Fighting Games Friday: The Street Fighter V Season of Patience
Capcom pulled back the curtain as far as they could on information about Street Fighter V’s final season of content this week. Dan Hibiki will be the first character to arrive as part of the season, with Rose and Street Fighter III’s Oro coming afterward. The biggest character surprise of this bunch was Akira Kazama from the Rival Schools/Project Justice series, who will be fourth to arrive. It was always clear that Rival Schools shared a universe with Street Fighter given Sakura’s appearance in the first game, but this is the first time a character from the former franchise will join the latter. The fifth character is currently shrouded in secrecy, but count on plenty of guesses being made in the meantime. A new gameplay mechanic will come with the characters, details of which were also kept vague.
Everyone will have plenty of time to make guesses. The most illuminating info in Capcom’s announcement was just how long the characters will take to arrive. Dan isn’t planned for release until “Winter 2020,” which usually translates to “December.” Rose will arrive in spring 2021, while Oro and Akira won’t come until summer of 2021. The final character will arrive in fall 2021. The content isn’t coming as soon as select rumormongers suggested on social media, but they should have been taken with a grain of salt to begin with given their accuracy rates. Only Dan is in a showable state, with the team making sure he’s just right in terms of balance by Dan standards. Unless they’re getting brave, he’ll sufficiently low tier due to his status as a joke character.
It’s worth questioning exactly why this new content will take so long. There’s reason to suspect that Capcom has given this content a threadbare team while a much bigger portion of the SFV development crew is working on other projects. This would be similar to what happened with Ultra Street Fighter IV, where a remaining small team largely reused assets produced for Street Fighter x Tekken with added characters and stages; Decapre notwithstanding, where Cammy’s character model was used as a base.
But it’s also possible that more SFV content wasn’t part of the plan to begin with. Near the end of last year, there was a direct hint that the next Street Fighter game, likely Street Fighter VI, would be announced at the end of the Capcom Pro Tour this year. It didn’t seem like anything else was planned after Seth arrived as part of the Street Fighter V: Champion Edition package, one that included most of the ridiculously-priced content released over the last four years in one less-expensive package.
It’s easy to think the COVID-19 pandemic is the most likely culprit, which has interfered with everything. But there’s a chance a larger disruption happened behind the scenes.
Capcom confirmed nearly two years ago that SFIV and SFV producer Yoshinori Ono had been removed as head of the company’s fighting game division, and was later confirmed to be the head of the esports division. Further rumors suggest this was only half of it, which say that Ono was removed as producer of the next Street Fighter game thanks to dissatisfaction with the product behind the scenes. They mention that Midori Yuasa, who was named head of the Capcom Pro Tour and Street Fighter League last year, took over the project to much satisfaction. Again, take rumors with a grain of salt, but it would explain a lot of what we’ve seen over the last week.
Ono was notably MIA during the fighting games roundtable last Friday, and during the stream for these announcements. Instead, both SFV director Takayuki Nakayama and producer Shuhei Matsumoto took the part. As further evidence of a team reshuffling, the art for the upcoming characters is in a different and more detailed (and, if you ask me, considerably improved) style. Ono has made a number of mistakes over the years, but he brought a certain energy to these announcements that few others at Capcom are capable of replicating. If Yuasa has indeed taken his place, perhaps she can bring that. It would be neat, admittedly, if women were the faces of two current fighting games, alongside Dragon Ball FighterZ’s Tomoko Hiroki.
The character lineup shows how the new team is listening to fans, as all these characters have been requested for years. This is most evident with Akira, who demands the largest cult following of any Rival Schools character. It’s enough to make any fan further wonder who the fifth character could be. With Ono removed from most of the picture, it’s unlikely to be Decapre again — or so I think.
Waiting for the final season will require patience, for reasons fans should come to understand. The deadly combination of studio turbulence and the pandemic is enough to justify the wait, but chances are the characters and whatever this new gameplay mechanic will be worth the wait.
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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
