Straight from the Teutonic halls of Gamescom 2011 comes a fresh trailer for Soulcalibur V.
Say what you will about Namco Bandai. Say that the company is over-reliant on the lucrative semi-otaku market or that Tekken 6 should have been an epic roleplaying game charting the rise and fall of a certain jaguar-masked alcoholic luchador priest.
But one thing you can’t say — well you could, if you wanna be a jerk about it — is that the development team behind the Soulcalibur series is unwilling to take risks.
Soulcalibur V is set 17 years after the events of Soulcalibur IV and despite fan attachment to characters like Lizard Man, features a roster rife with new faces. Admittedly, they are by and large analogues for beloved classic characters, but this is still a bold move in any genre, let alone the virtual fisticuffs division where one of the key draws is affection for a game’s characters.
This latest trailer for the game features a few Soulcalibur stalwarts (most notably an even more grizzled Mitsurugi), though the focus is definitely on the new folk. Or, it would be anyway, if they weren’t all overshadowed by the game’s combat systems. The latter half of the clip is almost entirely dedicated to the game’s over the top attacks, including a move that I am refusing to describe as anything other than “a Shoryuken with a sword.”
The game comes home in March of next year, and while it remains to be seen what kind of reception these new faces will garner, the actual fighting in the game looks as solid as ever. If I were a hack who relied entirely on catchy taglines, this is where I’d say something about a soul and its propensity for prolonged immolation but … oh wait, I already did that in the headline.
Sorry guys, looks like we’re all out of wit for the day.
