Bringing Tokon: Fighting Souls to Life - An Interview with Takeshi Yamanaka and Kazuto Sekine
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls has landed, and it has brought with it Arc System Works amazing skill in fighting game development, along with the world of Marvel comics, to create one of the most unique and welcoming fighters in memory. I loved it, and I wasn’t the only one, so when I got the chance to have a chat with Takeshi Yamanaka, Producer at Arc System Works and Kazuto Sekine, Game Director and Lead Battle Designer at Arc System Works, I had to say yes and discover for myself how this unique bit of biffo came together.
The first thing I had to know was just how much of the previous Marvel fighting games influenced what they developed. Did they recognise the legacy or simply want to strike out on their own? Sekine-San was quick to jump in. “Of course we are very aware of the long and highly respected history that Marvel games have within the fighting game community, especially as fighting game developers ourselves,” he said. “So when we had this opportunity, we, of course, wanted to pay our respects to that history, but we also felt we needed to step forward with something that was unique, something that only we could create.”
The importance of not copying the past became clear as Sekine-san continued. “If we kept the same format and just made another tag fighting game, that felt like it was the right approach for us, as this experience is already out there and available. We wanted to create something that could only be made by Arc System Works, and I think that’s what the players wanted too. So while we have respect for the existing games, we wanted to redefine a tag fighter, and that’s what led to the 4v4 structure.”
One of the biggest surprises in my time with Tokon: Fighting Souls was just how welcoming it was to new players. So I went looking for more info on just how important it was to welcome in new players. “For us, it was a key part of the structure of the game.” Said Sekine-san. “We wanted to ensure that all actions in the game would be something any player would be capable of performing. Of course, this is a versus game, but before everything, I think it is a Marvel title, so I wanted to ensure that players would enjoy controlling their characters, so they can live that fantasy of being the superhero or the villain and have fun with that. So it was very important from early on in the development for us to make sure that the entry point was there for as many people as possible to jump in and enjoy the game”
On the other side of that question, there is no doubt that despite the game’s welcoming nature, there is a load of depth there for those with more experience in the fighting genre. I asked about how hard it was to maintain that balance. “It is a very challenging thing to achieve both of those goals,” replied Sekine-san, “I would say that as a developer we have a lot of experience in developing fighting games for that core audience, so when we make a game like this we have to make sure that it lives up to the depth that those core players are expecting as well as making it more accessable.”
Sekine-san went on to explain further, “For me, competitive depth I consider something that can be achieved while keeping the control scheme simple. Complex controls are not equivalent to difficulty in the game. I feel the difficulty comes in with the breadth of options available to the player and the situations that come up through the match that require decision-making. The challenge is making the best decision mid-match to suit the situation that has been presented. I think that is what makes a fighting game interesting, leaving that room for players so they have a lot to think about and a lot to consider. Additionally, it is a four-v-four game, so asking players to learn four different fighters straight away isn’t going to be possible, so we created the game in a way where you start out controlling just one of the fighters in your team, and as you get adjusted, you can use other characters in your team. I think you learn more in this space by slowly adding to the number of characters available to the player.”
The single life bar was undeniably an interesting choice for the game, but one that clearly had a lot of thought put into it. “This plays into what I mention previously about only needing to learn one character to be able to start playing.” said Sekine-san “Also, in the traditional tag system, when a character loses its all of its health you are left with fewer options in the match without that character on your team so I feel like you start with full power and lose that power as the match goes on. Whereas in Tokon: Fighting Souls, the idea is that you are in your most powered-up state at the end of the match. This is something that is allowed by the shared health bar system.”
How much did Marvel have to say about these character choices? Did the team have free rein when picking from Marvel’s huge back catalogue of heroes and villains? I posed this question and was a little surprised at the answer: “We didn’t have a push from Marvel for any specific characters in the game”, said Yamanaka-san “However, they did ask us to include a good balance of characters from their major franchises like X-Men, Avengers and Spider-Man and to not lean too heavily into only one of them.”
Further to this, I was interested in how Marvel felt about the look of these designs, which are undeniably different to anything else we have seen from Marvel before. Once again, the answer is a little unexpected. “Initially we submitted to Marvel something that was more of an emulation of the American comic book style, but our partner at Marvel’s reaction made it clear that really wasn’t what they were looking for,” said Yamanaka-san. “He wanted to see a representation of the Marvel characters in the Japanese Animation style that Arc System Works is known for, and so when we resubmitted a revised version more in that style, we felt like this was the right choice. The first character we worked on was Iron Man, and we felt at that point our partners at Marvel were looking to be surprised, so we leaned even more into our style, with lead to that real Japanese robot anime style that Iron Man has.”
Finally, I wanted to ask about single-player content. It is something that is often secondary for fighting games, but it is clear that wasn’t the case with Tokon: Fighting Souls. Just how important were the single-player modes during the development? “Of course we do expect the core fighting audience to be playing it, we also realise that in this case, many of the players will be more casual, fans of the IP and the characters. So for those players, we realise that playing online is difficult and that is not the experience they are looking for.” replied Yamanaka-san “so for this project, from the early design phases we placed a lot of importance on ensuring that we had that story and those single player modes that would allow them to play, have fun and not get frustrated by the difficulty of the online space.”
So there you have it, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls was clearly developed as a fighter that is for everyone, not just the hardcore. It certainly comes across in the final game and, personally, I think it has a long future ahead of it.
Thanks to Sony Australia and, of course, both Sekine-san and Yamanaka-san for their time and the chance to pose a few questions. For more on Tokon: Fighting Souls, you can read my review here:
