Tekken Director Says Unlockables Are "Outdated"

Tekken series director Katsuhiro Harada says the concept of unlockable characters in fighting games made sense in the past but is "outdated" in the modern videogame market.

You know how it goes. You bring home a hot new game, fire it up for the first time and feel a dull sinking in your chest as you realize that you're going to have to work at the thing before you can really start to play it. If you're a PC gamer you can usually go online and find a patch that will unlock all the good content without forcing you to spend hours beating on the stuff that sucks but if you're playing on a console, you're generally out of luck.

Fortunately for Tekken fans, Harada feels your pain. "Why we locked the characters originally was that in the arcades, it was kind of to extend the life of the game by gradually unlocking characters. And also with the home versions as well, because you can rent games or whatever, it was to protect us against that," he explained.

"That's kind of outdated now though, especially with online play," he continued. "If we were to have locked characters it would irritate a lot of people, to be playing against others online and to not have all the characters available. So I think it's no longer useful."

I can think of at least one game critic who would wholeheartedly agree.

Source: VideoGamer.com

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NoMoreSanity:
I don't agree with that, it gives no reason to play through a game otherwise. Just have a small portion of the characters locked with majority playable from the start.

I strongly disagree.

I sure as hell don't play fighting games to unlock characters, I mean, what the hell? It's all about going online or having someone grabbing a second controller and winning, not about unlocking shit.

i would go to war over this arguement. unlockable characters are the purpose of my playing fighting games.

NoMoreSanity:
I don't agree with that, it gives no reason to play through a game otherwise. Just have a small portion of the characters locked with majority playable from the start.

fully heatedly agree with this statement!

Lima Bravo agrees. :D

I still think the only fightning game that gave me any incentive was Bushido Blades hall of 100 warriors thingy. That was awesome, win 100 fights in a row (With out being hit was optional madness) :)

I played that games for weeks.

...and the last horse finally crosses the finish line.

Better late than never though.

...Tekken has a director? What does he direct? The rubbish dialogue and cutscenes in between fights?

Also, unlocks vastly extend the life of a game, so, yeah, he's wrong, really...

About time, I still havent unlocked everyone on SF4. I just want to battle my friends or others over the internet. Spend hours trying to beat cheap bosses with charecters I dont like in order to unlock whoever is not fun.

Its just a pain in the arse.

NoMoreSanity:

Psychosocial:

NoMoreSanity:
I don't agree with that, it gives no reason to play through a game otherwise. Just have a small portion of the characters locked with majority playable from the start.

I strongly disagree.

I sure as hell don't play fighting games to unlock characters, I mean, what the hell? It's all about going online or having someone grabbing a second controller and winning, not about unlocking shit.

It's not about that either. It's about either button-mashing till you win, or going insane enough to learn every possible combo, than lose to a button-masher.

Just yesterday did I hear about a game called Blazblue from a dude nicknaming Armake21, he's got somewhat internet fame. Look that game up, no insane combos, a worthwhile story and it's not button mashing.

It got like 9.4 on IGN, and something like 9.6 on Gamespot. Both the Xbox 360 and PS3 version of the game has 90 and above on Metacritic.

tekken used to have tons of unlockable characters, i remember getting the newest tekken and then playing thru it to get all the extra chars

they always had one or two that you needed a perfect play through to get them unlocked

I guess it's a bit funny that the only game with unlockables I can recall dealing with recently wasn't a fighting game but a racing game, TOCA 2. And you can bet your ass that when I got tired of dicking around with cars I didn't like so I could finally get to drive the cars I did, I patched that sucker faster than you can say "Nigel Mansell."

Finally they ditched this idea. I just HATE having to unlock characters, especially when I lose my saved data for any reason and then have to wade through 2 weeks of gameplay to get them back.

Yahtzee is a "game critic"?

Don't make me laugh.

NoMoreSanity:
I don't agree with that, it gives no reason to play through a game otherwise. Just have a small portion of the characters locked with majority playable from the start.

I agree, that's why I kept playing Mortal Kombat for so long.

But repeatedly mashing low kick through street fighter 4 was so fun!

Then what will I do when there are no people around willing to play the damn game with me.

I'm willing to bet money that there will be unlockable characters in the future, and they'll unlock with a credit card.

Anyway, doesn't this take some of the fun out of it.

So does that also mean that all the character's ending movies will be unlocked from the beginning as well? I mean who would actually want to play through a game they've just spent money on, just to see how the story pans out for every character?

It's not even difficult to unlock the character's in Tekken. You just set the fights to one round and it's a breeze, and since it uses the formula of "beat the game X number of times to unlock Y", I always found that I'd unlocked all the characters just by playing for 5-10 minutes with the characters who'd interested me.

It just seems bizarre coming from the director of Tekken, a game in where it's always been easy (and just part of the first day's enjoyment) to unlock the characters, it's like they're catering for people who don't actually like to play Tekken, or fighting games, or have thumbs.

Ok, excuse the language, but seriously Katsuriho Hamada - Go fuck yourself. Unlockable's are not only a replay value thing, they're also a training thing. Tekken, has always been about unlocks. Just as with Street Fighter. Getting to the point where you're good enough to unlock Gouken or Seth. Yeah, that's a hurdle to climb when you first start playing.

What he really means is, the days of 'free' unlocks are over. Instead, we'll nickel and dime you to DEATH, using DLC. Bastards.

Morne

Mornelithe:
Ok, excuse the language, but seriously Katsuriho Hamada - Go fuck yourself. Unlockable's are not only a replay value thing, they're also a training thing. Tekken, has always been about unlocks. Just as with Street Fighter. Getting to the point where you're good enough to unlock Gouken or Seth. Yeah, that's a hurdle to climb when you first start playing.

What he really means is, the days of 'free' unlocks are over. Instead, we'll nickel and dime you to DEATH, using DLC. Bastards.

Morne

Soulcalibur 4 anyone

Darkrai:

Mornelithe:
Ok, excuse the language, but seriously Katsuriho Hamada - Go fuck yourself. Unlockable's are not only a replay value thing, they're also a training thing. Tekken, has always been about unlocks. Just as with Street Fighter. Getting to the point where you're good enough to unlock Gouken or Seth. Yeah, that's a hurdle to climb when you first start playing.

What he really means is, the days of 'free' unlocks are over. Instead, we'll nickel and dime you to DEATH, using DLC. Bastards.

Morne

Soulcalibur 4 anyone

Abso-friggin-lutely, couldn't have said it better myself. Nothing like seeing DLC available for the game you just bought, on LAUNCH DAY. Am I the only person who was so supremely pissed off at that, that I vowed to never purchase any DLC for SCIV?

On a side note, just out of curiosity, any Tekken 3 players out there? I wanted to try and guage my...obsession with that game, by comparing save data stats. My current save for Tekken 3 (Yeah, I know, it's ridiculous I still have the save game), has 17,642 versus matches on it, highest I ever got in Survival was 34. Any other sick, disturbed, tekken obsessed individuals out there able to share their stats?

Morne

I say the beat 'em up genre is outdated. Sorry couldn't resist.

NoMoreSanity:
I don't agree with that, it gives no reason to play through a game otherwise. Just have a small portion of the characters locked with majority playable from the start.

Agreed.

I agree with the Tekken director.

Mornelithe:
Tekken, has always been about unlocks. Just as with Street Fighter. Getting to the point where you're good enough to unlock Gouken or Seth. Yeah, that's a hurdle to climb when you first start playing.

Except Street Fighter 4 is the only game in the SF series that's makes important characters unlockable. I personally couldn't care less about SF2's Akuma or SF3's Gill being unlockable: those are broken boss characters only used for dicking around. I'm much more for costume unlockables, colors, all that sort of stuff instead of the important parts of the actual game being unlockable.

Second is the you'll only learn to abuse the CPU and not learn anything about the actual mechanics that go behind it. You know, those that'd help you in the fight against a human player.

NoMoreSanity:

It's not about that either. It's about either button-mashing till you win, or going insane enough to learn every possible combo, than lose to a button-masher.

I think there's a misconception here. A guy who knows mad combos will get trounced if that's all he knows since any guy who has a grasp on the basic mechanics of the game can make sure he won't get those combos in. A guy who knows the basic mechanics usually also knows a move that'll beat anything the button masher will try to do. There's a counter for it but if you just hit buttons aimlessly, there's not much of a chance the masher will find the counter.

That, and Tekken is actually one of the few fighters that are about insane combos. SF4 for instance makes huge combos largely useless by scaling the damage: every consecutive hit you make in a combo takes less damage. That means that doing a 10 hit combo and then ending it with an ultra is largely a waste of your execution skills and a completely viable ultra bar. Some of the best moves in the game are actually well-timed normal moves (Sagat's standing roundhouse and sweep for instance).

Mornelithe:

On a side note, just out of curiosity, any Tekken 3 players out there?

No, but I've played upwards 10k matches on SF3: Third Strike myself. No unlockables aside from one color per character and Gill, the broken boss character who isn't meant to be played by people anyway.

And a good 5k matches on Garou: Mark of the Wolves. No unlockables at all.

Those are my favorite fighters, by the way.

Me, I like unlocks that have no bearing on gameplay. Things like costumes, art, music, stages, etc. Characters, not so much. But I know that Mornelithe is right. Nickel and diming is how companies like to deal with their customers now. Why give away something for free when they could charge you for it? Why give you a full game with bonuses when instead they could give you a rudimentry version and then make you pay for extras? Why treat your customers with respect and give them little extras for supporting you?

I've lost a lot of respect for devs in this current generation...

I don't agree with that, for me, this would be a reason for me not to get the game, because it would get old much quicker.

NoMoreSanity:

Psychosocial:

NoMoreSanity:
I don't agree with that, it gives no reason to play through a game otherwise. Just have a small portion of the characters locked with majority playable from the start.

I strongly disagree.

I sure as hell don't play fighting games to unlock characters, I mean, what the hell? It's all about going online or having someone grabbing a second controller and winning, not about unlocking shit.

It's not about that either. It's about either button-mashing till you win, or going insane enough to learn every possible combo, than lose to a button-masher.

Actually, the easiest way to become a pro at tekken, is learning the speeds, distances, and move sets of every character. Essentially, you'll know where to be, and where not to be, at any given time. Sort of like Ryu. He doesn't go all out attack (unless he's under the influence of the Dark Hado)...he just blocks, blocks, blocks and then pounds you to dust when you leave an opening. It works like a charm in Tekken... I haven't lost to a button masher, since I actually took the time to learn move sets and combo's.

Morne

I think this is a positive step. Unlockable content can be fine, but it needs to feel like it is a 'bonus' and not a core part of the game, kind of like what God of War did (the unlockable content in that game was also very small compared to the rest of the content). Having access to every character from the get-go is a good idea, particularly since restricting that is a completely arbitrary gameplay lengthening strategy. Let's face it, if the game is good enough to stand up on its own, it doesn't need gameplay lengthening gimmicks. This is especially true of fighting games where the gameplay consists primarily of 30-90 second matches.

That's a shame, unlocking characters is always what I like to do first... Ah well, Tekken's crap anyway.

klakkat:
Having access to every character from the get-go is a good idea, particularly since restricting that is a completely arbitrary gameplay lengthening strategy. Let's face it, if the game is good enough to stand up on its own, it doesn't need gameplay lengthening gimmicks. This is especially true of fighting games where the gameplay consists primarily of 30-90 second matches.

This is basically what I was supposed to type in my long-winded post put short and sweet. Wholeheartedly agree.

if he really didn't like outdated things, he would not be working on a tekken game

Some rather worrying subtext here. Why make players earn bonus content when they have proven themselves willing to pay for it? Gamers seemingly being content to only receive a trophy and gamer-score boost for their efforts.

Of course, perhaps I'm just being cynical, but despite claims that they are acting towards the advancement of the medium, I'm sure an incredibly profitable recent trend has caught their attention too. They get my respect if they avoid releasing DLC though.

I don't mind limited unlocks much, like maybe keeping the story mode boss locked until you beat him but locking away the majority of the roster sucks. Unlockable characters should be characters that are optional, something like joke chars, boss chars, etc, ones that are nice to have but no deal not to have. It absolutely sucks when base characters are locked that people will actually miss in multiplayer.

The worst I've encountered was IIRC Naruto GNT3, had like 6 or 8 characters out of ~20 available without unlocking and until I got my hands on a FAQ (it's a japanese version so I understood tzero and thought the mission mode menu option was the tutorial) I couldn't get anywhere in mission mode and therefore not unlock those.

Yes, unlocks add content to make people keep playing a game as a single player but multiplayer is best without unlocks because then the content becomes the ability of your friends.

Maybe the game could ask "do you want unlocking enabled?" and perhaps let you add some cosmetic stuff to your characters if you go through the unlocks and want to show off but those who just want to have a fun time with others instead of the stupid AI can just go ahead and play.

I've still got plenty of empty spots in my Tekken 5 character selector but then again I didn't really enjoy the game anyway.

Somehow, I truly expected this article to directly point the finger at Smash Bros Brawl for being the worst offender to date.

Now if EA can drop the need to unlock every half-decent weapon in Battlefield 3, there may be hope for the world yet...