Fighting Games Friday: No Guilt With the Warden

This is still the calm before the supposed storm for fighting game news, the time before plenty of developers and companies provide info about their games at Evo. But I’m leaving it at “supposed” because there’s no way to tell how the event will be handled with such an abnormal Evo in this abnormal (putting it lightly) year of 2020. This year’s Evo Online event will be a virtual one over the course of several weeks throughout July and August, starting next weekend, and there’s no indication as to when the stream dedicated to news will happen. Hell, there’s not even an indication of whether Evo’s organizers fully know how they plan to handle this yet. Until then, we’ll have to manage with with a steady news drip from select companies.

There’s a small list of fighting games with bizarre, somewhat ill-fitting and downright goofy guest characters. Additions like the Hornet car from Daytona USA in Fighters Megamix and, more recently, Negan in Tekken 7 are among them. The newest addition will be the final character revealed for Samurai Shodown’s second Season Pass: The Warden from Ubisoft’s For Honor.

The Warden isn’t an entirely ill-fitting character in concept. Samurai Shodown has always included non-samurai characters, with Charlotte, a French noble who uses a fencing style in battle, being the biggest example. But the Warden’s non-anime style design couldn’t stand out further compared to the other characters who represent a colorful style.

One aspect that works about the Warden in SNK’s favor is how he’s easier to animate compared to other characters. Many of his animations look, uh, inspired by those from other characters (Haohmaru especially), but the development team didn’t have to create any detailed facial animations for him thanks to his helmet. He likely didn’t require as many resources to animate compared to the average character, which made for an inexpensive final addition for the season.

I’ve posted about how much SNK loves guest characters in the past, as they’ve shared several with other companies for their games. This previously paid off for them with SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, which included the Thief Arthur character from the Million Arthur series in exchange for The King of Fighters’ Iori Yagami joining fighting game adaptation Million Arthur: Arcana Blood. The Warden, however, is SNK’s biggest get yet, and should at least bring good attention to Samurai Shodown. For Honor has a significantly larger player base than any SNK game, after all. It’s just a shame this couldn’t have happened with a game with non-terrible online play, which will immediately turn away anyone who gives it a shot and wants to try and take it seriously. Maybe SNK will get this right with their next brand-new game.

The Warden released this past Wednesday, and can be purchased for $5.99 separately or for $19.99 as part of the second Season Pass with three other characters. This season included the very fanservice-laden Mina Majikina and Iroha, who had to be balanced out with Sogetsu Kazama and the Warden. I think those are the rules.

The newest trailer for Arc System Works’ Guilty Gear Strive didn’t feature any new characters, but instead further showcased two only shown briefly in an earlier trailer. It provided a better impression of how Millia Rage and Zato-1 will play. Both of them will retain moves from previous installments, though similar to other returning characters, their properties will be adjusted thanks to this installment’s new simpler combo system. I’m hesitant to say how different both characters will handle since the development team is still making adjustments to them and the gameplay system, undoubtedly one of the reasons for the game’s delay from fall 2020 to early 2021.

It could not be clearer that both characters are very much a work in progress. The lack of voices for both characters is noticeable with how prevalent chatter tends to be in anime fighting games. The previous trailer didn’t showcase their voices either, though this wasn’t noticeable thanks to music playing over everything. There’s also no UI here, making it impossible to see any damage properties. There’s a good chance they’re making serious adjustments, given the justifiable complaints about it being bland and underwhelming compared to previous installments.

As mentioned above: Guilty Gear Strive will be due for release in early 2021, so the marketing campaign still has a while to go from here. I still can’t believe they haven’t shown the mysterious black guy from the initial trailer in action, nearly a year since the reveal. They notably haven’t shown or formally revealed any brand-new characters yet, but they’ll have to reveal them eventually.

Video game announcements are being made throughout the summer as part of this extended E3 season, but I’d be shocked if there wasn’t a news segment or specific stream for Evo Online. The next Strive character reveal is coming in August, a likely clue as to when other news will come, including info on the final Street Fighter V season.