Scotia

It's been 20+ years since Sean, Necro, Remy, Sodom, Twelve and Q were playable. You'll be fine waiting 10 for a character that was in the last two games. I know you're a big Bison fan but please try to put your fanboy-isms aside for one game and be open to the series finally fucking doing something new for once instead of beating the same old dead Shadaloo horse again.

SF2's story is such a mess now. Part of me feels like they should just retcon the whole thing because the remains of its retconned corpse offers barely anything substantial narrative-wise at this point.

He didn't accelerate it though, Necalli did. I agree with the rest though (except I hope Bison sits out 6 entirely outside of foreshadowing his return because we absolutely need a break from him for at least one game).

The Luke showcase was pretty good! I thought it was much better paced than the Oro and Akira one and felt like they did a good job in showing off Luke. I thought it was really interesting that they showed off a bit of his character story, they've never done that for any other character which to me just reinforces that Luke is the next protagonist. They were dropping subtle hints to it as well throughout the showcase like Luke fighting Ryu, Alex and Rashid during his gameplay breakdown (I see you Capcom 👀). Nakayama straight up confirmed it later on Twitter though (along with Abel and Rashid being the protagonists of SF4 and 5 which is nice to have concrete confirmation for); https://twitter.com/takaNakayama/status/1463374000667586561?s=20 As for Luke himself, I doubt I'll main him or anything but I'll definitely check him out. His story is interesting so far and I'm excited to see what happened to his Dad (I heard someone suggest a rogue Q attack which would be really interesting) , I just hope there's lots of SF6 teases in there lol. For me though I like his story costume the best, I think it fits him the most and I like how it looks. It should have been his default IMO. The MMA costume isn't that great, especially as a default, and I don't really like the jersey outfit because it reminds me too much of Thuganomics John Cena lmao. Overall though, not bad. It was also really exciting to get the next SF project confirmed by them (which is totally not SF6 🤫)! I feel like old Capcom (aka Ono) would have never confirmed the game this far in advance so I'm glad they've improved their communication so much. Super excited for the future of SF!

🤔

Oh shit so we actually already moved past SF3, we just never knew it. Going by some of these tweets this is what he (might) be saying; Some character stories take place during and even slightly after the events of SFIII. An example is the ending of Ed's story (where we see all of Neo Shadaloo) which seems to occur at the same time as SFIII. I'm not sure but he might be saying that Laura's SF3 arcade ending where Sean wins a tournament might be canon? If so then my boy finally won something 😭 The Neo Shadaloo gorilla is named Baba Mwalimu (which Ryce on ResetEra says is Swahili for "father teacher"). Neo Shadaloo has inherited different characteristics of Bison. Falke can inject Psycho Power into objects, Ed can eject Psycho Power, the guy with the knife can teleport, and Baba Mwalimu is super intelligent. Ed's name came about when Nakayama wrote a note to a designer saying "ED" which meant "Ending"; the designer mistook the "ED" abbreviation for an actual name, and Nakayama thought it was cool so it stuck. "There's a reason for splitting up Bison's abilities. Maybe he knew he was going to have a confrontation with Ryu, or maybe he wants to come back in some way and continue as a king of fighting even if his body is destroyed... I hope we can talk about that someday! As for the names, as someone noticed, the initials are B (Baba Mwalimu), E (Ed), F (Falke), and G (I'm reaching Twitter's character limit...)" So 6 might actually end up moving past 3rd Strike, wow. I almost don't believe it's finally gonna happen lol. EDIT: This also might explain why they kinda dropped Neo-Shadaloo after Falke? They pretty much wrote it so that they don't really make a move until SF3 so I get why they wouldn't really end up doing a lot for the rest of SF5's story.

At this rate I expect Alex and the Illuminati to basically be a side plot similar to the Final Fight crew and the Wrestlers that run alongside whatever Ryu/the new Protag/the new villain is doing which I'm...kinda fine with as I just want that plot to fucking advance already. I've already completely given up on Alex ever getting that protagonist spot again and seeing how the last couple of games have gone I don't want him to have it because chances are he'll do all the work only for Ryu to come in last second to steal him out of defeating Gill. As for SF6, they have to set after SF3 at this point. There simply isn't enough space between SF5 and it to dance around in anymore. That said, I still fully expect them to find a way to escape having to follow on from it by doing a reboot/retelling/retcon which would just be the drizzling shits and be the final nail in the coffin to make me fully give up on keeping up with this series and pretending the SF3 and Alpha games are the only ones that exist. What's frustrating is that (to answer Sonero's question) SF3's plot isn't even that crazy or impossible to follow up on, Capcom are just so scared of doing it that they make it seem like some DMC2 type nonsense where nothing makes sense when compared to the other games. I mean, look at SF3's story compared to SF2's. SF2 barely even has a plot anymore because it's been retconned to hell yet they didn't have a problem following on from that one 🤷‍♂️. Shit just annoys me lol.

Who's the artist for this one btw?

Finished both story modes; Akira; Oro; In conclusion; they weren't bad but nothing really crazy was going on in them, just more mysterious riddle-speak that doesn't really explain anything. Feels like since S4 they've just been buying time with the story until they can move on to the next game and start from scratch there. I'm basically waiting for Luke's story at this point, really hope he brings something good that builds interest towards SF6.

I've barely played Rival Schools so forgive me if this is a relatively obvious answer but; Who is being referenced here? I've never heard of anyone from Rival Schools being fans of Ken and Alex.

I agree with that, I'd only want them to reveal and release it when they're ready. I just think if things lined up for them, dropping a trailer for Luke then teasing 6 not long after wouldn't be that bad of a thing for them, especially given the teases we've already had.

So how long should it be then? CapCup in February is the more likely option for something SF6 related, is that too soon after Luke's release? I don't want to wait an extra six months to see something from SF6 because some people might feel like their money is wasted because the last character of the previous game only came out a few months ago. It just seems like a weird limit to put on yourself to not buy content for a game just because the next game might be announced soon. Like, yeah I get you don't want to buy something just for something new to come out and replace it, but I assure you 6 is not coming out any time soon. The info we got from the data hacking was that they planned SF6 to be Late 2022 and given the issues with SF6's development plus COVID, I highly doubt it comes out that year, so you're probably looking at least 10 months to a year from reveal to release (fwiw, SF5 from reveal to release was 14 months).

The people who are still playing SF5? Teasing 6 isn't going to make 5 disappear, it'll still be at least a year before it'll come out and people are gonna have to play something until then. Plus it would make a lot of sense for Capcom to drop a logo for SF6 and go "Hey, if you're excited for the next game there's a character coming to SF5 that will give you a tease towards it". That alone would make people go check Luke and SF5 out just to see what's going on with SF6. And I mean, Luke's already teased as being related to the next game so it's not like people will be shocked by it. Look at the headlines that came out when Luke got announced, everyone knows SF6 is coming. Everyone knows SF6 is in development ever since the data-hack and Ono's demotion. This isn't some big secret that's gonna make everyone drop SF5, and if it does then chances are people weren't playing SF5 anyway which would make sense given we've had five years of this game now and people are most likely to ready to move on. 5 isn't gonna be pushing another mil any time soon, at least foreshadowing 6 within 5 would get more eyes on the game for a bit.

I just found out that the real EVO finals aren't happening till November and will be an in-person event. Given Luke is releasing in November, it's likely we'll get a trailer for him here (though it is late November so who knows). That said, with Luke being a probable tease for SF6, I can't help but wonder if we'll get out first SF6 tease at EVO too along with Luke (or just the tease itself if Luke is already out). Given some people (myself included) thought the first likely chance of hearing about SF6 was at CC which is in February, it doesn't seem too out there tbh.

I would love to get a behind the scenes look at the writing for this game because it feels like every season they changed their minds as to where they actually wanted things to go. Season 1: We're showing how Bison died while slowly leading into SF3 Season 2: Ed worries about Bison possessing him while leading his own band of Shadaloo rogues Season 3: G is some weird dude that's alluding to the apocalypse but he also might be Q? Season 4: Gill is starting to make his move but is also weirded out by G Season 5: Rose wants to reset the timeline to stop G. And whatever Luke's deal is I guess They at least decided on G eventually but even then they did NOTHING to actually show or explain who/what G is and why we should even give a shit about him, so I consider it a dropped ball in that regard. I don't even know what Ed's deal is now, dude somehow got a worse deal than Alex and got replaced in his own game. They seriously need better writers for SF6.

I'm not terribly excited for the guy but I at least want to give him a chance before I shit all over him. Can't really do that based off a minute trailer where he just beats up Ryu.

Excited to see some connections to SF6 but they literally just went "How about we do Alex again but in a game that won't kill the franchise for ten years?" My boy's never getting that spotlight again.

Not sure if this is the right topic but some scans of beta artwork for 3rd Strike are going round on Twitter. Ryu's is completely different than the one we got (and I like it more tbh) https://twitter.com/ryo_redcyclone/status/1409450074485125124?s=20

Thank you!

Yeah that's me!

Yeah I had feeling it was the latter where they just chose whatever endings they wanted for later games but I was looking at some of the Alpha 3 endings and some of them are like really out there for some characters (Sodom driving a truck into Shadaloo and blowing himself up?). Thanks for the replies though, I wasn't sure if it A3 was a straight up sequel or not but it seems like the better way to view it is to just look at each ending and kind of see how or if they match up to later games lol.

Quick question for anyone that knows; What's the deal with the Alpha game's story? Like is Alpha 3 a sequel to Alpha 2 or do both games have the same story that later SF games picked and chose which endings they wanted to use from each? I honestly can't tell lol

Her character story is literally titled 'Return to Alpha'. How much harder does Capcom need to slap you guys in the face before you realise they're trying to tease something here?

Rip. Can't say I'll miss it given we have this place but still a shame. Thanks