When talking to Gamasutra’s Christian Nutt, Capcom’s Yoshinori Ono, Producer of Street Fighter V, went into detail on how the team’s philosophy when working on the game was based on the Japanese idiom “onko chishin,” in which the team looked to previous installments in the series when working on new ideas and mechanics for Street Fighter V.
Ono’s explained exactly how “onko chishin” related to Street Fighter V and it’s development. “The first half of that phrase means ‘to warm up the past.’ That means we’re paying very, very close attention to all of the previous fans of the Street Fighter franchise, and make sure we cater to the experience that they want. But that doesn’t mean that we’re cutting off the line there, for just those fans. We’re taking into full consideration today’s day and age and today’s fans, and what they expect, and what they want. So we’re delivering together the old and the new.”
The interview also showed how this philosophy applied to players of all skill levels, from those who are more casual, to ones that might be playing Street Fighter V on a professional level. Ono said, “We wanted to make sure to protect everybody who’s been playing the game for a very, very long time, so we wanted to make sure to welcome everyone who’s playing Street Fighter IV, Street Fighter III, even oldStreet Fighter titles. We also wanted to make the environment a very nice environment for people that come in, and enjoy playing Street Fighter, all brand new players. So a very equal playing field for everybody.”
Ono also expounded on the effect Street Fighter IV had on Street Fighter V’s development. “And so how we approached that in terms of the battle system, we looked at Street Fighter IV, because we had a lot of great stuff in there to welcome new players as well. But instead of taking a ‘stacking’ approach from Street Fighter IV to Street Fighter V, we’ve taken those things that were very friendly to beginners and people new to the Street Fighter franchise, and created a baseline of what that needs to be. And we’ve built a new system on top of that. That way, we can get people that are very familiar with Street Fighter and yet have everybody come in and enjoy. And that’s just on the battle system level.”
You can read the full interview with Yoshinori Ono at Gamasutra, which also details his thoughts on in-game currencies, updates to the series over the years, and the hopes that Street Fighter V will create a robust community. Street Fighter V will come to North American and European PlayStation 4s and Windows PCs on February 16, 2016.
