Special Feature: Announcements from Evo 2019
There were two big questions about the fighting game announcements that would be made at Evo 2019 this past weekend prior to its start. The first involved whether they’d be on par with those from previous years. Developers and publishers have been making announcements at Evo for years, but the number and quality of them have continued to rise with the increasing popularity of eSports. The second question involved whether they would all leak beforehand. To answer them quickly: The quality of them was better than prior events, but while some good ones seeped through the cracks, not all of them did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4BssK32348
After I finished the post about Soulcalibur VI’s top 8, several fans and I were hoping Bandai Namco would continue supporting it with more than balance patches. The game received the least amount of attention among the main nine centerpiece titles, with the tournament starting and ending on Friday. Fortunately, it’s doing well enough for the publisher to keep it going. The final character for the first season is franchise favorite Cassandra, who released today. The game will also receive a second season of DLC with four more characters, one of which will be another guest character: Haohmaru from Samurai Shodown. Given who he is, he’ll fit in well. Hopefully the characters for season 2 will release at a faster pace than those from the first.
Tekken 7, whose top 8 was also entertaining all the way through (especially the Grand Finals), is getting a third season. This will include four new characters, including returning character Zafina, who debuted in Tekken 6, and a new character named Leroy Smith, an old kung-fu black man with dreads who wouldn’t be out of place in The Last Dragon. The characters, along with a new stage, will start releasing in spring 2020. Additional free updates will also come, including rebalancing that will include giving each character at least one new technique, updated play stats and UI displays, and an expanded Practice Mode. Several fans thought nothing related to Tekken 7 would be announced at E3, an easy conclusion to make considering this didn’t leak beforehand, but were happy to be wrong.
The crazily-named Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] was announced by French Bread, Ark System Works, and American publisher Aksys Games, another update to the seven-year-old Under Night In-Birth. This will include around a thousand new balance updates and new moves for the existing characters, along with at least one brand-new face with Londrekia, a guy whose good looks and techniques have drawn comparisons to Blazblue’s Jin Kisaragi. It will release in early 2020. No platforms were provided, but the previous leak (because of course it did) through the Taiwanese and Australian ratings boards mentioned PlayStation 4 and Switch. They should announce the systems officially soon.
New info about Granblue Fantasy Versus was shared between Evo and the Granblue Extra Fes 2019 event that occurred in Japan this past weekend. A demonstration was provided for newly-revealed character Percival at Evo, while a cool-looking side-scrolling action RPG Story Mode that resembles the likes of Dragon’s Crown was revealed at the Fes event. The game was confirmed for a worldwide release on February 6th, 2020, slipping from the original “2019” release timeframe.
Janemba was finally revealed for Dragon Ball FighterZ, a villain from the twelfth Dragon Ball Z movie whose existence leaked twice beforehand. Like prior Dragon Ball characters, Arc System Works has done a bang-up job capturing his animations. The new trailer also showed Super Saiyan Blue Gogeta from the Dragon Ball Super: Broly film, whose animations were also captured well. Janemba will arrive on August 8th (this Thursday), while Gogeta will arrive later in the year, likely with Broly from the same film.
Blazblue: Cross Tag Battle will receive the 2.0 update this fall, an announcement that leaked mere hours before the fun top 8, which featured an American using RWBY characters winning the tournament. The content pack will include nine new characters, including Akatsuki and Blitztank (an actual tank) from the Japan-only doujin fighter Akatsuki Blitzkampf, along with Yumi from Marvelous’ Senran Kagura: Estival Versus and Neo Politan from RWBY. The content pack will also include a new scenario, new character interactions, and colors when it arrives on November 21st for $24.99. Balance upgrades will also release alongside this update, though that will be free.
Arc System Works’ biggest reveal was the first good tease for the new Guilty Gear game. The title was announced last year, and was stated as the reason why series creator, director, composer, and character designer Daisuke Ishiwatari wasn’t in attendance. He was there this year, and presented this nice surprise that thankfully didn’t leak beforehand. The teaser showed franchise favorites Sol Badguy and Ky Kiske, along with a new character: A black guy with dreadlocks. If this is becoming a trend after this character and Leroy Smith in Tekken 7, it’s a good one. The animation looks even better than the Xrd titles, thanks to the developers being less concerned with the game deliberately mimicking the 2D titles this time. It’s due for release in 2020, and hopefully we’ll see more of it soon.
Development must be going well for Samurai Shodown, as SNK moved up the dates for the remaining DLC characters from the first season. The characters were previously planned to release bimonthly until February 2020, but the completion date was moved up to December 2019. Even better, Shizumaru Hisame, introduced in Samurai Shodown III, will now be included in the first season as a free character. He’ll arrive in September. A second season is also coming that will include four more characters in 2020, one of which will be the scantily clad Mina Majikina, introduced in Samurai Shodown V. A balance patch is also coming soon, which should nerf Genjuro into the ground.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYXSzsI70hg
SNK also confirmed The King of Fighters XV, something they let slip late last year. The game wasn’t shown, but prior rumors suggested that it will run on Unreal Engine 4 (believable since SamSho also runs on it), which means its visuals should be far better than The King of Fighters XIV. Perhaps we’ll see it soon, ahead of the planned 2020 release.
Nightwolf will arrive in Mortal Kombat 11 on August 13th, the second character to come from the Season Pass. This was revealed just before Evo started, but it’s close enough that I’m listing it here. Sindel will also release sometime after him.
It’s been over three years since League of Legends developer Riot Games acquired Radiant Entertainment, who worked on free-to-play fighter Rising Thunder. In that time, it was easy to assume that the former acquired the latter to work on a fighting game, and Radiant co-founder Tom Cannon finally confirmed is indeed the case. There’s no telling what form it will take, but it will be surprising if it doesn’t have something to do with LoL, either as a spinoff or a fighting game taking place in its universe. Given how overwhelmingly popular LoL has been for the last several years, and how fun Rising Thunder was before the full game was cancelled when Riot acquired the developer, this has the potential to be big.
Street Fighter V’s new DLC characters were set to be announced at Evo, but leaked on Steam last Wednesday, to Capcom and producer Yoshinori Ono’s chagrin. The pack, which is now available, includes E. Honda, Poison, and Lucia, who all cost $14.99 in a bundle. Valve has since taken responsibility for the leak, which they claim occurred thanks to a “mix-up in the publishing process.” After reading an apology for the leak at Evo (funnier than it sounds here), Ono confirmed that more SFV info will be provided in November or December.
This Evo somehow surpassed previous events in terms of all the announcements made, despite skepticism as to whether it would live up to them. It’s nice to know there will still be too many fighting games to focus on at a time in 2020 and beyond.
About The Author
Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
