At Gamescom 2018
DualShockers talked with Producer Motohiro Okubo, who was quite
frank in explaining through a translator that the brand was in
dire straits when asked why it took so long.
“The first
thing is that the IP itself of the SoulCalibur franchise had low
expectations from the company. It was actually facing a crisis
of maybe disappearing. It took time for me to convince the
company.”
We asked
Okubo-san whether this could be the last SoulCalibur in
the worst-case scenario that VI doesn’t do well, and
his answer was quite clear-cut.
“Yeah,
that’s right.”
At that, I
mentioned that we’d better buy the game, and Okubo-san switched
to English bypassing the translator, explaining that he hopes so,
but he isn’t trying to push players to purchase the game.
“We don’t
want to blackmail the users by saying that it could be the last
one, but as it is, yes.”
Later in the
interview, I asked whether the development team had any doubt in
retaining the level of fanservice that was included in previous
games, and that has apparently been fully preserved in SoulCalibur
VI. Okubo-san mentioned that the crisis the brand is facing
played a role in that as well. The development team decided to
stick with what they wanted to do since they have nothing to lose.
“Since the
SoulCalibur brand is facing a crisis, we have nothing to lose,
so we just decided to do what we want to do.”
That being said,
he also explained that they didn’t go out of their way to design
sexy characters.
“However,
it’s not like we’re trying to make the characters sexy. When
we decide on the costumes, we always think about how best they
can represent the characters. Sometimes there may be less fabric
and as a result, the character may be sexier, but we’re not
trying to make the game focused on sexy characters.”
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Soul Calibur is an iconic and very important franchise for the 3D
fighting genre. It's the best at what it does. With full support from the
fighting game community... "The Legend Will Never Die". Buy
it. 
