We got some The King Of Fighters XV news from Yasuyuki Oda the producer for both KOF XIV and now KOF XV. He talked about the graphics and story mode or the issue with striking a balance between story and arcade.
Oda put it as making sure you tell a story but as a fighting game and not an RPG which it is a must. If the story becomes the focus then the arcade aspect will suffer as players will become focus on that instead of playing one another. Now as I said before I disagree with this as players will come back to play in versus as it is a fighting and that is what they do. We see this for Mortal Kombat XI as well as Guilty Gear XRD. But at the same time I think i see where Oda is coming from.
Now let me explain the demand for story mode. SNK fans know there characters are rich with charm and lore and we would like to see that shown more in there games. To give you an idea as to what I mean KOF 2003 -xiv actually have stories on there website to explain how the teams came to be and what they hope to get out of the tournament. But you don’t see that in game as lore wise we see the boss goal and then what happens as that perspective team wins. To SNK faithful the game deserves more.
To be clear the term story has been used in KOF games before. XIII had it but it was more of cutscenes where how the teams fit in is all up to you. No really it was more about the paths you chose then the team you had. The cute scenes were nice in a way as they showed what other characters who were not playing were doing during tournament but it didn’t help with finding out what actually took place as the game story. XIV had a story mode in name only since just arcade which brings us to XV.
Now for us story mode would be great as it would be nice to know the true story of the tournament similar to Blazblue true ending. But I think it might be a developer issue more than a player one. Think about it. We have had games who do story mode well such MK and GG as I have said before. But we also had games that don’t and because they focus on it so much they are left with no traditional arcade mode which was an issue. I am of course talking about Street Fighter V and Dead Or Alive 5 and 6.
SFV had many flaws with one of them being no arcade mode. This was supposed to be substituted with story mode but that came later leaving people who play off line with nothing to do until Arcade Edition comes around and fixes it. Well that and other issue. DOA 5 and 6 do have arcade modes but they are not traditional as there is no almighty boss. Instead you get that through story mode. Something feels odd but is an issue in DOA 6. It is an issue as Raidou is a boss but only in story mode leaving the boss in arcade mode to be random. That is an issue as it seems to be as flushed out as the story mode which is the point.
That is the thing here as if we have focus issues which explains what Oda might be getting at. If they focus on story mode too much then the gameplay for arcade mode and versus might suffer. But that is a guess. As again he says it would be an issue for players not developers.
But with that I do hope they figure it out as I am one of those fans who think SNK can pull off a great story mode for KOF XV. What do you think though? Let me know below as we await for more news.
If you like what you see please hit the like and follow buttons. As always this is Jcphotog now Jcrcomicarts saying thank you for reading.
I feel a fighting game company saying they dont know how to balance between an arcade mode and story mode is them just being lazy. MK does it no problem and so does injustice games and the blazblue games, having a. story mode be separate from the arcade is not rocket science SNK just doesnt want to put in the effort. And if you wanna say maybe they that they take out this for the story mode is because they dont know how to balance their money and resources for the game. And the issue with the recent DOA games and SFV at launch was that the games main focus was on it online play, which is never good for a fighting game cause yes people play online but many companies have said that majority of their sales comes from casual players to play offline. Not having a full game with all mode is either laziness or not knowing how to use your time, money and resources
It does seem to be becoming part of the formula to have a story mode in your games at this point. And telling by the trailer SNK seems to have something planned for us. Hopefully we learn more with the trailer coming this week. Also thanks for coming by.