After seeing Yoda and Vader pop on screen, questions popped in my head. Fortunately, I had a chance to speak to Wayne Shiu, Product Marketing Manager of Soulcalibur IV, to get some answers. I figured plenty of people would ask why Yoda and Vader were in the game so I went in with a different angle. Starting with a character we already know about, Hilde.
Hilde is not in this build right?
Correct.
How is she shaping up? She’s the most unique, original character we know about in Soulcaibur IV.
We are really excited about the character. In terms of how she is shaping up, she is doing great. She looks great. We will be revealing more details and showing her a little more later on.
As you can see from the TGS trailer and some of the other trailers that we put together she is going to be one of the main forces within the game as well. The fact that she uses dual weapons, I think is really cool and I think a lot of people will like it. She is not like other characters, even in our game as well as fighting games where they always have their boobs popping out and stuff like that. She is a really cool character where she is feminine and very strong.
You know, how you’re talking about the boobs popping out thing? When I visited Namco Bandai around Tokyo Game Show and I was watching Hilde being unveiled the first question a fellow journalist asked, was “is her armor destructible?” I know you’re trying to make a character who is the opposite of Ivy, but what do you think about the overtly sexual design of the characters? Is it too much?
Personally, I think a lot of times when people make the games they are trying to make them for the people who buy it, which are typically males. As we get farther along in gaming and more people accept it, you will see more characters like Hilde. Hopefully, this is a start where this can transition into other characters as well.
The highlight of tonight is Yoda and Vader, but one thing that immediately disappointed me is you can’t have a classic clash between the two. How come?
With Soulcalibur II we had platform exclusive characters, but this time around we wanted to give each platform a signature character. We decided to bring Vader to the PS3 because he’s dark and black. Then Yoda went to the Xbox 360 because he’s green. That’s how it’s going on for now. As for whether we can see them battle, who knows? We’re still not released yet, so things can happen.
I think people would buy Yoda and Vader separately as downloadable content in the future. Would you guys consider selling the characters?
I think that’s something we are considering. But, it’s hard to say. We don’t want to repeat those kinds of where we force everyone. I grew up playing Soulcalibur and Soulcalibur II especially. I had to struggle to decide which platform to buy. I can understand that and it’s something we are definitely looking into.
What about other characters? You know, Heihachi from Tekken was in Soulcalibur II. Would you consider taking characters from other Namco series maybe Lloyd since he was in Soulcalibur Legends and sell them as downloadable content?
I don’t think there are any plans currently. But again, our team is focused on making the game and making sure it gets out on time. Down the road there could be potential.
Speaking of Lloyd do you think he will make an appearance here [in Soulcalibur IV]?
Hahaha. You know I don’t know. As far as I know there are no plans. The focus is on making the characters we have right now and then just Darth Vader and Yoda. Especially, working with Lucasarts we want to make sure those characters perform as best as possible to how all the fans remember them. So, adding new characters adds a lot more work in there.
Can you explain how Yoda and Darth Vader fight?
Specifically, we are going to be releasing that later on, more information about how they fight and stuff like that. As we’ve seen movies Darth Vader is more like a swordsman type of fighter whereas Yoda has an acrobatic style.
So, they are going to be true to the movies?
We are going to be as true as we can. Lucasarts wouldn’t work with us, agree or approve any of this stuff unless we make it as true as possible
For the online part there isn’t going to be anyway to have a cross console battle between PlayStation 3 users and Xbox 360 users?
I don’t think there are any plans for that. Do any other games do that?
The only cross platform games between a Sony console and a Microsoft one I can think of are Final Fantasy XI and Phantasy Star Universe. But these are both PS2.
Right. I don’t think there are any plans because the systems are so different.
If you can pick any character from a Namco franchise who would you put in?
My favorite?
Your personal favorite.
[a member of the Namco Bandai PR team chimes in] Pac-Man won’t work. Yeah, he wouldn’t work.
He could work, I mean he would just roll.
Hahaha. What would you use? I have something. Actually, what I really want to see is the main character from the Afro Samurai game we’re working on in there.
Ahh… Afro Samurai. That would be really cool. I asked the same question to Jin Okubo, the producer of Soulcalibur Legends in Tokyo. Would you guys ever make a traditional Soulcalibur fighting game on the Wii? Maybe a modified version of Soulcalibur IV for the Wii?
I can’t say never, because you can never say never. The reason why we didn’t bring Soulcalibur IV to the Wii in addition to the other consoles is the graphical power of the other platforms is just so different that we didn’t want the Wii user to get a stripped down version. It’s really hard to say. Maybe down the road, potentially you might see something better than Soulcalibur Legends. We can tweak that and work on that a little more. We also want to make sure it’s innovative.
