Today Bandai Namco published a new trailer of Tekken 8 and a handy Q&A with director and chief producer Katsuhiro Harada touching a couple of interesting topics.
First of all, we take a good look at Panda in action, interestingly shown in Azucena's new Peruvian stage.
I mention Azucena because she's a relevant part of the news today.
Panda, also known as “Pretty Protector,” has two main roles, Ling Xiaoyu’s pet and her bodyguard.
Her fighting style, which you can see in the trailer below, is Heihachi-Style Advanced Kuma Shin Ken.
Moving on to the Q&A, Harada-san addresses a situation that came up during a recent exhibition match.
Current EVO Tekken 7 champion Arslan Ash completely steamrolled his opponents by using the new character Azucena, which prompted Harada-san to mention that she'd be nerfed for release.
The veteran developer explains that the term "exhibition match" has different interpretations in different countries.
The way he sees it, while winning is important to some extent, what's even more crucial is the athletes demonstrating and sharing the techniques inherent to the game alongside its charms.
On the other hand, Arslan Ash just went to town on the opponents with a character they weren't yet familiar with.
Harada-san continues by mentioning that while this is ok, he wanted to see more back-and-forth kinds of battles. The problem is that he did not actually tell the players to fight that way. After all, it still had to be a serious match.
There was no money or honors involved, so the only instruction he gave was to promote the charm of Tekken 8. He believes he ultimately should have explained better what he expected from an exhibition match.
On the other hand, proving whether Azucena is really strong or not requires looking at real statistics after thousands of matches.
For instance, Akuma in Tekken 7 has a low winning rate. It's always around 40% or less as he's really hard to master. Yet, when a skilled player plays with Akuma really well, it can create the impression for the viewer that the character is too strong.
Tekken didn't want people to have the impression that Azucena is too strong from an exhibition match, as we don't yet know whether that is the case or not.
So Harada-san said she'd be nerfed just as a countermeasure to ease the impression that she might be too strong. Realistically speaking, not just Azucena, but all characters will be adjusted all the way until just before the game's release.
You can watch the full video below.
Tekken 8 is coming for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S on January 26.
If you'd like to read more about the game, you can read our latest dedicated preview and an interesting interview with the developers. You can also watch an interesting video in which Succession star Brian Cox recaps the series' story so far.
