous one was a catsuit that was unzippered to show cleavage for no practical reason (but you know the real reason). But her new main outfit involves a sleeveless sweater and leather pants, which is far more practical. Like other characters, her default outfit will very likely be included as an option, so there’s no need for any freak-outs.

DOA6 will release on February 15th for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. There are several fan-favorite characters that haven’t been revealed yet, so they should be shown before the release date. Dead or Alive 5 also contained guest characters from the Virtua Fighter series, but we’ll see if any of them, or others, are among this particular game’s cast soon.

In fact, one of these days, I’ll have to write a post about the increasing prevalence of guest characters in fighting games. There’s a good chance all get around to that on a week that isn’t busy for fun fighting game news, though that doesn’t happen often these days. We’ll see how busy next week is.