So this is something thats been stirring in me since the Heihachi Announcement at Evo. Its more than just Heihachi though, Bison coming back recently on top of Heihachi made it clear that death isn't the end. To be clear thats ALWAYS been the case, going back to the 90s in fighting games but with two super high profile characters back to back it almost begets a trend and one thats worth talking about, kind of all leading up to the one death that's mostly stuck for the last 25 years, Geese Howard. Geese being one of the most famous video game bosses of all time, with the upcoming Fatal Fury City of the Wolves... does he come back as well?
Roofle, you are the best, man. I've watched your content back since around DBFZ, and your hard work and dedication towards the genre I love has always been appreciated 😎🫡
As you said, "super high profile characters". Zero chances in hell they wouldn't give you those characters. Base? Probably not, as some of them are related to the story within that entry. And even if it wasn't, they wouldn't pass up making bank if it means putting them as "base" in an edition years down the road. Also pretty sure someone out there wants to play them. "How are they going to play in this one???" is the question consensus asks every. Single. Entry. With updated looks and different mechanics/features one would be hard pressed to not be slightly curious. Moot video. But I and many others appreciate the click bait. Much love and respect.
To be fair it "stuck" for 25 years because there hasn't been a Fatal Fury game in 25 years. Then again, SNK did effectively erase K9999 for 2 decades until they brought him back in KOF15...just because they thought it'd be fun.
They could go the injustice 2 route like what they did with joker. Terry has a nightmare of the fight with Geese in the story and boom satisfies all parties. Geese stays dead but he can still be in the roster without breaking canon.
@@Toxic-Pyro I think more of it as how KOF 2002 and 98 were dream-match-up type of fighting games. Where storyline is not what matters here, there's not story, is just an arcade and fighting game of the franchise where everyone is here, you can make every match up possible. Except team sports.
Heihachi may have been pissed that Kazuya got revived, but in retrospect he's probably laughing that Kazuya needed some scientific corporation to get revived in the first place.
Speaking of Geese, the most plausible option I feel like him coming back as Nightmare, but with it based on his description in the RB games. As in, make him a literal nightmare in the characters' dream, that way he still exists and doesn't really involve too much with the bigger story.
yea but the thing is, Nightmare Geese isn't "alive", he's basically a secret boss in fatal fury where Terry has a horrible dream reliving the day he killed Geese. In fact, if Nightmare Geese ends up playable, Geese will still stay dead, which would not harm the story at all really. Plus, Garou already hinted Geese's dead wife was actually alive and just being hidden by Kain, so I doubt they'll also revive Geese.
@@Erroratu Im pretty sure he knows that dude. That was the point of his comment. Bringing back a dead character as a nightmare so it doesn’t mess with the canon.
Heihachi coming back is the biggest betrayal ive seen from a developer in the fgc. M.Bison at least had that sinister smile right before he blows up that let you know he still has plans.
it'd be nice but there's basically nothing to him other that he dresses nice. You'd have to invent stuff from whole cloth vs you got one of the most iconic gaming characters of all time sitting right there.
@@rooflemonger Then again, we still do not know much about the real truth and mystery about the maternal side of Rock's own family. Perhaps this is what we would likely be looking into in CotW.
@@crimcrusader8459I really hope that is the case and not just reviving Geese again. It is understandable in kof because that is meant to be crossover series with its own characters and timeline. I hope they just build up Kain and explore new characters.
I think that's a bit dismissive towards SNK's lore integrity. It's not just Geese who wasn't in Garou, every Fatal Fury character was missing whether alive or dead, except a re-designed Terry. The plot of KoF14 wasn't exactly Pulitzer Prize worthy writing, but they still spent an entire game setting up the return of dead characters before bringing them back. That plus keeping them dead for 25 years ought to earn them better than stapling them to the cynical handling of Bison and Heihachi. Street Fighter and Tekken may have to do that because they're under big corporations that could otherwise make more money making other games, but SNK only wants to make fighting games. The easy money here would not be to try to revive a 26 year dead franchise at all, it'd be to make KoF16. And they've already announced that they're going to follow this by reviving an even less popular franchise that's been dead even longer. We are probably going to see a new Art of Fighting before we see a new Darkstalkers, Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive, Killer Instinct, Marvel or maybe even Virtua Fighter, despite Art of Fighting being by far the least popular. That's not a cynical, easy money decision on SNK's part. AoF will only return because the guys working there care about it, there's no business case for it. The only death I'm willing to hand-wave is the death of SNK itself.
My thing is why do they keep writing these villains to die just to have them come back. Heihachi must’ve been pronounced dead like five times. Just write storylines where they stay alive one fake out is cool, maybe even two, but it gets excessive after sometime.
No one escapes from death They just have to actually be killed, which most if they time they're not, they're just left in situations where they probably died.
As a life long SNK fan and a big fan of Geese Howard (he's one of my mains), I'll actually be pissed if he comes back in City if the Wolves. I have always loved that for the most part SNK doesn't give into the peer pressure of "bad guy is popular so we'll just bring him back". Rugal is famously popular and stayed dead for 15 real life years before they found a lore reason to bring him back. To take my point further, Billy has always been Geese's right hand man and that's kinda it. Now that Billy is back (since he wasn't in Mark of the Wolves) I'm so much more interested in knowing how he's grown as a character now that Geese is no longer around. He's the head of the company now, there's so much they could do with that. I sincerely hope SNK doesn't just throw that and any possible character development away.
I agree, unless it's explicitly non-canon or something similar to Kazumi in Tekken 7 and Joker in Injustice 2 where the only times they are dead and only appear in a boss fight and/or flashbacks
@@thesilentsociety3252 what? where did you heard about that? There is no plan and no urgency for merging the timeline because AoF's timeframe are before Fatal Fury, and KOF are alternate universe where every SNK ip's are there as a guest.
it really is too bad that decent storytelling takes a backseat in basically every fighting game because the characters are definitely good enough to deserve a proper story
"Why bother with the story of a fighting game? " I mean, a story makes us care about the characters, their conflicts and personal journeys. It deeply bonds the player with the game. And it does not even need a whole mode, since a character interaction before a versus match, it's also telling a story. Character deaths builds stakes. If they are brought back everytime without a reasonable explanation, why even bother connecting with what can happen with the rest of the cast in future entries?
Keep in mind that if Geese is brought back as a full character in Fatal Fury, that's going to lessen the huge impact when Geese is revealed as a playable character for Art of Fighting where he's still alive, because it takes place before Fatal Fury. That's a franchise that desperately needs him to hype up their roster. Geese can have his Heihachi moment in Art of Fighting where he comes back in his younger form, and not even need a cheap plot contrivance. Fatal Fury can maybe have crusty Nightmare Geese, but Art of Fighting needs fresh Geese, with maximum anticipation built up around his return. (Make it also Jeff Bogard's fighting game debut and they'll get the game in front of even more eyes unfamiliar with AoF but who know Terry.)
Maybe something interesting could be made out of having your main villain retire to some farm or whatever, not necessarily becoming a good person, but accepting that they've been defeated. That way the impact of their "death" remains, but they can still canonically show up to throw some punches while a new villain takes center stage. It might be a hard sell with some characters, but moving them into a side character role might be the best way to keep their gameplay around while remaining story-friendly if they really care about that. Plus it would really be funny to see a big bad guy act the same way they do world domination as they do like... fishing or something...
This was actually Thanos' original fate after he lost in _Infinity Gauntlet_ - retired to some backwater planet and became a farmer (you see a variation of this in _Endgame_ , except that was after Thanos _won_ , while in the comics, that was after Thanos _lost_ ). At least for a little while.
My question is why do characters need a canonical story justification to come back to the roster? We don't expect what-if characters like Violent Ken or Purple Nakoruru to come true, we don't expect guest characters like Noctis or the TMNT to become canonical to the series's lore, and we don't expect DLC costumes to show up in story mode cutscenes, so why mangle it all just to bring back X character when you can just have that character and just keep them dead in the story itself?
We don't expect iconic, franchise-defining villains to stay dead forever. We just ask that they stay dead for at least ONE SINGLE GAME and return with more fanfare than "Oh yeah, they're just one of the DLC characters."
hate to be that guy / a buzzkill here, but the budgets to develop new games in these franchises at the level of production they're at now would probably make our heads spin. They're pouring money and manpower into it like it really might just be the last game the company makes (initial sales should pretty obviously disprove that though). Successive DLCs get less return on investment with each season, so they gotta make the "safe" choice knowing one of the earlier seasons will be met with as much fanfare as a DLC can get, and ensure many future seasons with more returning favorites and the guest character you never dreamed of fighting your faves. It's pretty cynicism-inducing for us fighting game oldheads but it's the nature of the business.
Because they are too iconic and new villains can’t match them. Great for those dlc bucks. They even made Heihachi look younger so they are most likely keeping him alive going forward. At this point i just accepted that a logical story is not their main focus. Which makes me sad, but on the other hand i get it, because even i can’t wait to play Heihachi and i’m maining Bison
New villains 100% can and do match them, not always but many times. The thing is nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and it's hard for a lot of people to logic putting in the time to get to know a new character when they have a popular character right here with 20+ years of history. I personally don't mind bringing back classic characters, but I like a balance of the new with the old.
@JustNardo This, exactly. While I personally believe newerr villains (and heroes, as well) can very much stack up to the classics, the belief that the classics can "never be replaced" comes very much from the practice these companies have of forcing these characters to stay in all the time, even when it doesn't make sense. If the creators of these games didn't constantly forcibly bring the characters back in the old days, it would be much easier for people to accept the new characters in these newer releases. Even though it, too, still falls into this trend, I think King of Fighters has been much better about managing the dynamic between new characters, audience reception, and maintaining a dynamic story.
okay bring back baek and the 1st armor king/kunimistu ..write them in as canon too...if you're going to bring back the dead and be okay with it fine bring back the others in some weird way too
@@selfimprovement5873 As long as those who are not part of the problem, like you 4, can only come up with “ehm actually, they totally could, even though it never happened 🤓”, as an argument, i’ll gladly be the part of the problem. The “i only started playing fighting games a few years ago” energy is very strong here. No, Bison and Heihachi will never be replaced, as they simply became too iconic through decades, get over it.
The ironic part is that Street Fighter is, at the same time, the best and the worst at bringing back older villains. They put Sagat into a path of vengeance but had him grow out of it, then they brought back Seth as a crazed defective shell of his former self and even gave Gill a proper prequel to his appearance in SF3. The only villain they keep fumbling is Bison
Shang Tsung in MK11: Gets turned to temporal dust Bison in SF5: Gets turned into energy and flattened by ruble Heihachi in T7: Melted in literal Lava All 3 coming back in the next game: Tis but a scratch.
At least MK just flipped the table and threw everything up in the air after the end of MK11. "So, Liu Kang is god and he remade the universe but because it turns out he likes selli... I mean, fighting baddies, he decided he's going to make true his own fanfic version of all the Mortal Kombat that has ever happened. This is what you're playing through from now on"
MK11 Shang Tsung survived due to timeline divergence. In one timeline, yes Liu Kang erased him, but in another he killed Liu Kang and absorbed his soul. Bison is known for possessing other bodies. Heihachi has no reason to survive melting by lava, he is just human.
@@thesilentsociety3252 Kazuya was thrown in a dormant volcano + Devil gene + modifications by G Corp. So its not the same. Plus he at least sat out T3/time skip from T2.
I loved the longer in-depth discussion style on an interesting topic that rarely really gets talked about, would like to see more videos like this. Learned a ton I didn't know about, like Geese's wife and how she really is.
Its easy, they have no creativity. They kill off a character, try to make a new character with no build up or just hanging on the coattails of the previous big bad (JP was a big name in Shadaloo but only just now is in the limelight). They always connect the new big bad with the old making us always think of the old boss and failing the new boss.
Given Terry's Hidden Gear pays homage to the 90's Obari anime trilogy, I'm not surprised if they handle Geese's inexplicable survival by taking cues from _there_ as well. Heck, might as well add in Krauser for the heck of it (We never see him _actually_ die, only Terry's words to take into account for that)
I understand that characters are going to keep being brought back. However, I feel that if the plot of the game's story was that character's death, have them skip the next game in the series. Allow for their death to have weight, and in the case of villains allow another/new big bad to present the conflict and challenge the remaining characters. Then after we've had a game to miss them bring them back. That would be fine.
To make it clear I am absolutely pro geese's return, although as the video goes into I try to give reasons/outs for it. Basically he's a cool friggin character and todays dead guy is tomorrows alive and well in fighting games so its only one handwave explanation away from being reality lol. Like Rocks fine and all, but I wanna hear that anger when I hear DOUBLE REPPUKEN lol
Yep. Bison died in Alpha, in 2 and 5. I mean if we put the Street Fighter games on chronological order ( not in release order), you can justify Bison return because before SF 6 there was SF 3 and he wasn't present in those games
Ima say it. Fuck bringing Geese back. I kinda want old master versions of Ryo and Robert. Like I know we have Marco, but we could still atleast get Mr. Karate 2. It is technically cannon thanks to Buri-ki 1
The thing that bothers me about it is folks coming in droves to act like anybody with any investment in the actual stories of a fighting game series is a loon that's doing it wrong.
There's also the matter of King of Fighters 14 where this THING _points to Verse (the final boss of KOF 14)_ shows up and is supposedly an entity comprised of souls of those who died in the KOF franchise... And by destroying this thing, released all the souls and revived a lot of past bad guys from the KOF series into KOF 15 such as Rugal, Goenitz, Team Orochi (Yashiro, Shermie, and CHRIS), Ash Crimson, with the possibility that Krizalid and Igniz might've also returned from the dead as well. And that's only the ones that were confirmed based off a KoF Mangaka... We don't even know if other characters like Mukai, Magaki, Zero, Clone Zero, Ron, Glugan, and Saiki have returned as well... or even if they might bring back augmented versions like OMEGA Rugal.
Fighting game developers have no balls to kill off anyone, that's why. All jokes asides, I think this is genuinely true, they just refused to move on and evolve. When they tried, Soul Calibur V happens. Please just make DLC characters separate from story mode and stick to the character death. For Tekken 8, They should have brought Heihachi back as Robot Heihachi with Human Heihachi as a alternative skin. That would have made Heihachi the literally King of "Iron" Fist.
They do have balls to kill off anyone but because of WE PLAYERS refused to move on and evolve (probably some devs too but the main factor is popularity from players). It's the reason story mode exist but they all sucked because the villains will come back again and some characters that has character development that will change like their moves, remove some moves or retiring and changed to someone like a student or son/daughter will stopped or even forgot about it and this is because we can't accept the changes.
I think the main problem that nobody wants to admit is that a lot of fighting games have pretty garbage stories and the developers generally speaking, don't care about the story. It doesn't help that most fighting games are Japanese and most Japanese media has horrible stories, plot, and next to no character development. Or that most games have garbage stories in general.
@@jellojiggler1693 how are you saying Japanese games have bad writing when lots of western media have the same thing? MK specifically because it’s a western fighting game and a bunch want the Japanese fighting games to follow it, yet we’ve seen 4 reboots of MK over the past decade. You wanna talk about how Japanese media has bad writing? Ill take it further that Western media writers wants to shove in their politics because they can’t handle the fact no one actually cares what they think, and only use games/movies/tv etc. as a substitute to spew whatever political drivel they can instead of writing the thing they’ve been paid to.
Personally i prefer not to bring back Geese story wise, the idea of MotW was basically based on Geese's dead and legacy If you want play Geese they can do a non Canon Character or Nightmare Geese
I think the two plausible reasons for bringing back Geese for CotW are the last two you mentioned. Either he comes back as Nightmare Geese, and he's a ghost or sticking with whole "new generation" theme of Garou and now CotW and having Rock's mom be essentially the new Geese Howard.
I really did like that one Twitter post drawing the comparisons of Tekken being basically WWE. It just works so well in my mind with how Tekken is pretty damn unique with how it handles its melodrama and cheesy moments so Heihachi coming back suits it all. That said, I have a hard time applying that same viewpoint to something like street fighter. Bison and potentially the rest of the four kings coming back just feels lame even if they it’s potentially better for business than adding more sf3 and 4 characters
I think a big part is that if a villian skips a game in todays era, hes gone for 6-9 years. As opposed to the 90s where games were coming out yearly wed onpy lose them for a year or 2
My only issue with dead characters coming back is how quick the turn around is. Like at least wait until season 2 or 3 for them to come back. It's hard to be hyped for a character returning that is only been gone for like 6 months.
well for geese the turnaround would be by the time city of the wolves comes out it would have been 27 years since he was last playable in a fatal fury game
I'd rather have a flashback to when the character was supposed to die, and when you play as them you're going through a retelling of their story leading up to their death even if it took place years earlier in the storyline to the rest of the game.
This topic will never not be amusing to me. People complain about not being able to play their main because they’re dead. Meanwhile, the majority of the SF characters I like rarely make the cut for new games and I’m forced to learn another character with each entry. And it’s not because the character died. They just weren’t popular enough for the majority to care about. Never a dull moment.
Remember that Tekken 7 made the wife of a main character a brand new character, and it was all told in flashback. Kazumi was dead. Completely. But she was still a whole new original character with a completely different moveset than any other Mishima. They could bring Geese back just in flashback, and then have him playable in arcade modes, or make his story something different telling the events leading up to CotW. A lot of players don't know the FF lore, just like they didn't know the Tekken lore, and just as how T7 reviewed some key moments from the previous games, CotW could do the same thing.
Bison, at least, became an amnesiac and lore wise, he’s come back multiple times. Heihachi, we’ll have to wait and see. I could see Geese in CoTW via the same way Kazumi was playable in Tekken 7.
What a great brake down of this, I've always loved when villains come back and i love even more the epic, badass and sometimes goofy or cliche ways they pull it around. Hell i love when they dont even give a reason or even a small reason as to why or how they are back lol
I feel like we, as a fanbase, should list down the essential characters that have stayed dead. Like, how comic fans used to say that the only characters who stayed dead was Jason, Bucky and Uncle Ben. For now, I can't think of anyone
Jason and Bucky coming back were both solid stories that led to interesting characters and was overall a very positive thing. Versus say like... Psylocke coming back which was a handwave and a half. And of course now the status quo is death has died and nobody stays dead for long.
Fighting game lore is as contrived as Doom Eternal lore, where half the story is there because they had designed such cool looking environments they needed some way to justify sending you there. And I love both.
Marco Rodrigues, formerly known as Khuhshood Butt, formerly known as Marco Rodrigez in Japan. Sorry USA, the man is Brazilian, so he needs to have a proper Brazilian name. I am glad SNK listened us Brazilians about his name.
I really don't understand why fighting game developers think that if a dead character returns as a playable character, they must also return in the story. Guest characters in most fighting games are expected to be non-canon and just there for gameplay reasons. Nobody was expecting Homelander's arcade mode in MK1 to be anything more than a "what-if" story, and nobody needs Tekken 8 to explain what Negan and Noctis were doing in the story of Tekken 7. So, why can't dead characters just be like guest characters?
The thing that made me actually believe Heihachi's death in Tekken 7, was the fact that his voice actor died. Japan tends to honor their voice actors a lot, and I've heard of some characters being retired from ongoing stories (in anime and games) in order to respect their actors death. At most I figured he'd return as some kind of ghost that wasn't story relevant but playable so they could just reuse his old voicelines... Buuut clearly I underestimated his popularity. He's front and center in the new story stuff, so he's definitely been recast. Times change, and yet they stay the same.
What I honestly think CotW will do is have Rock fight nightmare geese as the personification of his dark power. That was you still have him without needing to revive him which I think would appeal both sides
I wish it was more common to just bring them back as playable characters and keep em dead in lore or something. I know people like them, and they make money, but its so boring in terms of story to have Bison be the bad guy every single time
I do think bringing dead characters back as ghosts is a great solution. Even outside of KOF, Bison comes back in the form of a psycho specter in SFV Ed’s story mode. (Of course, it’s a bit too late in bison’s case.)
So, apparently the reason why the volcano didn’t kill Heihachi is because those things have a mortality rate that is LOW. And I mean low - according to howstuffworks, "around 278,000 people have died since the year 1500 as a result of volcanic activity, which averages about 540 people a year for the past 517 years."
Honestly, arcade times KoF formula had this right: 94, 95, 96, 97... all good, we rolling with the lore and ended it with tying up the issue with the big baddie 98 - This is a "Dream Match", folks. Basically anything goes, pay it no particular heed when it comes to continuity etc... 99, 2001, 2001 - New story chapter, more plot, more lore! Another big baddie that comes up and is eventually taken down 2002 - Well, remember that "Dream Match" thing? We just wrapped up a bunch of plot, let's do one of those again 2003+ - All right, everyone, new plot.... It allowed KoF to enjoy the best of both worlds. I can understand character's popularity and whatnot but I can wait to get to play Vice again! It's a shame this doesn't really work any more with the current release cycle. I kind of wish SNK would go back to that model, adapting it to modern situations, this would allow them to get to pretend KoF HAS plot again Let's imagine there's a KOF '26 that's building on KOF '25 with more plot and whatnot and it's a standalone game BUT.... it reuses a lot of assets from 25 because it's kind of like DLC or an expansion pack AND it makes use of online store functionality so that if you're coming in fresh, it's full price. But if you already have KOF25, then, you get a huge discount because what you're buying is like an expansion pack. A bit like how the old Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War games were structured in the past Ultimately, for serialised works like this, the artistic side (plot, design, etc...) will always be in conflict with the commercial side ("well, are you NOT going to sell them back X?").... and, y'know... I'm here salivating for the chance to play Vice again once she comes out, I get WHY it happens, it's just unfortunate, I liked the silly plot of KoF and the SNK fighting game universe in general. How it felt these things were intertwined but now it's just an indistinct soup of background noise
Samurai Shodown games (except 4: Amakusa's Revenge) have different Final Bosses, counting Oboro's sentient weapons (MC of Warriors Rage was Seishiro) and Golba (MC of Edge of Destiny was Princess Suzu). Art of Fighting 3 has Wyler instead of Mr. Big, given the game was about Robert's story. RBFF Special Dominated Mind has White (voiced by the late, great Keiji Fujiwara) who mind-controlled Billy Kane.
This is why I love Guilty Gear they had Justice and Kliff who are characters that died from the first game and never came back to life, the other time they came back as playable characters was more of a retelling of their story from first game.
I got quite a few! Check the playlists on the main page scrolling down and I got a playlist full of lore vids. I can only make lore vids every now and then but I got a few years built up
I think this Heihachi is a memory of him, like how Kazumi was still dead in Tekken 7, but she was playable and looked as young as she was when she died like 30 years ago.
There's that saying, a stories hero is only as good as its' villain. It takes an interesting villain to elevate the story and give our characters something to fight against, against the backdrop of characters fighting other characters. Because then the fighter is not only fighting against the villain, they are fighting against what they represent. I enjoy the storylines of fighting games...but their storylines can turn into comic books, with larger than life characters. And we know characters don't stay dead in comic books. A bit of retconning, weird plot devices, or multiverse shenanigans will bring back fan favorite characters, if the developers so deem it.
17:06 - I know, he's my favorite villain too! But for the sake of the story of Fatal Fury, don't bring him back from the dead. Make a nightmare Geese that is not real and lives in Terry's bad nights of sleep or something, at best. I really can't take Bison and Heihachi seriously because *I know* they won't die no matter what. SNK makes great stories for its games, and characters in said stories can't be more important the the stories themselves.
Nah, I'd severely doubt Marie Heinlein would even be a playable character, let alone an inheritor for Geese's moveset. For Heihachi, there are at least some hints concerning him being alive and also younger. For starters, in the shot where he comes out and says "I am Heihachi Mishima," he's wearing different clothing than when he was thrown into the lava in T7. So I don't think this is a shot of Heihachi coming out of the lava that Kazuya threw him into, I think this is a completely different point afterwards that takes place during T8's story followup. Like I think the story will set up a mysterious Tekken Monk leader who has Heihachi's moves and w/e, and at some point this character will get thrown into a volcano or something similar, only to emerge and "reveal" that he's "Heihachi." But who knows...it might not even actually be the same Heihachi from T7. It makes me think of the character Amiba from Fist of the North Star. He tricks Kenshiro into thinking he's the real Toki, one of the Ken's "older brothers," by getting an identical scar to Toki's on his back to trick Ken. Perhaps the fist on Heihachi's chest is serving the same purpose, but I'm probably just overthinking it and it's simply just Heihachi.
weird that Heihachi looks younger and darker-haired than before he "died" while the story trailer kept focusing on the one masked monk doing Heihachi's moves and beating everyone's asses. We see Heihachi wearing the monks' "iron fist" insignia but the masked monk has long white hair. Maybe that's just a part of the outfit idk. Starting to think it might actually be a totally different guy, but the chest scar still has me questioning if he really did survive...
I think part of the reason there's discourse around Heihachi and Bison is because these characters have essentially been central focus points of their franchises where their death is made a big deal. And before you have any chance to miss them they're DLC for the franchise. I think so far overall M. Bison has a better angle where Bison is not just back and on top of things like nothing happened but overall, artistically the thing to do should be to at least let them be dead for one game. Just let the story play out like they died. You could even tease them being alive at the end. At least make them like the last DLC to come? I understand that the nature of the games means you are probably eventually just going to want any character back. But I posit there's ways to do that that don't involve necesarilly breaking the story. I'm gonna go into some examples and not all of them are villains or dead but just to show you. In Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance Liu Kang was dead. They broke his neck onscreen, to show that the new villains were not screwing around. I mean they wern't new but you know what I mean. He wasn't in the game. And then the sequel came out and he was playable...but still dead. They had a corpse that looked and played like him but they wern't hard commiting to the corpse being HIM him. They didn't just immediatly revive him but they wern't exactly brushing aside his death. I think something like that, where you acknowledge the death and hold on to it, while alsonot passing by the chance to have the character playable. In Soul Calibur , Nightmare was Sigfried when holding Soul Edge, the evil sword of corruption. Eventually his arc is that he stops wielding Soul Edge, the evil sword of corruption and finds his father's real killer or whatever. But now what did they do, stop having Nightmare forever? No they made a new Nightmare that was just independent by itself . So that solves that problem. This is also what Kage is to Ryu/Evil Ryu, You could do something like that where the villain in story is like a shadow or an aspect of the deceased person, or maybe like a robot with their memories. Something like that where the character is still dead but still playable and who are you to say this replicant wouldn't have the exact moves and hitboxes the real thing could. Here's one thing I've thought of that I don't think any big time fighting games have done so far: You remember when Gouken came back even though he's Dead Mentor Dead, The Most Dead You Can Be? They explained it with...I'm sure they came up with something. What if instead though Gouken was just a representation of Ryu just mastering his abilities to Gouken levels. Like we in game see it as Gouken but when it goes to story we see that this is just Ryu doing what Master Gouken would do. You can explain it like that. With Geese if they aren't planning to make him the final boss because instead of becoming a street pizza he fell into a portal to The Next Dimension or whatever you could, at least for a while, explain that he's like a mass delusion. Everyone's infected with the Geese virus so when they think they're fighting him it's all int heir head. Something like that. Although in City of the Wolves... Geese just being back is a bit more earned. There hasnt been one of these in awhile, so it's like...less weird.
I dont mind dead villains coming back, but only as dlc and not involved in the current story or theres an actually cool and unique reason that theyre back and not just a "oh they just lived bc they were powerful". Nightmare Geese was perfect and i hope COTW does bring back Nightmare Geese. But bison and hei? I just cant help but feel like "really? Again?"
I would say that in cases like M Bison, I feel that having a character that takes his moveset and carrys on his legacy would have been a stronger idea because it keeps the legacy of the character, dows something new with them, and keeps the impact of the death; my problem with Bison returning is that it was done too soon and it has been done so often that his appearances don't feel as special especially since he doesn't have much progression which makes him feel more like an idea rather than a character and even doing something like bringing him back but as a new character but retains a similar personality and motivation as he use to but in a different way can be a way to keep the legacy of the character while keeping the stories progression. I can't say much on Heihachi because the story dlc isn't out yet but I think the main problem people have is that they want these games to move forward in their rosters like adding more third strike characters in Street Fighter or giving characters like Bruce a dlc slot that haven't been seen in awhile in comparison to villains that are present in every game despite a game like Street Fighter having a large amount of villains to expand on before Bison like G who is still a unknown character to the franchise. I think its cool that people have their mains back but them having story significance feels like it takes away from the story and stifles the story from progressing with new characters and stories which worries me.
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So this is something thats been stirring in me since the Heihachi Announcement at Evo. Its more than just Heihachi though, Bison coming back recently on top of Heihachi made it clear that death isn't the end. To be clear thats ALWAYS been the case, going back to the 90s in fighting games but with two super high profile characters back to back it almost begets a trend and one thats worth talking about, kind of all leading up to the one death that's mostly stuck for the last 25 years, Geese Howard. Geese being one of the most famous video game bosses of all time, with the upcoming Fatal Fury City of the Wolves... does he come back as well?
since namco has the license for naruto namco used edo tensei on heihachi
Roofle, you are the best, man. I've watched your content back since around DBFZ, and your hard work and dedication towards the genre I love has always been appreciated 😎🫡
@@killerkind187 thank you for the kind words 🙏
As you said, "super high profile characters". Zero chances in hell they wouldn't give you those characters. Base? Probably not, as some of them are related to the story within that entry. And even if it wasn't, they wouldn't pass up making bank if it means putting them as "base" in an edition years down the road. Also pretty sure someone out there wants to play them. "How are they going to play in this one???" is the question consensus asks every. Single. Entry. With updated looks and different mechanics/features one would be hard pressed to not be slightly curious. Moot video. But I and many others appreciate the click bait. Much love and respect.
To be fair it "stuck" for 25 years because there hasn't been a Fatal Fury game in 25 years.
Then again, SNK did effectively erase K9999 for 2 decades until they brought him back in KOF15...just because they thought it'd be fun.
They could go the injustice 2 route like what they did with joker. Terry has a nightmare of the fight with Geese in the story and boom satisfies all parties. Geese stays dead but he can still be in the roster without breaking canon.
developers could bring back dead villains as playable characters and make them non cannon to the story
Forget the story. It's all about the gameplay.
@@joshuawoodard6998if they don’t care about the story then why even have a story?
@@Toxic-Pyro for people that care. I'm saying the story doesn't matter in terms of just letting people play who they want. Gameplay comes first.
the Oni / Evil Ryu treatment
@@Toxic-Pyro I think more of it as how KOF 2002 and 98 were dream-match-up type of fighting games. Where storyline is not what matters here, there's not story, is just an arcade and fighting game of the franchise where everyone is here, you can make every match up possible.
Except team sports.
Kazuya really messed up by tossing Heihachi into the one cotton candy lava volcano on the planet. lol what an amateur
Would it be any worse if that volcano happens to be a Lazarus Pit?!
Uh, about that…
Volcanos have a low mortality rate.
Heihachi may have been pissed that Kazuya got revived, but in retrospect he's probably laughing that Kazuya needed some scientific corporation to get revived in the first place.
@@XellosNitrue like it was stroke of luck that G corporation even took an interest into Kazuya's devil gene in the first place.
Kazuya should have pick a different volcano since he survived the same volcano.
Speaking of Geese, the most plausible option I feel like him coming back as Nightmare, but with it based on his description in the RB games. As in, make him a literal nightmare in the characters' dream, that way he still exists and doesn't really involve too much with the bigger story.
I am relatively confident Gesse will come back as "Nightmare Geese", and I'm fine with that.
yea but the thing is, Nightmare Geese isn't "alive", he's basically a secret boss in fatal fury where Terry has a horrible dream reliving the day he killed Geese.
In fact, if Nightmare Geese ends up playable, Geese will still stay dead, which would not harm the story at all really. Plus, Garou already hinted Geese's dead wife was actually alive and just being hidden by Kain, so I doubt they'll also revive Geese.
@@Erroratu
Im pretty sure he knows that dude. That was the point of his comment. Bringing back a dead character as a nightmare so it doesn’t mess with the canon.
Heihachi coming back is the biggest betrayal ive seen from a developer in the fgc. M.Bison at least had that sinister smile right before he blows up that let you know he still has plans.
No it’s the biggest betrayal amongst the casuals. We’ve already seen the fgc reactions, they loved it
@@j2sketchykinda fucks the story over making a lot of takken 7 story a slap in the face
Bro swim dive in lava like kars in the Vulcano
@@j2sketchy talking story and lore reasons, not to mention Harada himself said hes dead for good and hes not coming back
@@toasttt6270 Yh that’s why I said amongst the “causal” meaning those who care more about story than gameplay.
Honestly there's a simple solution to this, just have them be playable in the game, but still dead in story line
I hope SNK takes the time to make Kain more compelling before smashing the big red Geese button.
it'd be nice but there's basically nothing to him other that he dresses nice. You'd have to invent stuff from whole cloth vs you got one of the most iconic gaming characters of all time sitting right there.
@@rooflemonger Then again, we still do not know much about the real truth and mystery about the maternal side of Rock's own family. Perhaps this is what we would likely be looking into in CotW.
@@crimcrusader8459I really hope that is the case and not just reviving Geese again. It is understandable in kof because that is meant to be crossover series with its own characters and timeline. I hope they just build up Kain and explore new characters.
Everybody always predict Nightmare Geese as DLC, but nobody suggests Sweet Dream Geese.
I think that's a bit dismissive towards SNK's lore integrity. It's not just Geese who wasn't in Garou, every Fatal Fury character was missing whether alive or dead, except a re-designed Terry. The plot of KoF14 wasn't exactly Pulitzer Prize worthy writing, but they still spent an entire game setting up the return of dead characters before bringing them back. That plus keeping them dead for 25 years ought to earn them better than stapling them to the cynical handling of Bison and Heihachi. Street Fighter and Tekken may have to do that because they're under big corporations that could otherwise make more money making other games, but SNK only wants to make fighting games. The easy money here would not be to try to revive a 26 year dead franchise at all, it'd be to make KoF16. And they've already announced that they're going to follow this by reviving an even less popular franchise that's been dead even longer. We are probably going to see a new Art of Fighting before we see a new Darkstalkers, Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive, Killer Instinct, Marvel or maybe even Virtua Fighter, despite Art of Fighting being by far the least popular. That's not a cynical, easy money decision on SNK's part. AoF will only return because the guys working there care about it, there's no business case for it. The only death I'm willing to hand-wave is the death of SNK itself.
Honestly, my only disappointment with the Heihachi reveal is that they didn't bring him back as a robot.
To be honest, this is what I was expecting. I was expecting Lee to build the ultimate Combot with Heihachi's personality and everything 😂
Cyber Heihachi.
we still have time for a Pjack reveal
Like Raidou in DOA?
Should have brought him back as a ferral man-bear hybrid
My thing is why do they keep writing these villains to die just to have them come back. Heihachi must’ve been pronounced dead like five times. Just write storylines where they stay alive one fake out is cool, maybe even two, but it gets excessive after sometime.
Harada managed to ruin like the 2nd best Tekken story after Tekken 5 just because Namco was pissed people werent buying skins from the Tekken Shop
You could say Geese's resurrection and inclusion into the game is... Predictable.
I'll see myself out.
😂u should be arrested.
🤣🤣
@@fennicfox4600 I believe you misspelled "predictabo"
As you leave, you should run
No one escapes from death
They just have to actually be killed, which most if they time they're not, they're just left in situations where they probably died.
As a life long SNK fan and a big fan of Geese Howard (he's one of my mains), I'll actually be pissed if he comes back in City if the Wolves. I have always loved that for the most part SNK doesn't give into the peer pressure of "bad guy is popular so we'll just bring him back". Rugal is famously popular and stayed dead for 15 real life years before they found a lore reason to bring him back.
To take my point further, Billy has always been Geese's right hand man and that's kinda it. Now that Billy is back (since he wasn't in Mark of the Wolves) I'm so much more interested in knowing how he's grown as a character now that Geese is no longer around. He's the head of the company now, there's so much they could do with that. I sincerely hope SNK doesn't just throw that and any possible character development away.
I agree, unless it's explicitly non-canon or something similar to Kazumi in Tekken 7 and Joker in Injustice 2 where the only times they are dead and only appear in a boss fight and/or flashbacks
Well, he gonna come back at some point since SNK is planning to merge AOF, FF & KOF timelines into one singular timeline.
@@thesilentsociety3252 what? where did you heard about that? There is no plan and no urgency for merging the timeline because AoF's timeframe are before Fatal Fury, and KOF are alternate universe where every SNK ip's are there as a guest.
it really is too bad that decent storytelling takes a backseat in basically every fighting game because the characters are definitely good enough to deserve a proper story
Whomp Whomp
"Why bother with the story of a fighting game? " I mean, a story makes us care about the characters, their conflicts and personal journeys. It deeply bonds the player with the game. And it does not even need a whole mode, since a character interaction before a versus match, it's also telling a story.
Character deaths builds stakes. If they are brought back everytime without a reasonable explanation, why even bother connecting with what can happen with the rest of the cast in future entries?
Keep in mind that if Geese is brought back as a full character in Fatal Fury, that's going to lessen the huge impact when Geese is revealed as a playable character for Art of Fighting where he's still alive, because it takes place before Fatal Fury. That's a franchise that desperately needs him to hype up their roster. Geese can have his Heihachi moment in Art of Fighting where he comes back in his younger form, and not even need a cheap plot contrivance. Fatal Fury can maybe have crusty Nightmare Geese, but Art of Fighting needs fresh Geese, with maximum anticipation built up around his return. (Make it also Jeff Bogard's fighting game debut and they'll get the game in front of even more eyes unfamiliar with AoF but who know Terry.)
Maybe something interesting could be made out of having your main villain retire to some farm or whatever, not necessarily becoming a good person, but accepting that they've been defeated. That way the impact of their "death" remains, but they can still canonically show up to throw some punches while a new villain takes center stage. It might be a hard sell with some characters, but moving them into a side character role might be the best way to keep their gameplay around while remaining story-friendly if they really care about that.
Plus it would really be funny to see a big bad guy act the same way they do world domination as they do like... fishing or something...
This was actually Thanos' original fate after he lost in _Infinity Gauntlet_ - retired to some backwater planet and became a farmer (you see a variation of this in _Endgame_ , except that was after Thanos _won_ , while in the comics, that was after Thanos _lost_ ). At least for a little while.
I think seth is probably my favorite method of bringing back a villain. A wondering insane fucked up vessel.
My question is why do characters need a canonical story justification to come back to the roster? We don't expect what-if characters like Violent Ken or Purple Nakoruru to come true, we don't expect guest characters like Noctis or the TMNT to become canonical to the series's lore, and we don't expect DLC costumes to show up in story mode cutscenes, so why mangle it all just to bring back X character when you can just have that character and just keep them dead in the story itself?
Money
Why is Zangief piledriving Honda in his Alpha 3 ending the funniest thing I've seen today. xD
We could have had Hachi; Lee's trusty robot assistant as the Heihachi return. Dressed in Heihachi's getup from Tekken 3.
We don't expect iconic, franchise-defining villains to stay dead forever.
We just ask that they stay dead for at least ONE SINGLE GAME and return with more fanfare than "Oh yeah, they're just one of the DLC characters."
facts
This needs to be the top comment
hate to be that guy / a buzzkill here, but the budgets to develop new games in these franchises at the level of production they're at now would probably make our heads spin. They're pouring money and manpower into it like it really might just be the last game the company makes (initial sales should pretty obviously disprove that though). Successive DLCs get less return on investment with each season, so they gotta make the "safe" choice knowing one of the earlier seasons will be met with as much fanfare as a DLC can get, and ensure many future seasons with more returning favorites and the guest character you never dreamed of fighting your faves. It's pretty cynicism-inducing for us fighting game oldheads but it's the nature of the business.
@@RicochetForce yep they need to keep that same energy and bring back ALL the dead characters that they killed off
Because they are too iconic and new villains can’t match them. Great for those dlc bucks. They even made Heihachi look younger so they are most likely keeping him alive going forward. At this point i just accepted that a logical story is not their main focus. Which makes me sad, but on the other hand i get it, because even i can’t wait to play Heihachi and i’m maining Bison
New villains 100% can and do match them, not always but many times. The thing is nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and it's hard for a lot of people to logic putting in the time to get to know a new character when they have a popular character right here with 20+ years of history.
I personally don't mind bringing back classic characters, but I like a balance of the new with the old.
@JustNardo This, exactly. While I personally believe newerr villains (and heroes, as well) can very much stack up to the classics, the belief that the classics can "never be replaced" comes very much from the practice these companies have of forcing these characters to stay in all the time, even when it doesn't make sense. If the creators of these games didn't constantly forcibly bring the characters back in the old days, it would be much easier for people to accept the new characters in these newer releases. Even though it, too, still falls into this trend, I think King of Fighters has been much better about managing the dynamic between new characters, audience reception, and maintaining a dynamic story.
okay bring back baek and the 1st armor king/kunimistu ..write them in as canon too...if you're going to bring back the dead and be okay with it fine bring back the others in some weird way too
You're part of the PROBLEM!!! 😂😂😂
@@selfimprovement5873 As long as those who are not part of the problem, like you 4, can only come up with “ehm actually, they totally could, even though it never happened 🤓”, as an argument, i’ll gladly be the part of the problem. The “i only started playing fighting games a few years ago” energy is very strong here. No, Bison and Heihachi will never be replaced, as they simply became too iconic through decades, get over it.
The ironic part is that Street Fighter is, at the same time, the best and the worst at bringing back older villains. They put Sagat into a path of vengeance but had him grow out of it, then they brought back Seth as a crazed defective shell of his former self and even gave Gill a proper prequel to his appearance in SF3. The only villain they keep fumbling is Bison
Shang Tsung in MK11: Gets turned to temporal dust
Bison in SF5: Gets turned into energy and flattened by ruble
Heihachi in T7: Melted in literal Lava
All 3 coming back in the next game: Tis but a scratch.
Kazuya is back to life in TK4 after his lava bath. So at this point, it isn't a surprise Heihachi did too.
At least MK just flipped the table and threw everything up in the air after the end of MK11. "So, Liu Kang is god and he remade the universe but because it turns out he likes selli... I mean, fighting baddies, he decided he's going to make true his own fanfic version of all the Mortal Kombat that has ever happened. This is what you're playing through from now on"
MK11 Shang Tsung survived due to timeline divergence. In one timeline, yes Liu Kang erased him, but in another he killed Liu Kang and absorbed his soul. Bison is known for possessing other bodies. Heihachi has no reason to survive melting by lava, he is just human.
@@thesilentsociety3252 Kazuya was thrown in a dormant volcano + Devil gene + modifications by G Corp. So its not the same. Plus he at least sat out T3/time skip from T2.
@@thesilentsociety3252Kazuya was gone for YEARS instory and
Wasnt in Tekken 3 and had more than enough lore to survive
I loved the longer in-depth discussion style on an interesting topic that rarely really gets talked about, would like to see more videos like this. Learned a ton I didn't know about, like Geese's wife and how she really is.
I can bust out this style of vid every now and then, the heavy editing makes it as much work though as like 4 normal vids lol
If nobody's bothered with Heihachi's appearance being non canon in Tekken 5 i'd say we can go with that
Its easy, they have no creativity. They kill off a character, try to make a new character with no build up or just hanging on the coattails of the previous big bad (JP was a big name in Shadaloo but only just now is in the limelight). They always connect the new big bad with the old making us always think of the old boss and failing the new boss.
Given Terry's Hidden Gear pays homage to the 90's Obari anime trilogy, I'm not surprised if they handle Geese's inexplicable survival by taking cues from _there_ as well. Heck, might as well add in Krauser for the heck of it (We never see him _actually_ die, only Terry's words to take into account for that)
Only the movie showed Krauser's death which is why a lot of ppl think he died in the game.
Isn't Krauser alive and chilling as of Real Bout 2? He was defeated but wasn't killed.
I understand that characters are going to keep being brought back. However, I feel that if the plot of the game's story was that character's death, have them skip the next game in the series. Allow for their death to have weight, and in the case of villains allow another/new big bad to present the conflict and challenge the remaining characters.
Then after we've had a game to miss them bring them back. That would be fine.
To make it clear I am absolutely pro geese's return, although as the video goes into I try to give reasons/outs for it. Basically he's a cool friggin character and todays dead guy is tomorrows alive and well in fighting games so its only one handwave explanation away from being reality lol. Like Rocks fine and all, but I wanna hear that anger when I hear DOUBLE REPPUKEN lol
So many popular characters in media are coming back. We got Hugh Jackman and RDJ back in Marvel too!
Heihachi "Died" at the end of tekken 1 and the beginning of 5
and Bison died at the end of street fighter alpha and street fighter2
Yep. Bison died in Alpha, in 2 and 5. I mean if we put the Street Fighter games on chronological order ( not in release order), you can justify Bison return because before SF 6 there was SF 3 and he wasn't present in those games
HOLY SHIT I forgot about that alpha ending where Honda was piledrived to destroy shit!
Ima say it. Fuck bringing Geese back. I kinda want old master versions of Ryo and Robert. Like I know we have Marco, but we could still atleast get Mr. Karate 2. It is technically cannon thanks to Buri-ki 1
Money, but more importantly, everyone LOVES bad ass villains!
The thing that bothers me about it is folks coming in droves to act like anybody with any investment in the actual stories of a fighting game series is a loon that's doing it wrong.
There's also the matter of King of Fighters 14 where this THING _points to Verse (the final boss of KOF 14)_ shows up and is supposedly an entity comprised of souls of those who died in the KOF franchise... And by destroying this thing, released all the souls and revived a lot of past bad guys from the KOF series into KOF 15 such as Rugal, Goenitz, Team Orochi (Yashiro, Shermie, and CHRIS), Ash Crimson, with the possibility that Krizalid and Igniz might've also returned from the dead as well.
And that's only the ones that were confirmed based off a KoF Mangaka... We don't even know if other characters like Mukai, Magaki, Zero, Clone Zero, Ron, Glugan, and Saiki have returned as well... or even if they might bring back augmented versions like OMEGA Rugal.
Fighting game developers have no balls to kill off anyone, that's why. All jokes asides, I think this is genuinely true, they just refused to move on and evolve. When they tried, Soul Calibur V happens. Please just make DLC characters separate from story mode and stick to the character death. For Tekken 8, They should have brought Heihachi back as Robot Heihachi with Human Heihachi as a alternative skin. That would have made Heihachi the literally King of "Iron" Fist.
They do have balls to kill off anyone but because of WE PLAYERS refused to move on and evolve (probably some devs too but the main factor is popularity from players). It's the reason story mode exist but they all sucked because the villains will come back again and some characters that has character development that will change like their moves, remove some moves or retiring and changed to someone like a student or son/daughter will stopped or even forgot about it and this is because we can't accept the changes.
I think the main problem that nobody wants to admit is that a lot of fighting games have pretty garbage stories and the developers generally speaking, don't care about the story. It doesn't help that most fighting games are Japanese and most Japanese media has horrible stories, plot, and next to no character development. Or that most games have garbage stories in general.
@@jellojiggler1693 so explain how MK rebooting itself more than 4 times is better?
@@ShatteredPedestal7 I honestly don't see how this relates to my comment?
@@jellojiggler1693 how are you saying Japanese games have bad writing when lots of western media have the same thing? MK specifically because it’s a western fighting game and a bunch want the Japanese fighting games to follow it, yet we’ve seen 4 reboots of MK over the past decade. You wanna talk about how Japanese media has bad writing?
Ill take it further that Western media writers wants to shove in their politics because they can’t handle the fact no one actually cares what they think, and only use games/movies/tv etc. as a substitute to spew whatever political drivel they can instead of writing the thing they’ve been paid to.
Best FG RUclipsr. Helloooo an weeelcome is the much needed break after a day with the family 😅
Personally i prefer not to bring back Geese story wise, the idea of MotW was basically based on Geese's dead and legacy
If you want play Geese they can do a non Canon Character or Nightmare Geese
I think the two plausible reasons for bringing back Geese for CotW are the last two you mentioned. Either he comes back as Nightmare Geese, and he's a ghost or sticking with whole "new generation" theme of Garou and now CotW and having Rock's mom be essentially the new Geese Howard.
I really did like that one Twitter post drawing the comparisons of Tekken being basically WWE. It just works so well in my mind with how Tekken is pretty damn unique with how it handles its melodrama and cheesy moments so Heihachi coming back suits it all.
That said, I have a hard time applying that same viewpoint to something like street fighter. Bison and potentially the rest of the four kings coming back just feels lame even if they it’s potentially better for business than adding more sf3 and 4 characters
I think a big part is that if a villian skips a game in todays era, hes gone for 6-9 years. As opposed to the 90s where games were coming out yearly wed onpy lose them for a year or 2
My only issue with dead characters coming back is how quick the turn around is. Like at least wait until season 2 or 3 for them to come back. It's hard to be hyped for a character returning that is only been gone for like 6 months.
well for geese the turnaround would be by the time city of the wolves comes out it would have been 27 years since he was last playable in a fatal fury game
I'd rather have a flashback to when the character was supposed to die, and when you play as them you're going through a retelling of their story leading up to their death even if it took place years earlier in the storyline to the rest of the game.
Lol, that Zangief Honda combo was hilarious! I can't remember that from when I played it hella years ago.
As a Honda main since SF4 it just made me happy seeing him and Gief bro out. Low tiers/wrestlers/apes together strong.
This topic will never not be amusing to me. People complain about not being able to play their main because they’re dead.
Meanwhile, the majority of the SF characters I like rarely make the cut for new games and I’m forced to learn another character with each entry. And it’s not because the character died. They just weren’t popular enough for the majority to care about.
Never a dull moment.
19:48 - *THANK YOU*
Short answer: money
Remember that Tekken 7 made the wife of a main character a brand new character, and it was all told in flashback. Kazumi was dead. Completely. But she was still a whole new original character with a completely different moveset than any other Mishima. They could bring Geese back just in flashback, and then have him playable in arcade modes, or make his story something different telling the events leading up to CotW. A lot of players don't know the FF lore, just like they didn't know the Tekken lore, and just as how T7 reviewed some key moments from the previous games, CotW could do the same thing.
Bison, at least, became an amnesiac and lore wise, he’s come back multiple times. Heihachi, we’ll have to wait and see. I could see Geese in CoTW via the same way Kazumi was playable in Tekken 7.
What a great brake down of this, I've always loved when villains come back and i love even more the epic, badass and sometimes goofy or cliche ways they pull it around. Hell i love when they dont even give a reason or even a small reason as to why or how they are back lol
I feel like we, as a fanbase, should list down the essential characters that have stayed dead.
Like, how comic fans used to say that the only characters who stayed dead was Jason, Bucky and Uncle Ben.
For now, I can't think of anyone
Not necessarily a villain, but Cliff from guilty gear still has not come back. In canon he is dead and this is Daisuke’s vision.
Jason and Bucky coming back were both solid stories that led to interesting characters and was overall a very positive thing. Versus say like... Psylocke coming back which was a handwave and a half. And of course now the status quo is death has died and nobody stays dead for long.
@@SirLightsOut99 You're right
Cliff hasn't come back at all
Nash/charlie
Jun in Tekken.
Fighting game lore is as contrived as Doom Eternal lore, where half the story is there because they had designed such cool looking environments they needed some way to justify sending you there. And I love both.
Geese would be dope but his little brother Wolfgang Krauser needs some more screentime and recognition.
Marco Rodrigues, formerly known as Khuhshood Butt, formerly known as Marco Rodrigez in Japan. Sorry USA, the man is Brazilian, so he needs to have a proper Brazilian name. I am glad SNK listened us Brazilians about his name.
Loved this video.
hooray
Geese Howard is completely dead!! Until he comes back!!
Clearly the solution is to turn him into a robot. We have Omega Rugal with some robot stuff in him, so how about Mecha Geese?
I really don't understand why fighting game developers think that if a dead character returns as a playable character, they must also return in the story. Guest characters in most fighting games are expected to be non-canon and just there for gameplay reasons. Nobody was expecting Homelander's arcade mode in MK1 to be anything more than a "what-if" story, and nobody needs Tekken 8 to explain what Negan and Noctis were doing in the story of Tekken 7. So, why can't dead characters just be like guest characters?
I was JUST talking about this subject with my younger brother! What timing 😂
SNK when they have to meet this fiscal year quota: "THE GOOSE IS LOOSE BOIZ"
The thing that made me actually believe Heihachi's death in Tekken 7, was the fact that his voice actor died.
Japan tends to honor their voice actors a lot, and I've heard of some characters being retired from ongoing stories (in anime and games) in order to respect their actors death. At most I figured he'd return as some kind of ghost that wasn't story relevant but playable so they could just reuse his old voicelines... Buuut clearly I underestimated his popularity. He's front and center in the new story stuff, so he's definitely been recast. Times change, and yet they stay the same.
8:15 I never noticed that, and I find that hilarious. I can never look at him the same way again.
Their aura overthrows death itself
What I honestly think CotW will do is have Rock fight nightmare geese as the personification of his dark power. That was you still have him without needing to revive him which I think would appeal both sides
People don't like new baddies as much the as the old ones.
Deadpool to Heihachi:"they will make you fight until you are 90!!"
I wish it was more common to just bring them back as playable characters and keep em dead in lore or something. I know people like them, and they make money, but its so boring in terms of story to have Bison be the bad guy every single time
It’s been done.
They’re called dream matches.
SNK use to do this quite a bit in the old days
I do think bringing dead characters back as ghosts is a great solution. Even outside of KOF, Bison comes back in the form of a psycho specter in SFV Ed’s story mode. (Of course, it’s a bit too late in bison’s case.)
They make better excuses than "somehow, Palpatine returned.."
geese just landed on a bouncy house
I like play the cool characters but I also like when they do cool story things like when cool character dies. Quite the creative puzzle. 🤔
So, apparently the reason why the volcano didn’t kill Heihachi is because those things have a mortality rate that is LOW. And I mean low - according to howstuffworks, "around 278,000 people have died since the year 1500 as a result of volcanic activity, which averages about 540 people a year for the past 517 years."
Honestly, arcade times KoF formula had this right:
94, 95, 96, 97... all good, we rolling with the lore and ended it with tying up the issue with the big baddie
98 - This is a "Dream Match", folks. Basically anything goes, pay it no particular heed when it comes to continuity etc...
99, 2001, 2001 - New story chapter, more plot, more lore! Another big baddie that comes up and is eventually taken down
2002 - Well, remember that "Dream Match" thing? We just wrapped up a bunch of plot, let's do one of those again
2003+ - All right, everyone, new plot....
It allowed KoF to enjoy the best of both worlds. I can understand character's popularity and whatnot but I can wait to get to play Vice again! It's a shame this doesn't really work any more with the current release cycle. I kind of wish SNK would go back to that model, adapting it to modern situations, this would allow them to get to pretend KoF HAS plot again
Let's imagine there's a KOF '26 that's building on KOF '25 with more plot and whatnot and it's a standalone game BUT.... it reuses a lot of assets from 25 because it's kind of like DLC or an expansion pack AND it makes use of online store functionality so that if you're coming in fresh, it's full price. But if you already have KOF25, then, you get a huge discount because what you're buying is like an expansion pack. A bit like how the old Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War games were structured in the past
Ultimately, for serialised works like this, the artistic side (plot, design, etc...) will always be in conflict with the commercial side ("well, are you NOT going to sell them back X?").... and, y'know... I'm here salivating for the chance to play Vice again once she comes out, I get WHY it happens, it's just unfortunate, I liked the silly plot of KoF and the SNK fighting game universe in general. How it felt these things were intertwined but now it's just an indistinct soup of background noise
Samurai Shodown games (except 4: Amakusa's Revenge) have different Final Bosses, counting Oboro's sentient weapons (MC of Warriors Rage was Seishiro) and Golba (MC of Edge of Destiny was Princess Suzu).
Art of Fighting 3 has Wyler instead of Mr. Big, given the game was about Robert's story.
RBFF Special Dominated Mind has White (voiced by the late, great Keiji Fujiwara) who mind-controlled Billy Kane.
This is why I love Guilty Gear they had Justice and Kliff who are characters that died from the first game and never came back to life, the other time they came back as playable characters was more of a retelling of their story from first game.
I would love to see more videos from you on fighting game lore.
I got quite a few! Check the playlists on the main page scrolling down and I got a playlist full of lore vids. I can only make lore vids every now and then but I got a few years built up
I mean Bison is now Old Spice Man, Heihachi had a rejunenating lava spa treatment, and Geese.....predictable.
Answer: They’re Too Fucking Cool!
I think this Heihachi is a memory of him, like how Kazumi was still dead in Tekken 7, but she was playable and looked as young as she was when she died like 30 years ago.
Shao Khan should be on this list as well because he pre ordered in Mortal Kombat 11 after being dead in X
There's that saying, a stories hero is only as good as its' villain. It takes an interesting villain to elevate the story and give our characters something to fight against, against the backdrop of characters fighting other characters. Because then the fighter is not only fighting against the villain, they are fighting against what they represent.
I enjoy the storylines of fighting games...but their storylines can turn into comic books, with larger than life characters. And we know characters don't stay dead in comic books. A bit of retconning, weird plot devices, or multiverse shenanigans will bring back fan favorite characters, if the developers so deem it.
you can’t keep a good villain down; at least forever.
17:06 - I know, he's my favorite villain too! But for the sake of the story of Fatal Fury, don't bring him back from the dead. Make a nightmare Geese that is not real and lives in Terry's bad nights of sleep or something, at best. I really can't take Bison and Heihachi seriously because *I know* they won't die no matter what.
SNK makes great stories for its games, and characters in said stories can't be more important the the stories themselves.
6:48 - Adel rocks!
it's a good thing the only villains that come back from the dead are in fighting games
it's unheard of anywhere else
Nah, I'd severely doubt Marie Heinlein would even be a playable character, let alone an inheritor for Geese's moveset.
For Heihachi, there are at least some hints concerning him being alive and also younger. For starters, in the shot where he comes out and says "I am Heihachi Mishima," he's wearing different clothing than when he was thrown into the lava in T7. So I don't think this is a shot of Heihachi coming out of the lava that Kazuya threw him into, I think this is a completely different point afterwards that takes place during T8's story followup. Like I think the story will set up a mysterious Tekken Monk leader who has Heihachi's moves and w/e, and at some point this character will get thrown into a volcano or something similar, only to emerge and "reveal" that he's "Heihachi." But who knows...it might not even actually be the same Heihachi from T7.
It makes me think of the character Amiba from Fist of the North Star. He tricks Kenshiro into thinking he's the real Toki, one of the Ken's "older brothers," by getting an identical scar to Toki's on his back to trick Ken. Perhaps the fist on Heihachi's chest is serving the same purpose, but I'm probably just overthinking it and it's simply just Heihachi.
weird that Heihachi looks younger and darker-haired than before he "died" while the story trailer kept focusing on the one masked monk doing Heihachi's moves and beating everyone's asses. We see Heihachi wearing the monks' "iron fist" insignia but the masked monk has long white hair. Maybe that's just a part of the outfit idk. Starting to think it might actually be a totally different guy, but the chest scar still has me questioning if he really did survive...
The rumors of Fighting Game villain's deaths are greatly exaggerated.
I think part of the reason there's discourse around Heihachi and Bison is because these characters have essentially been central focus points of their franchises where their death is made a big deal. And before you have any chance to miss them they're DLC for the franchise. I think so far overall M. Bison has a better angle where Bison is not just back and on top of things like nothing happened but overall, artistically the thing to do should be to at least let them be dead for one game. Just let the story play out like they died. You could even tease them being alive at the end. At least make them like the last DLC to come?
I understand that the nature of the games means you are probably eventually just going to want any character back. But I posit there's ways to do that that don't involve necesarilly breaking the story. I'm gonna go into some examples and not all of them are villains or dead but just to show you.
In Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance Liu Kang was dead. They broke his neck onscreen, to show that the new villains were not screwing around. I mean they wern't new but you know what I mean. He wasn't in the game. And then the sequel came out and he was playable...but still dead. They had a corpse that looked and played like him but they wern't hard commiting to the corpse being HIM him. They didn't just immediatly revive him but they wern't exactly brushing aside his death. I think something like that, where you acknowledge the death and hold on to it, while alsonot passing by the chance to have the character playable.
In Soul Calibur , Nightmare was Sigfried when holding Soul Edge, the evil sword of corruption. Eventually his arc is that he stops wielding Soul Edge, the evil sword of corruption and finds his father's real killer or whatever. But now what did they do, stop having Nightmare forever? No they made a new Nightmare that was just independent by itself . So that solves that problem. This is also what Kage is to Ryu/Evil Ryu, You could do something like that where the villain in story is like a shadow or an aspect of the deceased person, or maybe like a robot with their memories. Something like that where the character is still dead but still playable and who are you to say this replicant wouldn't have the exact moves and hitboxes the real thing could.
Here's one thing I've thought of that I don't think any big time fighting games have done so far: You remember when Gouken came back even though he's Dead Mentor Dead, The Most Dead You Can Be? They explained it with...I'm sure they came up with something. What if instead though Gouken was just a representation of Ryu just mastering his abilities to Gouken levels. Like we in game see it as Gouken but when it goes to story we see that this is just Ryu doing what Master Gouken would do. You can explain it like that.
With Geese if they aren't planning to make him the final boss because instead of becoming a street pizza he fell into a portal to The Next Dimension or whatever you could, at least for a while, explain that he's like a mass delusion. Everyone's infected with the Geese virus so when they think they're fighting him it's all int heir head. Something like that.
Although in City of the Wolves... Geese just being back is a bit more earned. There hasnt been one of these in awhile, so it's like...less weird.
Those ppl are too angry to stay dead. They have things to do!
"Turns out both Geese and Marie both abandoned Rock.... nobody wants that kid" 😂😂😂
I dont mind dead villains coming back, but only as dlc and not involved in the current story or theres an actually cool and unique reason that theyre back and not just a "oh they just lived bc they were powerful". Nightmare Geese was perfect and i hope COTW does bring back Nightmare Geese. But bison and hei? I just cant help but feel like "really? Again?"
Because fighting games need villians. And because people love their villians
Zombie Lui Kang is the OG wtf resurrection for me
I think The O'Jays said it best.
No one’s ever really gone.
its like poetry, it rhymes
Somehow he returned.
Fucc yeah.
the dead speak!
It's okay to have non-canon characters just in the roster and not story.
I would say that in cases like M Bison, I feel that having a character that takes his moveset and carrys on his legacy would have been a stronger idea because it keeps the legacy of the character, dows something new with them, and keeps the impact of the death; my problem with Bison returning is that it was done too soon and it has been done so often that his appearances don't feel as special especially since he doesn't have much progression which makes him feel more like an idea rather than a character and even doing something like bringing him back but as a new character but retains a similar personality and motivation as he use to but in a different way can be a way to keep the legacy of the character while keeping the stories progression.
I can't say much on Heihachi because the story dlc isn't out yet but I think the main problem people have is that they want these games to move forward in their rosters like adding more third strike characters in Street Fighter or giving characters like Bruce a dlc slot that haven't been seen in awhile in comparison to villains that are present in every game despite a game like Street Fighter having a large amount of villains to expand on before Bison like G who is still a unknown character to the franchise.
I think its cool that people have their mains back but them having story significance feels like it takes away from the story and stifles the story from progressing with new characters and stories which worries me.
Kazuya threw Heihachi in the lazarus pit. The volcano was 2 towns over....