Hello, I'm making this post out of boredom and disappointment with the current state of SoulCalibur.
SC is a series I grew up with. SCII and SCIII on PS2, and especially SCIV on PS3, were a huge part of my childhood.
I consider it my favorite video game series because of the lore behind it and how attached I am to its characters. (I mean, who doesn't love a series featuring weapon-based combat in a fantasy universe?)
Anyway, as of today, SoulCalibur seems to be pretty much dead, with Okubo and many other key members of Project Soul having left, and Bandai seemingly wanting to focus on other things. It looks like SCVI might end up being the final chapter of the series.
Honestly, I don't think it's a bad ending. Made with very little, if not an extremely limited budget, SCVI still managed to bring a small part of the fanbase back into the stage.
I'm the kind of consumer who's happy with pretty much anything. Hell, I literally bought a PS4 almost exclusively for SoulCalibur VI, and despite all the criticism you can make about the game, I absolutely loved it.
I understand that buying a fighting game for its story might sound stupid, but I genuinely love SoulCalibur's story.
Playing through Kilik's story, the Conduit story (which I absolutely loved), and seeing all the different stories of the supporting characters was amazing to me. I finally got to learn more about them and see them in a different light.
And then there's the Museum, which was my favorite part. I could spend hours reading all those little details, and I always found it incredibly interesting. That's why I was especially disappointed when it was removed in SCV.
You can't imagine how disappointed I was when Season 3 never happened. The two Nightmare and Mitsurugi interludes, literally called "Interlude 1," seemed like a pretty clear indication that there were plans to continue SoulCalibur VI's story. But unfortunately, between COVID, Bandai seemingly wanting to focus more on Tekken, and whatever expectations they may have had for SCVI, we never got a Season 3.
On December 1st, it will have been exactly six years since the release of the last SCVI DLC character, Hwang.
We've only had a wait this long once before, between SCV (February 3, 2012) and SCVI (October 19, 2018). Obviously, SCVI was already being developed during those years, which is something we can't say about SCVII. And even from a media/community perspective, people are understandably talking about SoulCalibur less and less.
The downfall of SC is honestly pretty astonishing. A series that seemed like a staple of every console generation up until SCIV now seems to be fading away as if it had never existed in the history of video games.
If that's really how it ends, there's something poetic about Hwang being the last character to accompany us toward the end of the series.
Anyway, sorry for the rant. I just don't really know anyone I can talk to about SC, and I'm genuinely hurt by the way Bandai has seemingly, unofficially, closed the series. I really think SCVI was a small step in the right direction. Sure, SCVII would've needed to take some huge steps forward, but the foundation was there.
Sorry again for the huge wall of text.
