Sega Wants New Virtua Fighter to Be More Than a Fighting Game

Last week, Automaton published part one of their interview with Riichiro Yamada, a producer on the new Virtua Fighter game. While it went over several topics, the general theme of it revolved around the direction for the new game. Yamada made a pretty bold statement that with the new game, they wish to achieve not so much realism, but "reality." Something that is perhaps adjacent to what we usually call "Hyperreality," usually used to describe works that evoke a more intense perception of real life through careful use of exaggeration and focus on specific details.

This week, Automaton returned with a follow-up, and it seems like Yamada still had some really, and I mean really ambitious things to say about the future of the series. As it turns out, the developers don't want to settle on simply making a good video game. They don't even want to think of Virtua Fighter in terms of its genre. Treating it as only a fighting game limits the scope of thought within the niche. Instead, they want to make a fun game first and foremost, something that can be nominated for Game of the Year. Not just fighting game of the year, but an outright GOTY.

Yamada never specifies what exactly they plan to do in order to achieve this, but it's worth keeping in mind that we are still so far from release that the game doesn't even have a proper title yet. However, we can sort of put the pieces together and speculate. At one point, many of Virtua Fighter developers became a part of the RGG team that worked on the Yakuza games. While none of the games in the series ever won the prestigious "Game of the Year" award, it's still an incredibly consistent series that typically achieves both commercial and critical success.

With RGG working on the new Virtua Fighter, and Yamada stating that they wish to do a better job with the narrative of this series, it seems very likely that we will see a major single player component that could be measured not against other fighting games, but against other AAA titles. In other words, they're aiming to create something that can be called "great" without it being followed by "for a fighting game."

This also leads into a somewhat controversial topic of balancing accessibility and depth. While Yamada (once again, understandably) doesn't offer too many specific details, he says that with a new game, they want to "experiment with various ideas." This means trimming away the fat, and adding new features. For example, the new Uprising mode that is meant to be a lot more dynamic than Standard VF rules, but should still stand alongside as a pillar of the game.

If you've been around for some time, you've probably heard all of this before. Each time a fighting game gets a sequel, someone asks what developers are planning to do, and get a response about how they want to please both new fans and old veterans. This almost never works out, as one side or the other gets obvious preferential treatment.

However, Yamada's responses here were refreshingly self-aware and candid. He understands that it's basically impossible to make a perfect sequel. Some fans will inevitably prefer something that they already love and are familiar with. They're not letting this discourage them from experimenting, and it seems like they are deeply aware that Virtua Fighter is not a series where you can neglect the veteran players.

I feel like you can really tell how much attention they are paying to this from his comment about the stances. For those unfamiliar, in Virtua Fighter, some moves will have slightly different impact depending on your stance (open or closed, depending on which foot is forward). This can have significant impact on your available combo routes, and your attack or evasive options. Some veterans might think that this is too hard for new players, but Yamada points out that beginners actually think it's a pretty cool detail. The nuance of your stances only really matters to high level players, while beginners can simply appreciate it as something that exists.

Only time will tell if the new game will actually live up to the impossibly great legacy of Virtua Fighter, but for now, it does seem like the series is in the right hands.