Fighting Games Friday: Speculation for the Next Guilty Gear Is Already Off the Rails

There were several great fighting game-related announcements and reveals during Evo 2019 last weekend, and one of the best among them was Arc System Works’ tease for the next Guilty Gear game. The first part of the teaser showed franchise mainstay characters Sol Badguy and Ky Kiske battling it out, and while that’s nothing new, it was a good opportunity to show the leap in presentation this game will have compared to even the Guilty Gear Xrd games. The predecessors were already beautiful to look at, but Arc knew they could top themselves within a reasonable budget. The teaser also showed a new character, a black man with cornrows who will don a cybernetic mask in battle, though his identity is currently unknown.

It was the kind of teaser that has fans immediately wanting more, enough for the speculation machine to start chugging at full power. But just as that machine was starting to wind down, we received something that’s bound to keep it going by the time the game is shown again.

A few words from Daisuke Ishiwatari on the new #GuiltyGear…

Official Guilty Gear Website: https://t.co/5t2AD9wFxi pic.twitter.com/Dh20lleKH0

— Arc System Works @ #BBTank (@ArcSystemWorksU) August 9, 2019

Guilty Gear creator, director, character designer, and music composer Daisuke Ishiwatari released a statement about the game on Thursday night, to slightly elaborate on what to expect from the next game in the series. Arcsys isn’t ready to reveal anything more about it yet, so the wording is vague to hilarious degrees throughout.

Ishiwatari claimed this installment won’t be an “evolution,” nor will it be about returning to the franchise’s roots. It will be a “brand-new experience,” a reconstruction of the franchise. This could mean it will be a reimagining of all the previous titles in terms of the themes and characters, or that it will take the best gameplay aspects from those games and assemble them into one new package. Or… it could mean neither of those. Who knows! It’s tough to take anything from this other than “get ready to rock the next title.”

There is one part that’s frightening some fans to death. Late in the statement, Ishiwatari says the “game is a bridge that connects people,” and fans are taking this to mean it will be far more simplified than the older games. Not that this requires a guess; Ishiwatari flat-out told us to expect the next game to be easier.

Ishiwatari had an illuminating response about what the next Guilty Gear could be during an interview with Destructoid’s Chris Carter in February of 2018, after Carter provided his assessment of GG being “a niche series for a hardcore audience” to him:

“After releasing Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 it’s clear what we need to improve on. The key is to win over more users because of the complex controls. But if we implement everything the game will no longer be Guilty Gear. It’s hard to balance out all the improvements. One thing that we have to do in the next installment is to reduce the number of systems [mechanics]; it’s too complicated for everyone. You can expect that in the next game.”

It’s easy to see why this sent fans into a panic at the time, who think this means it’s being dumbed down for the masses. That might be too extreme a conclusion, but it’s clear the next installment will be easier to play than previous titles. That’s not too surprising a fact considering the Xrd games were already more approachable than the Guilty Gear XX series, though they were hardly easy to get into per se. The upcoming game will have a considerably lower barrier of entry, which Ishiwatari was pondering shortly after Dragon Ball FighterZ released and during Blazblue: Cross Tag Battle’s promotional cycle, when he provided these comments.

Expect the game’s base combos to be easier to perform, likely with auto-combos that, unlike those from Xrd Revelator and its progeny’s Stylish Mode, can’t be turned off. Several fans think one from Sol might have been shown in the teaser, where he performs three rapid and powerful punches on Ky. (Note that this isn’t a definitive analysis, so it could be “bullshit.”) Other existing features will be streamlined further than in Xrd, perhaps including Roman Cancels and Instant Kill techniques. It won’t be simplified in the same way as FighterZ and CTB thanks to not being a tag-team fighter, so the Persona 4 Arena titles would be a better comparison, or the also-upcoming Granblue Fantasy: Versus.

The biggest danger in simplifying a game is alienating the audience they already have, something Ishiwatari and the team are aiming to avoid, as mentioned in the quote from Destructoid. He also implied this in the new statement by saying this installment will be “a bridge that connects people.” This is an extremely difficult tightrope to walk, since fans can be very particular with what they like and don’t like in fighting games — especially titles with smaller audiences like GG. This team already managed to make Xrd easier than prior titles while not alienating many fans (there are always some who didn’t like any changes), but as the P4A games showed, simply having auto combos won’t necessarily mean the skill ceiling will be too low.

In other words: The result of the adjusted gameplay style could equal either Heaven or Hell, with little in between. So, let’s hope the game rocks for everyone.