Tekken 8 channels Street Fighter 6 and racing games to continue Bandai Namco's hot streak

It's more than fair to say that Bandai Namco has been on a bit of a winning streak as of late. Its impressively vast library of popular anime licences, paired with the release of heavy hitters like Elden Ring and Armored Core VI, have resulted in a string of profitable and, more often than not, critically well received games. Elden Ring DLC notwithstanding, Tekken 8 is set to be Bandai Namco's next big release - but what have the development team learned from Tekken 7's release to ensure the sequel's success?

A preview in late November finally gave me some insight. Story mode was capped up until the end of chapter 4 and we were only allowed to play a couple of the Arcade Mode chapters, but every character was available to try out in versus, practice and the Tekken Ball mode.

There was also a chance to sit down with Tekken 8's game director Kouhei Ikeda and producer Michael Murray - who also acted as our translator - and ask them some burning questions. Unbeknownst to me beforehand, long-serving series producer Katsuhiro Harada also made a surprise appearance - although in true Harada style, he mostly just sat in the back looking cool and only occasionally chimed in with anecdotes about things like how much he hates Macbooks.

Tekken 8 marks the second time Ikeda has served as director following his work on Tekken 7, but Ikeda and Harada have worked together on several Bandai Namco games over the years, so I was curious how their relationship had developed. As Michael explained, Ikeda was once a journalist, so he was on the side of interviewing Harada before he got to working with him. After all these years however, his impression of Harada was "pretty much the same as it was when he was interviewing him." That said, he's learned to avoid certain very specific topics that, he says, "Harada-san gets very angry about."

These topics include, curiously, "Cilantro, and anything with cilantro in it," (that's coriander to us UK folk), as well as the topic of "blood types," which Ikeda-san claimed was a popular discussion point in Japan, in response to which "Harada-san is just like 'that's horse...' uh... 'crap.'" And Harada-san's also not a fan of people posing on Macs, Ikeda has discovered. "There's this stereotype about trendy people in Japan about people going to Starbucks, getting out their Macbooks and acting like they're doing some huge project... Harada is more of a PC user so he's like, 'these guys, they don't know what they're doing.'"

Away from Harada's foibles, I decided to focus my time on learning a couple of characters that were unplayable in the closed network/beta tests: Reina and Victor. Since fighting games are relatively complex beasts, eight hours of playtime wasn't going to be enough of a window into Tekken 8 to answer many fighting game aficionados' most in-depth queries. So it felt better to drill down into those characters the public hasn't had a chance to play just yet.

I'll admit, I had so much fun learning Reina that I spent a lot more time with her in practice mode than I did with Victor. For a Tekken character, she actually seems relatively easy to pick up. Her combos and aerial links felt extremely forgiving (again, I should stress, for a Tekken character), and she has a good mix of long reaching kicks and extremely safe jabs. Her personality is going to be the reason people flock to her however, as her overconfident, smarmy win screens and snide dialogue make her the perfect main for anyone looking to stunt on their opponents.

Victor immediately felt strong to me. I'm not going to potentially embarrass myself by saying anything like "he feels top tier" (especially when I've only had hands-on experience with a third of the roster) but I'd be surprised if he's far off that. A solid ranged game, easy to execute combos with great damage, and in-built options in his blockstrings that allow you to mix your opponent with ease just make him feel extremely strong right off the bat. If it wasn't already obvious, my judgement may be clouded by the fact that another player at the event absolutely wiped the floor with me using Victor.

One newly introduced mechanic in Tekken 8 that helped me get to grips with Reina and Victor relatively quickly was the Super Ghost Battle mode, which was the main focus of the slice of Arcade Mode we were able to play. Ghost Battles are probably best compared to competing against your ghost in racing games, as the AI will learn how you play specific characters and replicate your playstyle when you fight against them. When playing against your own ghost, the function is supposed to help you identify weaknesses in your own playstyle - which is why I found it very humbling that whilst the CPU was oddly difficult to defend against due to it replicating my extremely aggressive playstyle, every time it did land a hit on me it ended up dropping the exact same Reina combo I'd spent ages labbing prior to fighting it.

That isn't Ghost Battle's only use however, as in the Arcade Mode there were several players you could fight that had learned from other players prior to the event. Some of these ghosts were, assumedly, members of the development team, based solely on the fact they were ridiculously difficult to beat. Tucked away in the practice mode was a function to play against a "Downloaded Ghost", and it was later explained to me that the option to download the data of people you fight against online will be available to players at launch. Considering how well CPU ghosts were able to replicate how terrible I was at playing Reina, I can only assume that it will do an equally impressive job at replicating how experienced players perform, which could be a godsend for players looking to improve by giving them to option to play against AI replicas of pro players whenever they wish.

I did find the story in Arcade Mode pretty interesting in itself, mostly because there is a very deliberate emphasis on the relationship between fighting game veterans and newer players, something that Twitter denizens have been infinitely beefing about ever since modern fighting games began introducing simpler options for executing inputs. In Arcade Mode, you play as a custom character who is new to Tekken and enters a tournament against several veterans and pros, many of whom look down on you and regularly smack talk you for being a newbie before matches.

Ikeda-san clarified that this narrative focus was a deliberate reaction to the demise of the physical arcade scene. "You used to be able to go to arcades anywhere - in the West and Japan," he said. "In Japan especially, you don't have that opportunity as much anymore because arcades are so in decline." Whilst the story is definitely supposed to evoke feelings of nostalgia in older players, Ikeda-san noted that it also gives newer players the chance to experience something that is almost entirely lost to them now, as he hopes that "people who experienced it first hand, they're like 'oh yeah, this is exactly what arcades used to feel like.' Not just the atmosphere, but in the conversations you have with the NPCs. For newer players that didn't have that experience, they can go online and feel what it's like, so they can feel what arcades were like when they were at their peak."

This focus on the newer player experience extends to other facets of Tekken 8's design too, such as the Special Style mechanic. Special Style, much like the Dynamic control scheme in Street Fighter 6, makes inputs and combos extremely easy to execute, distilling what would otherwise be a lengthy series of inputs down to simply mashing one button.

The difference between Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 in this respect is that Special Style doesn't need to be selected prior to the match, and can be turned on and off just by hitting L1. You can even activate Special Style during a combo, which ended up being pretty handy considering it allowed me to execute aerial combos with ease, mid-combo, by simply tapping L1 and repeatedly hitting punch. Fighting game veterans shouldn't feel too worried that Tekken is now suddenly too easy however, as whilst Special Style did make dropping combos feel borderline impossible, it also felt extremely limiting and far from optimal.

In light of this, I was curious what Ikeda and Harada-san's opinion was on the discourse surrounding the simplification of fighting game controls, and how their decision to add a function like Special Style into Tekken factored into this. As Ikeda-san explained, "A lot of attention went into this, more so than people probably realise. We're aware of the topic you're talking about, it's a popular topic these days... a lot of veterans, they don't think it's a good thing. In Tekken, we tried to make the Special Style approachable and to let a few button presses help you do over the top signature moves or flashy aerial combos. But unlike in other games where you're stuck with a mode like Special Style throughout the entire match, it's easier for us to balance it because unlike other games you can turn it on and off anytime during the match."

Ikeda-san did note that more experienced players were taken into account when adding Special Style however, noting that "it doesn't constrain more advanced players, because they still have all the tools that they want. More so for Tekken, we still have just inputs, Electric Wind God Fist being one of the most famous ones, and those are still in the game for more advanced players. Backdashes, wavedashes - those things are still there for high level players that give you some kind of benefit for all the added practice that you put into the game... in Tekken, we put a lot of energy into balancing that area of the game."

So, is Tekken 8 set to continue Bandai Namco's hot streak? From what I played, almost definitely. It's obvious that the development teams at Arika and Bandai Namco Studios have had newer and less experienced players in mind when designing the game - a far cry from the Tekken 7 that launched back in 2015 without the option to view frame data - but the teams have been extremely conscientious not to disregard seasoned Tekken players in the process. In this sense, there are a lot of favourable comparisons to be made between Tekken 8 and Street Fighter 6, which struck the perfect balance between being beginner friendly and yet still managing to properly cater to its pre-established, dedicated audience.

Speaking of Street Fighter, I couldn't help but throw in a cheeky question at the end of my interview regarding Yoshinoro Ono's surprise appearance at the last EVO. For those unaware, Ono randomly jumped on stage and teased the possibility of Tekken x Street Fighter, first announced back in 2010 and long thought to be cancelled, finally seeing release.

After some debate amongst Michael, Ikeda and Harada, Michael finally replied "I don't remember that. Did that really happen? ...well, I think that was just a spontaneous thing that may, or may not, have happened."

After I pressed them on the likelihood of the game ever seeing the light of day, Ikeda-san continued, stating "Hmm... that's tough. Harada used to just say, "it's pending." That was the official answer. Last time he was asked, he just said "ahh... hmm..." so, that gives you a little bit of info on the current status of that."

As I began to wrap up the interview and thanked them for their time, I off-handedly joked that I'd take their answer to my final question as a yes, to which they simply replied "Take that as a... hint."