Fighting Games Friday: Making Luke Protagonist in Street Fighter 6 Is Risky

Street Fighter 6 director Takayuki Nakayama and producer Shuhei Matsumoto were asked and largely answered 118 rapid-fire questions as part of Game Informer’s exclusive cover feature for the game this month. There were plenty of good answers covering topics about and beyond the game itself, but one pertaining to the former stuck out to me: It was mentioned that Luke will take over as the main protagonist of this newest installment.

This isn’t entirely surprising. It was previously mentioned by Capcom that Luke would represent the future of Street Fighter when he arrived as the last downloadable character in Street Fighter V as part of the final season. It’s also why he was part of the initial largely-CG trailer alongside Ryu. They weren’t solely talking about him being among the group of new faces for SF6.

This is a somewhat risky move on Capcom’s part thanks to how long Ryu has been the main face for the SF brand, and how all roads regarding the franchise tend to lead back to him. Ryu also took over as the face of Capcom itself after poor Mega Man diminished in importance. To suddenly replace him with a new character might be hard for some longtime fans to swallow as the marketing campaign continues on.

It makes sense, though. Just as a new generation of developers have taken over the Street Fighter brand following the departure of Street Fighter IV and V producer Yoshinori Ono from the company, a new generation of fighters are being introduced in the first game they’ve built from the ground up. SF6 will notably have a higher number of new characters at launch than the aforementioned titles, even though one who had concept art on the leaked sheet (A.K.I.) won’t be part of the initial roster. Combine these with the new World Tour mode that will presumably give the game a robust single-player mode and element of customization, and the “Dynamic Controls” mode, and it’s clear to see how the development team is going beyond the bounds to welcome a new audience.

The biggest hindrance to this plan is that Luke, as shown through SFV, is a boring-ass character. Between his extremely safe move set, the default design that appeared to have been focus-tested by the Gamer audience, and his inoffensive personality, the man could not be blander. But I’ve seen enough tournaments for fighting games to know that the most dangerous characters in the genre can be the bland faces who also happen to be top tier, as Luke was shortly after he arrived in SFV.

I can’t emphasize “SFV” enough because the developers have the opportunity to improve on this for SF6. They’ve yet to show if he will be any better in the new game, though his default outfit is a considerable step up. But the new title will have a story to tell through its World Tour mode, in which the characters can mentor the players through the customized avatars that wander around Metro City. How robust that mentoring will be also remains to be seen. We’ll find out if Luke can live down his vanilla introduction.

This isn’t the first time Capcom has tried to introduce a new protagonist to the Street Fighter series. Alex was the protagonist of Street Fighter III: New Generation and 2nd Impact, the games that kicked off the trilogy of titles before cult classic 3rd Strike. It was a partial holdover to the time when the first game was originally planned to star a brand-new set of characters, before the development team made the late (and wise, in terms of marketing) decision to include Ryu and Ken in the roster. Alex is the focus in the promotional pictures and the intros in the first two SFIII titles, though 3rd Strike’s places larger focus on the 18-character cast. Since then, Alex has simply been another face that debuted in SFIII, making subsequent appearances in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom and SFV. With SF6, they’re giving the protagonist switch another shot.

In fairness, though, Luke is more mainstream friendly. Alex, with his grapple-focused move set, was not easy to play, let alone master, in a series of games that never gained mainstream acceptance due to themselves being tough to play. Luke has a more traditional fireball-esque punching move and an uppercut, both of which are enough for any player to see how he functions within minutes.

(I do think Alex is cool, by the way. They should bring him back again.)

The reception will determine whether Capcom sticks with him as the main character for SF6, or if they’ll phase him out and pretend they never made him the protagonist in the game’s future updates over the years. This will depend on how much more content the single-player quest in the World Tour will receive over time, or if they’ll solely focus on the fighting side. Their plans will depend on the game’s sales, and the audience that will stick with it.