Fighting Games Friday: The Iron Fist Kings Are Approaching

Tekken 8’s January 26th, 2024 release date is quickly approaching. The combination of this fact and the recent leak, one totally accurate despite producer Katsuhiro Harada’s light insistence to the contrary, explains why the initial roster has fully taken shape more than two months before the game’s arrival.

The highlight among the newest characters revealed is Victor Chevalier, an older French ninja who makes for the second brand-new face shown for this installment. He uses a combination of vanishing melee attacks and flashy combos, some utilizing a stylish sword and a side pistol. His move set gives the impression that the Tekken development team wanted to reuse the weapons and combos of Final Fantasy XV protagonist Noctis Lucis Caelum for one of their own characters, since it’s unlikely that he’ll be featured again after his guest appearance in Tekken 7. The mixture of those moves, some from Master Raven, and other unique moves of his own gives him one of the most robust and flashiest move sets displayed yet for this game.

Speaking of the Ravens: Victor seems to be higher in stature than both. He’s even beyond the Master Raven. Perhaps he should be called Big Raven.

Victor is voiced by actor Vincent Cassel, who makes for a hell of a get for Tekken considering his status in the TV and movie world. It’s one matter to have a big actor reprise their guest role, like Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan from The Walking Dead in Tekken 7. It’s another to rope in a large-ish actor to portray an original character. It’s a damned shame that Cassel’s made terrible comments about masculinity, to the point of defending noted social media shitstain Andrew Tate. The jury might also be out on his acting quality here, with some French listeners saying his performance is on par with Ronda Rousey’s as Sonya in Mortal Kombat 11. At least the character’s cool.

Between Victor and Azucena, the dev team ensured that the new characters far outclass the returning ones in terms of their style and techniques. It’s a shame there are only three of them, with the final one set to be the last character revealed on November 12th, a week from Sunday. Rumors suggest that Reina is the previously-unknown daughter of Heihachi Mishima, who may be set to replace him on the initial roster. It won’t take long to determine if those rumors pan out, but I’m having trouble not believing them.

Several returning characters to Tekken 8 were confirmed alongside Victor this week. A short-ish trailer under two minutes long confirmed that Panda, Zafina, Lee Chaolan, Alisa Bosconovitch, and Devil Jin will be part of the roster, again to no surprise thanks to prior leaks.

This indeed seems to confirm that Kuma and Panda will occupy their own panels on the character select screen this time instead of both being merged into one, perhaps implying that the two will have unique moves instead of both being clones. Zafina is the only character in Tekken 8 returning to the initial roster after being downloadable content in the previous game, which should please the several who play her. She also appears to have retained her powers from Tekken 7.

Lee Chaolan is another character with a peculiar default outfit, but that’s not a big issue given the knowledge that every character will have at least four alternate outfits. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for Violet being one of them, unless the dev team is feeling ballsy enough to make him a separate character again. Alisa, I don’t believe, needs an introduction at this point, a character popular enough that she was bound to return in the initial roster. The same goes for Devil Jin, outside me thinking his new threads are cool.

The trailers don’t show much of them in action. Perhaps they’re saving individual footage for separate trailers they’ll provide sometime before the release date. It’s also possible the development team plans to demonstrate the character themselves, or will have tournament-playing influencers fulfill that job. It would also be nice if the player base could get their hands on them through another beta testing session before late January. Just throwing that one out there.

To be blunt: They damn-well should have another testing session before the game arrives, considering the inconsistent player opinions on the netplay. The consensus I’ve seen suggests that the online play is better than Tekken 7’s, but still leaves room for improvement. (I’d love to regale you all with my hands-on opinions, but I lack the means to play it.) It’s reportedly on par with Street Fighter V’s netplay at best, barely acceptable in 2016 but should not be tolerated now. I certainly hope the team smooths this over, and doesn’t take the path of leaving it as is with Harada vehemently defending it on social media. We’ll find out if there’s another beta coming before the January 26th release for the full game soon.