The new age of Street Fighter has arrived! We got our first official look at Street Fighter VI during the season finale of Capcom Cup 2021 and there’s a lot to talk about with this teaser. Capcom had this revelation in the works after a mysterious countdown timer was revealed with six days and 20 hours which counted down to Capcom Cup. The fighting game community has genuinely been positive about the announcement and has created quite the buzz for Capcom.
Street Fighter VI in the fighting game community is a huge deal because it’s the first time in seven years that Capcom has revealed a fighting game title. Seven years ago, that reveal was Street Fighter V. The teaser sees classic fighter Ryu and newcomer Luke battling it out before it reveals the new logo.
Ryu has a different design in Street Fighter VI, he’ll be dawning his battle costume from Street Fighter V as opposed to his classic Shotokan gi. This is the perfect design and evolution for Ryu, it gives Ryu some age in the Street Fighter universe and spices things up for Capcom’s poster boy. Though, rest assured his classic Shotokan gi will return as a nostalgia costume. Luke is a newcomer to the Street Fighter universe first appearing as the last DLC character in Street Fighter V: Champion Edition.
Producer Shuhei Matsumoto and director Takayuki Nakayama said that Luke will be an important character in Street Fighter VI’s story, so his appearance was guaranteed. Luke looks extremely different from his Street Fighter V counterpart, everything from his design and even character model look different in a new way.
Let’s address the elephant in the room: Street Fighter’s new art style and visuals using the RE Engine. Reactions to Street Fighter VI’s art style have divided most fans but have gotten Capcom a lot of attention.
The cause and effect of developers changing a fighting game’s art style is that it widens their horizon to newer audiences, but at the same time loses original fans.
It’s about time the Street Fighter series moved away from the anime-cartoony art style and into a more realistic art style like Tekken and Mortal Kombat while retaining some aspects of the anime-cartoony art style.
Street Fighter VI will also change engines from Unreal Engine to the RE Engine which is an in-house engine at Capcom used on its biggest IPs: Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and Monster Hunter.
This engine change was the right decision to make, not only does it allow for Street Fighter to be more expressive and push visual fidelity to new heights with its realistic animation and frames; but also because Capcom had no reason to use Unreal Engine by Epic Games when they already had an engine developed in-house that’s already proved a success with other Capcom IPs.
Capcom now is in the right state of business to rely on their resources and in-house engine which is good because it should’ve been that way.
If you look closely in the teaser trailer, you can see muscle movements and contortions as Ryu prepares for battle and it’s those subtle details that are going to make Street Fighter VI visually interesting compared to the other titles in the series.
Though we barely know anything about this game from its gameplay to characters, there’s one thing fans are hoping Capcom does with Street Fighter VI and that takes their time.
Fans don’t want Capcom to rush another fighting game title and we’ve seen this happen before with Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite and Street Fighter V. One of the many flaws of Street Fighter V was the fact that it’s launch was rushed to make the competitive Esports cycle at Evolution 2016.
The game was extremely rushed, deprived of single-player content and with a roster of characters no one cared for, as well as poorly functional online. It took years and two versions of Street Fighter V for people to take care and find enjoyment in it.
So the hope is Capcom takes their time to produce a title worth full price. Have single-player content that’s not just arcade and story mode, create new and unique modes that make players want to replay them.
The problem with modern fighting games is that Japanese fighting game developers still treat fighting games like they’re arcade games with the most content focused on online which is respectable now that developers are comfortable using rollback netcode, but there’s a lack of single-player content that developers avoid and they shouldn’t because they hold a lot of replay value.
It’s one of the reasons why Netherrealm Studios does a great job with their single-player content in Mortal Kombat and Injustice is because they know how to create unique modes that keep players replaying them.
Capcom has confirmed that more news will be coming for Street Fighter VI this summer possibly during Capcom’s conference at E3 though it’s not confirmed, or Summer Games Fest hosted by IGN. It’s a great time to be a fighting game fan and hopefully, the future of Street Fighter VI brings good news.