Tekken 8's Michael Murray Talks How Announcing A Whole DLC Season Is Different From One-Off Reveals

If you've attended a fighting game event, there's nothing quite like watching a trailer for a new character with the crowd. When Heihachi was announced to be alive and well in Tekken 8, you should have heard the EVO Crowd's reaction as their favorite villain and least favorite father climbed out of what should have been a fatal volcano drop. After seeing video confirmation that Heihachi would continue to be a menace in gameplay, the crowd popped off again for a smash cut montage of then Tekken boss Katsuhiro Harada lying through his teeth that Tekken 8 would keep Heihachi dead. 

Despite insisting moments like these are the strength of not knowing which character is coming in advance, this year the Tekken team has followed in lockstep with other fighting games and announced the Season 3 DLC roster ahead of time. Starting with Kunimitsu, then Bob and Roger Jr, with the final character after that to be announced later.

According to Tekken producer Michael Murray, the shift in approach has meant a change in how people talk about the game online. 

Surprise Vs Stability When Announcing Tekken 8 DLC

"So obviously the more vocal people online have shown very positive reaction to being able to see all the characters at once because they have a better idea if they want to buy the pass or
individual characters. So that's been understandable.", Michael says. "But at the same time, when we first were, one of the reasons we didn't do that initially is we always saw the fan base kind of, and you saw this a little bit on Reddit, for example, before we did it".

"Who's the character? We know there's going to be four. Who are the other three? And is it this character? Is it this, is it Wang Jinrei? Is it Jinpachi? Or is it Ogre?", he continues. "And then there was a lot of fun that the fan base was having and trying to figure out what the characters were. We didn't want to take that away from them".

He also explained that there was also a production advantage to doing the single reveals: By the time Heihachi was announced, you could see him in his full, not-dead glory. As compared to Bob and Roger Jr, who currently only exist in the form of concept art (that still gives us more questions to be answered when their trailers are out). 

"It's always kind of a tough balance. The people who wanted to know what they were purchasing with the pass ahead of time were quite happy. But we did see some of the fan base
who were like, yeah, I'd rather wait for a character one at a time because also we don't have the character assets created so far ahead of time that we can make a trailer with the gameplay and
all the cool animations and everything", Michael says. "So you notice we just showed the character art and that's it. So there's kind of opinions on both. But I guess in this current time, things change depending on the times. A lot of people seem to be happy with that approach, I would say".

That being said, he did say theres a magic to surprising the crowd at big events.

"It depends on where you're showing it, right? If you're showing it at a Combo Breaker or EVO or something, people are going to explode. But if it's just shown off to the standard media, they're going to be like, yeah, so?", he says. "So yeah, the crowd that you're showing it to also, you need to kind of tailor it to that".

When it comes to selection though, Michael did elaborate on how DLCs are selected. It's been well documented that the Tekken team takes both gameplay and popularity into account when it comes to choosing the DLC lineup- especially if there's something new they can add. However, Michael stressed that popularity is so much more than "if this post gets 100 upvotes they'll ad Dr Bosconovich back into Tekken". 

"When I mean popular, there's various popularity, right? Not just the different novice, beginner, expert, etc. But also one character might be very popular against people who draw fan
art or one character a lot of people like to cosplay as", Michael says.

"But we really want people to also actually pick up the character. So Lei, for example, Lei Wulong, a very popular staple of the Tekken franchise. And everyone's like, we need Lei to make it a proper Tekken", he says.

"But did people actually play Lei when he was in the game? Not so much. So please, I'm not saying Lei is never going to be in Tekken 8. That's not the point. It's one thing that we do have to consider is of course people will be happy when they're in the game", he explains.. "A lot of people don't play Armor King, but when he was in the game or added to the game, they were very happy about that".

"But there are still a lot of people who actually play Armor King. So because it takes so much resources to add a new character to the game, especially the new design elements in their
gameplay, we really prefer it when the character has an audience of players that actually use the character when they're added".

In the interest of these paragraphs not being screenshotted with some sort of tacky headline like "LEI DECONFIRMED FROM TEKKEN 8?!", Michael was kind enough to say it's anyone's guess if humanity would be subjected to Lei Stance Pressure with a dash of Heat, the kind of knowledge check you'd have to ace to stop an Elder God from materializing on earth.

"My mind's not made up on Lei, again, on the record", he laughs.

Leaning Into The Mysticism With Kunimitsu

On the topic of the here and now, though, Michael shared quite a bit about the new direction they're taking Kunimitsu, second of her name and daughter of the original Kunimitsu. In Tekken 8, she's got both a new design and a fun backstory- alongside being a thief-ninja, she's also in a fake friendship with Tekken 8 newcomer Reina as she seeks out the cursed sword Yoshimitsu. 

While Michael Murray shot down my idea of any kind of story content exploring that dynamic, he did explain that in Tekken 8 they were able to push her Kitsune motif much further with a modern twist- ancient Ninjas were infamously known to not wear pumped up kicks, so Michael says adding a dash of sneaker culture to Kunimitsu was a good way to freshen up her design. 

"We knew we wanted to do more focus heavily on the ninja theme. And so to what kind of traditional Japanese aesthetics lend themselves well to the costume? Giving a very flashy look, but at the same time, making sure that it doesn't look like an older woman, that she's actually a proper, vivacious student, right?", he says. "And to mix that traditional look with stuff that's more appealing to a younger audience, like a sneaker culture, something that fighting game fans really like a lot. And you've seen our previous tie-ins with Nike, etc. So to kind of blend those sneakers and stuff like that to a traditional Japanese aesthetic was something that took a few tries to kind of get the right balance with that".

He also talked about pushing the Kitsune elements- new to Kunimitsu's backstory is her nine legendary swords that appear in her Rage Art, making her look like a nine-tailed fox. Combined with other cool elements like classic ninja jutsu like replacing yourself with a log and breathing fire, Kunimitsu feels like the archetypal Tekken Character- showing off all the classic hits of her major theme with a dash of the new with her modern elements. 

Unfortunately, he did also clarify (read: shoot down) other theories about the character- such as the interpretation that Raven training under her father could mean she was one of (potentially many, he canonically gets around) children of Victor Chevalier. 

"Kunimitsu's father and Victor are different people", Michael explains. "Kunimitsu's father and Victor were old friends, and Raven was Kunimitsu's father's student". 

If your heart screams for cool ninja moves, sick kicks and the funky beat of Vermillion Gate, you're going to want to download Kunimitsu when she drops in early access for Tekken 8 next week. If nothing else, to get good references for that Kunimitsu/Reina school rom com project you're gonna wanna start working on. 

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