Harada talks Tekken 7's "seamless" approach to story

Gamereactor recently caught up with Tekken 7's Game Director and Chief Producer Katsuhiro Harada as well as Game Designer Michael Murray at E3, where we talked about the game and their approach to the story.

When asked about the story mode and how the plot is brought into the game, Harada said that previous instalments like Tekken 5 "had like a brief kind of introduction and then you would have battles and then depending on your character when they had some kind of rival come in and you would fight them, there'd be a short exchange of words before the match and then you'd go back to the normal battle". This time "is quite different though."

"You have the CG and opening movie, it just transitions smoothly straight into the in-game cinematics and right into the battle", he said, before adding "not only that, but in the past once you had the cinematics where the spoken lines finished, you would still start in the same positions across your opponent and normal battle etc.

"This time though the conditions are as they are in the cinematics, so if you start with lower health that's how it is when the battle starts, you start from the positions you were last seen in the movie etc., and even when you're fighting you have different game events that kind of occur, and you'll have exchanges between the characters while you're fighting, so it's more seamless this time around".

Harada also commented on Tekken 7 as a conclusion to the story. The game is meant to "revisit why they're fighting", he said, and "it's just that as a numbered sequel; we really felt we had to pick up on the kind of story again and to kind of tie up some loose ends".

Another reason to conclude things is that the player is now offered "one, at least, conclusion to the Mishima saga with the father and the son fighting each other".

When asked about Akuma's inclusion in the game, Harada said that previous instalments had crossed over, such as Street Fighter X Tekken, but that all these games had shared characters in small ways.

"Wouldn't it be cool if we could take a character and have him linked into the story not just as a normal kind of promotional guest character but he's actually part of the atmosphere of the story."

Tekken 7 is heading to PC, PS4 and Xbox One next year.