Street Fighter 6 Director Talks FFVII Collab, Roster Diversity, and Upcoming Movie

One of the most famous and popular fighting games, Street Fighter continues its reign with the sixth installment. Originally released three years ago, Street Fighter 6 has received numerous updates and content drops, many of which come in the form of exciting new fighters and revamps throughout the series. With the announcement of a collaboration between Final Fantasy VII and Capcom, not to mention a handful of new characters coming in the next year, competitive fighting has never looked better.

At Summer Game Fest this year, we were able to sit down with Street Fighter 6 Producer, Shuhei Matsumoto, and Director, Takayuki Nakayama to discuss the 4th year of the beloved fighting game, not to mention the upcoming movie.

Speaking with Shuhei Matsumoto and Takayuki Nakayama

Tifa is a great collaboration between Capcom and Square Enix. How did that happen?

We’ve been talking to people on the Square Enix side for three years now. That’s when the first conversation begins. We discussed, it would be nice to do some kind of collaboration between the two groups, and Tifa’s name came up as one of the nominees.

And at the TGS event, where they had the opportunity to speak with the Final Fantasy VII Remake team, we were able to narrow down and focus more on the final results of this collaboration. It has been in constant communication and interaction to this day.

In the live show, one of the loudest moments was when Tifa appeared at the end of the trailer. How did it feel to see that reaction among so many announcements?

Nakyama-san was on stage, you can’t really hear the audience too much. It was hard to see and hard to hear, so it was hard to say, but Matsumoto had an audience, and he was able to see the reaction of the attendees and on social media people seemed to be very happy, too. Overall, they are happy with the response they have received.

Speaking of the other cast members, what led to the decision to have almost all new cast members on the show, compared to previous years when it was a mix of old characters and newcomers?

The last new character introduced in Street Fighter 6 was named Aki. He appeared almost two years ago, and since then we have been adding many characters that have appeared in previous titles to the series. We thought, maybe it’s a good time to start introducing new characters to the game, and expand the brand a bit. Mainly because we see a lot of new players joining the game, and we wanted to represent other areas.

Places like India and the Philippines where both Arjun and Yasmine come from. India has a growing number of gamers and we are looking for a new character to represent that area. And Yasmine is a Filipino character. There are many people within the fighting game community who have Filipino roots, so we want to cater to that particular region as well.

How do these characters differentiate themselves from other characters? What makes them different?

Because they are new characters, no one knows who they are, it’s a challenge to get people to know them, since they don’t know anything about them. Using Yasmine as an example, she is a new character from the Philippines who uses a karate style that has never been represented in the Street Fighter series, so we feel confident that it will bring a new experience to Street Fighter fans.

Are there any favorite characters from past games that you wanted to bring back that didn’t make it?

For the sake of simplicity, we would like to bring in characters from past shows and past titles within the series. Obviously, we have limited time and budget, it is difficult to represent everyone completely. Within those limits, we’ve tried to maintain diversity when it comes to region, gender, fighting style so as not to overlap with any existing characters. Those are the things that we tried to take into account when choosing who is coming next.

Based on community feedback, are there any plans to fix or remove throwback loops?

We’re not going to say we’re going to fix this or we’re not going to fix this, or we’re going to look at the big picture and make some tunings as we see if it makes sense in the game. We have made some changes in the past when it comes to combat systems such as parry or we have done it so you have to enter the directional to get the right parry to kill it successfully.

There are no specific plans to share at this time, but we will continue to monitor the situation and see what is right.

What led to the decision to end support for World Tour Mode?

We would like to continue building the World Tour, because we love the mode and the characters, representing each new character. But, due to some constraints, we could not do so going forward after Ingrid’s release.

However, one of the goals of the World Tour mode, is to be a unique mode that can stand alone, but something that can make people who are not very familiar with fighting games more comfortable, and eventually be able to grow into a fighting gamer. We feel like, it’s been a few years since Street Fighter 6 was first released, and many people have been able to meet World Tour and learn its basics. In that sense, we feel that we were able to confidently get those players on board.

With the upcoming Street Fighter movie adaptation, how involved was Capcom in working with the studios?

Speaking of how involved you are, especially Makayama-san in working with Legendary studios. But he was there from the beginning, even in the early stages of the contract – almost eight years now. He was also heavily involved in the process of writing the script. He had a lot of back and forth with what would and wouldn’t be good for a Street Fighter movie.

Ultimately, he was able to build a relationship with the film’s director, and he understands what fans expect and don’t want from a Street Fighter movie. They were able to have ongoing conversations and communication with the studio went very smoothly.

All in all, he was very involved from the start, and it should be something to look forward to.

Released

June 2, 2023

The ESRB

T For Teens For Medium Blood, Medium Language, Sexual Themes, Alcohol and Tobacco Use, Violence