Tekken 8 | Heihachi Gameplay Trailer

[Moonface]

Tekken 8 | Devil Jin Trailer

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Jun: "Jin, don't let the power of the Devil consume you!"
Devil Jin: "Hmph! Suffer the lineage of family trauma you've avoided for so long!" *proceeds to chain her to a rock and slice her in half with a light saber*

[Mr EliteL]

I did play Devil Jin quite a lot in T5 and T6 but just barely used him in Tag2 and T7. I didn't really get into the story version of DJ when I played the demo so didn't see much, but this trailer really makes me want to go back and give him a go again as I was already planning to anyway. Didn't realise his hits have much more impact now, makes him look more brutal than ever especially doing that to Jun, really makes it look like there's nothing left of Jin and it's just the Devil Gene going wild.

[Moonface]

Although it's obvious, I'm going to advise you to avoid going onto YouTube @Mr EliteL as apparently people who got the game early are putting up story spoilers on there. I've not seen any myself but saw a good number of people on the Tekken subreddit saying they'd seen it in their front pages or on the recommended sidebar while watching a video.

That aside, currently T8 is sitting at a 90 average from critic reviews, which apparently Tekken hasn't hit as an average score for quite some time now.

[Mr EliteL]

Yeah I'm going avoid YT tomorrow as well as Twitch until I have the game in my hands, although I am willing to see how high the Twitch viewership numbers get to when I get up on Friday. I don't know when my copy will arrive as I ordered physical, hope it doesn't take too long.

90 average, not too shabby. I wonder how I'll feel when I've played a good amount. Tag2 is still my personal favourite overall though, T7 came close at one point but lacked in areas way too much I might not even consider it my 2nd anymore. Team Battle better be a DLC mode down the line because that's the mode that made me play each Tekken a lot until next release, even T6 though to a lesser extent than the rest, T7 without it made me stop playing when the 3rd DLC pack came around, I'd only play sparingly each DLC release then drop it. Although I have little to no hope for Team Battle now, Sadge. I'll just see how the game does for DLC and patches in the future but no need to decide right now how much or long I'll play T8.

My plan for Friday is either play story mode first or get to grips with Lee then story, then I'll give Lili, Devil Jin, King and possibly Xiaoyu a good try then Arcade Quest.

[Moonface]

Why would you need to avoid Twitch? Unless you were to go into a stream where someone is playing the game I'd expect spoilers would be almost impossible to come across.

If this game doesn't get Team Battle or any other modes added post launch, my dream wish would be that when the story of Tekken is done and no further mainline games will happen that the final Tekken game is just one that contains all of the fighters, stages, and modes that have appeared throughout the series. Almost like a game that celebrates everything about Tekken.

[Mr EliteL]

Yeah to just avoid any screens if I look in the Tekken 8 category, but don't need to now. Saw T8 got up to 86K viewers which is pretty good.

Yeah a final game to celebrate the series would be great, don't know when that will be though. If T8 does do well I'm thinking Tekken x Street Fighter will be made next then T9, apparently Harada said 8 will last for 10 years until the next game. 10 years sounds like a long wait so surely there will be something in between to fill in the gap, and with the producer of SF showing up during Evo 2023....wait no, Ono isn't part of Capcom anymore. OK, perhaps not then.
Still I think there will be a sequel because of a certain something.

Played through all Story Mode, quite enjoyed it and certainly better than T7's because everyone got a part to play, even if small with some having a bigger role than the rest plus no silly journalist slowing the momentum down. I played on Hard, some Kazuya fights took a while, namely when I was forced to play Lars who I just sucked with.
There was a teaser in the Story Mode that was similar to Tekken Force so I'm thinking that might actually happen at some point, that moment did get a bit clustered though and I sometimes got stuck in between enemies, so I got chain attacked around me, whilst there were gunners shooting at me too.

Story Mode Spoilers

So yeah, Azazel really did return and we had to fight him as Kazuya who was aiming to take Azazel's power. It worked fine I thought making Zafina the temporary host then Kazuya removes Azazel from her.

Reina is Heihachi's daughter and has a Devil form. She's still seemingly young so who did Heihachi get with?! She did get blasted by Devil Kazuya which may have given her Devil power but if not that then was it from the mother somehow, or is she an experiment? Lars got blasted too when he fought Kazuya and he didn't seem to get any.

Jin accepts Devil Jin to become Angel Jin, fights Devil Kazuya and they both cancel each other out and both lose their powers for good. That fight was quite intense and was also annoying a bit from the amount of armour and regen Kazuya got but whatever. Then the two fight again as mortals. The stage that is sent into space I was completely confused by though, I had no idea what caused the piece of land to lift out from the sea, other than that though the two stages looked good to fight on.

Jun was a vision basically until the very end where we see her foot stepping next to a KO'd Kazuya after the battle with Jin and she's now confirmed to be alive...I think. Her Story Episode said she was basically completely out ever since fighting Ogre. The shrine type thing she entered had a type of effect on her, Jin enters it too in the Story and he goes into a lull state where he confronts Devil Jin. Jun isn't there then so she had finally woken up by the conflict between Kazuya and Jin.

Claudio may have died but it wasn't completely certain, he got hit by the same blast Reina and Lars but they both have strong genes, but still may not have been lethal. He couldn't do much with his Exorcist Art...want to say I expected more from him but I just felt whatever really. In the credits there was an image of Zafina and a foot that might have been Claudio's or just a random Sirius member.

Oh and er, Law fought against Paul because Paul broke his promise to share his earnings with Law.  

So far my only gripe is character customisation, it may have a bit more areas to customise than T7 but the options are worse than T7's. There are no unique clothing for characters like T7 had, everyone at least two for Upper Body and Lower and maybe a Full Body, also you could individually select the upper clothing of default/unique outfits or lower and mix them or with the common options. None of that in T8. Female characters have a very limited Lower Body options too it's like two skirts with slight variations and two trousers with slight variations. Similar with the Males too but they get a tiny bit more.

[Moonface]

Oh dang you finished the story already. I was expecting it to take you until tomorrow or the end of the weekend to get to the end so hadn't gone to find a YouTube playthrough of the story so I could talk about it with you and share my thoughts on things.

I do know about at least two of the character arcade endings (Jun and Kazuya) as they both got posted onto the Tekken subreddit pre-launch, so I guess those and the character customization is the best I can offer for a discussion right now that isn't just me asking questions about the game.
I've seen mixed responses to the character customization, with the only agreed upon view being that it's better than T7 but doesn't come on par to TTT2 or T6. Obviously I can't see all of the options to form my own opinion on it (not do I know the full scope of T7's customization to make a comparison) but I'm aware a lot of characters are lacking iconic clothing they've had in previous games (Hwoarang lacks his headband or classic Dobok, Nina doesn't have the bodysuit) and that there's apparently a lot of t-shirts for everyone?

Despite whatever the state is of T8's character customization though I have seen a lot of really good custom outfits over the last day or so that I wanna share:

• Leon Kennedy (Resident Evil 4)
  
• Super Saiyan Blue Goku
  
• John Wick
  
• Bayonetta
  
• David Martinez (Cyberpunk Edgerunners)
  
• Scorpion (Mortal Kombat)
  
• A2 (NieR Automata)
  
• Josie (Tekken 7)
  
• King (Tekken 3)
  
• Vaas (Far Cry 3)
  
• Ryu and Ken
  
• Paul (Tekken 4)
  
• Mileena (Mortal Kombat)
  

Also, in case you didn't know this happened EL, there was a drone light show over London Bridge to celebrate the launch of Tekken 8: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tekken/comments...in_london/
As neat as that is, I'm not sure how I feel yet about the idea of drones being used to play advertisements in the night sky.

[Mr EliteL]

Yeah I made it my mission to do it all Day 1, also for the alternate ending as you can just enter the final chapter and play it through and let the other outcome happen on the final round/phase. I must say that final chapter is brilliantly done for the atmosphere, cutscenes, music, multiple phases, Jin being given some of his Tekken 3 moves and also Jun/Asuka Kazama style moves, Jin and Kazuya countering each other to prolong it.

I've done Jun, Reina, Lee and Nina Episodes so far, everyone gets 5 fights. There is an Arcade mode too with the usual 8 or so rounds but nothing at the end except a special boss fight against story Devil Kazuya, possibly other character but I've only played once so far.

I'd actually disagree with T8 being better than T7 as I already mentioned. Most of those are recolours of character's own costumes with a few exceptions like Leon. Plus the hairstyles used are also a few character's own just featured in the customisation for both male and female like for Paul is Lee's hair (Lee's hair is also in the female selection, another is Leo's too and a few others). The recolouring is fine and all as that's mostly what I've been customising so far, just needs more unique or more variety. I don't particularly like any of the T-shirts either, they just look crap with the male builds.

Any other ads with drones in I wouldn't want to see but damn that one for this game looks incredible.

[Moonface]

I'm aware of the alternate story ending if you lose in the fight that triggers it, and I have seen it but barely remember it.

So besides the number of fights what's the difference between the Episodes and Arcade mode? I'm just wondering why the devs bothered to put character endings into Episodes over going the classic way with the Arcade mode when both modes are present in this game (unlike T6 if memory serves correctly).

[Mr EliteL]

The alternate ending is kinda meh really, Kazuya just continues on the warpath leading G Corp as a supreme power over everything. That definitely won't be the canon going into T9.

I wondered why they couldn't just put the Intro and Endings in the Arcade Mode instead too. Little reason to play Arcade other than the last stage fights. The Character Episodes at least have fights against 5 rivals fitting to the character chosen and not just completely random. Kazuya faces Paul, Claudio, Victor, Lee then Lars. Lee has Bryan, Yoshimitsu, Jack-8 (those three to test his battle suit against), Lars then Kazuya.

I realised why the Into The Stratosphere stage happens as I was confused during story as to how it launches into space, because I wasn't paying attention first time.
Also, t-shirts don't look as bad on characters as I previously thought.

[Moonface]

I finally started watching a playthrough of the Story Mode, but since it's three and a half hours long I'm not gonna binge the entire thing in one hit. I did consider just watching cutscenes and no gameplay but given there's a lot of moments within the actual gameplay itself I'm either going to miss some cool stuff or just end up with a video filled with random jumpy gameplay cutscenes mixed in with the regular cutscenes. Anyway, I just watched to the end of Chapter 3:

Story Mode Chapters 1 - 3

Not much to comment on Chapter 1 because it was in the demo, so that can be skipped.

I liked how Chapter 2 sets up a fight despite being a chapter consisting entirely of downtime. I can't tell from watching footage so I'm curious, does Jin's gameplay differ here at all compared to Chapter 1 besides the lack of any moves that display a Devil trait such as that kick where the wing appears? With Lee's analysis that he's weaker and just trash on all fronts I would hope that was reflected in the gameplay, but I'm never going to tell from watching.

The biggest thing the story has addressed so far that I like the most is the issue people were speculating about pre-launch with Kazuya declaring anyone who loses in the tournament will see their country punished when a lot of countries have multiple fighters. I know it's probably been a thing in most of the Tekken plots that the tournament involves qualifiers and isn't just everyone on the roster in a gigantic fighting bracket, but it never occurred to me that qualifiers to pick one person from each country immediately solves the problem of equal representation. It's probably supposed to be nobodies, but I'm curious if Reina and Hwoarang won their fights against an actual character or not like how we see Paul defeating Law.

Given that pretty much the entire cast show up in the Story Mode (at least I'm assuming they will) I wonder how characters like Asuka get involved because she isn't in the tournament due to Jin winning the spot to represent Japan. I know that Yoshimitsu also won't be in the tournament because it would serve nothing for the story, but I wonder if he would even be allowed to enter when he doesn't actually have a country to represent.

I'm aware that Reina has a Devil form as I have seen the post-credits scene of it, and although I have no further context than that her fight with Jin tells me that she's investigating the power to figure out how to use her own. I'm sure whatever happens to trigger it in her probably looks crazy or just unusually cruel (I dunno if she's gonna activate it from getting her shit utterly shoved in or pulling an Ash Ketchum and running between Jin and Kazuya as they fire lasers) without the knowledge of that post-credits scene, so I'm curious if you saw her post-credits scene reveal coming or not @Mr EliteL.

[Mr EliteL]

Story Chapter 2-3

Yes, as you already knew Jin loses the new devil moves he could do that this game gave him. So inputting any of them they turn into a generic or just non-devil version of the move, or even the input just doesn't do anything. It differs, I can't remember what ones did what, I tended to avoid them while playing.

Adding a qualifying section of the tournament was neat. Brought the roster down a lot as it goes into the final bracket, there's also randoms as if you saw when it announced Lili was in the finals she was fighting some dude. So...( I need to separate this)

..back when it was the original Arcade mode the amount of characters would fit in a way, if you tried to imagine a massive tournament of 8 or so matches to get to the end, the starting tournament would be...TWO-HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX entrants!! (256, yes, I felt the need to capitalise it), plus the final stage 9 that has the boss. So Tekken 1 had the 8 starter characters plus the other 8 unlockables taking only 16 of the entrant spots. Which I so happened to have made an image of when I was figuring out how many there would be in an 8 stage tournament.

You'll see what happens with the rest in the story, well perhaps you already have by now. Two characters kinda get shafted as in very very minor screen time though, I assumed they cut them out during the mass fight later or something.

As for Reina, I was expecting something special as in getting or having the gene, just wasn't sure how it was going to be done. That or perhaps something else since Heihachi was always trying to put an end to Kazuya either eradicating the power from him too or somehow taking some of it for himself. So makes sense in a way that Reina's taken over.

For anyone else: Here's my rendition of what the Tekken 1 tournament would look like with full brackets, what?!

[Moonface]

I finished watching the whole Story Mode after my last post so I know everything now.

Tekken 8 Story Mode

I love that Azazel got used and even gets an actual fight! It really makes up for how he was handled post-T6.

Reina likely already had the Devil Gene in her, and doesn't get it from Kazuya's blast. From the moment she turns up, she is trying to work out how the power works and how to activate it, as seen in her fight with Jin. She goes on to fight Kazuya one-on-one at the tournament venue to likely try and have him beat the living shit out of her and activate her power, but when what she receives there isn't enough to trigger the Devil Gene in her she opts to welcome the giant laser during the battlefield segment of the story.

The qualifying section was cool, but those brackets made no sense. Each side has three fights, and because that can't work out evenly it ends up with one person having to win two fights just to face the other person in their half of the bracket who only had to win one fight.

The Angel Jin vs. Devil Kazuya fight stage gets lifted into space purely from an explosion created under the ocean by Kazuya's Spirit Bomb.

I doubt Claudio died.

I really hope the open battlefield part was a test bed for a new Tekken Force mode.

Oh! I loved that the trailer announcer got to have a part in the story as the announcer for the tournament fights chapter. It makes me wish she was an option for the match announcer in regular fights instead of the normal person they use. Heck, if not for probably needing to get permission and payments sorted for it it'd be cool if every announcer from previous Tekken games could be an option to use; it would go well with having the ability to use music from previous Tekken games in stages too.

[Mr EliteL]

Story Mode

Yeah she was just trying to find a way to activate it. We need to know though how the Devil Gene got passed on to her though even if dormant at first, because why Heihachi want another one with it, where, how and who?

That's where I think they cut the story a bit, why is Yoshimitsu vs Bryan here instead of the mass fight where a lot of the characters were, because the trailer showed Bryan there shooting wildly and Yoshimitsu avoiding it, but that scene never happened. So for whatever reason the tournament was shorter using only 12 fighters instead of 16, or Kazuya was a bastard to test two of them even more than the rest.
I'm also glad they fit her in to announce in the story, wouldn't mind the option to choose her for elsewhere but I'm OK with the current one anyway.

I completely missed the explosion for the stage to happen, I was too "wtf" with Angel Jin to notice, then when it lifted into I was even more "WTF?!" Still it made sense, that fight was insane and with the music it amped it up even more, it's become my favourite stage in T8.

Haven't been playing much recently just here and there, but plan to try out online soon especially after buying a wire to connect directly to my router instead of WiFi because I can't trust it after it disconnected during the Beta.

[Moonface]

I'd have to assume Reina obtained the Devil Gene from being experimented on, since I doubt poor Heihachi managed to put a bun in another tainted oven and if he had he would have absolutely nuked the little shit, and Reina doesn't act like Heihachi gave her the typical Mishima family treatment. Tekken 4 also has Heihachi seeking the Devil Gene for this purpose:

Two years ago Heihachi failed to capture Ogre. He made his researchers collect blood and tissue left behind by Ogre and attempted to create a new life form by combining its genetic material with his own. However, the experiment failed. Heihachi learned that he lacked the Devil Gene necessary to harness Ogre's powers.

It would make the most sense (from the options we can speculate about) for Reina to have come from this. We never get a definitive answer to whether he actually gets a sample of the gene from Jin or Kazuya, and he may have even got one from Jinpachi.

Oh a trailer showed Yoshi and Bryan in that battlefield section? Which one shows it?

I'm curious, what stages would you say have good songs? I tried listening to the OST on Spotify and I gotta be honest, I didn't vibe with anything I heard. It might be a case of the OST being better in-game than out of it, but that sucks if so because I feel like older Tekken games have OST's that can be good independent of the game.

Oh, if you're wondering why I didn't spoiler tag this it was because I figured since just us are in this thread there's little need to keep hiding everything.