Do you really think they’d dig themselves out of the Sony-shaped hole they’re in by Final Shape even if left entirely to their own devices anymore? I lost anything I had for Bungie when they wanted to try and pin the reason for their layoffs on ‘the players not spending enough’ with the prices they already charge for base admission.
Soul Calibur and Dragonball were a part of my life long before I started seeing just how fucked the whole field was as far as representation was concerned is the only reason those never got cut off-- and Zasalamel was the first Black character I’d seen in a fighter since Jackson Briggs. (I didn’t get into KI until 2013, so I can’t say TJ Combo.) Nagoriyuki looks really new though; I’ve literally never heard of this dude regarding Guilty Gear. It’s a start at least.
I don’t have melanin on my list of fighting game criteria
Considering it’s like pulling teeth to get any kind of favorable representation in games these days, especially out of eastern devs, it’s a larger consideration than you’d think-- and frankly, with a response like that, I don’t expect you to have thought about any of the fuckery in this space that might shift a non-settler’s priorities. When the likes of Granblue or Under Night has Leroy Smiths, Eddie Gordos, Zasalamels, Jax and Jacqui Briggses, and Darriuses running around every iteration, then we can talk. Til then, I don’t fuck with anime fighters, and barely fuck with JRPGs.
Live servicing things that never needed it is a much more recent irritant.
Granblue VS and Under Night In-Birth are both WAY too white for my tastes; and that’s the issue I have with most anime-fighters. Strive is lacking in proper melanin too; and from what I remember of Skullgirls’ playerbase, it’s like 90% 4channers-- that’s a pass from me big dawg.
If they still made Soul Calibur iterations I wouldn’t be in this trick bag; because I hate having to put my faith in unverified hype-- I def don’t believe the IG announcement Wednesday is going toward a sequel, much as I’d like for that to be the case.
What fighting games even exist anymore that are both satisfying and non-polluted by publisher greed? I don’t do shonen that isn’t DBZ anymore; so I can’t just backpedal to anime fighters for that-- and FighterZ’s dead in the water without rollback, so even that’s out
They’re already beating MK with the live-service stick; they really fucking around about to make me a primarily Tekken player for the first time in like 20 years.
We used to have flak cannons, tri-barreled rocket launchers, railguns-a-plenty, and rifles that straight-up shot everything from super-heated(and occasionally explosive) circular saw blades to literal lightning bolts. What do we have now? Licensed out dime-a-dozen replicas of the same like 30 weapons that keep spilling innocent blood in the hands of irl barbarians; I refuse to believe that would’ve just been ‘the end game anyway’ assuming a world without military spectacle as a genre. Not knowing how much Pentagon money goes into military spectacle.
At least Halo tries to look like it didn’t jump off the weapons rack at your nearest military outpost’s armory. Fails about half the time, but it at least tries.