Who says video game developers can’t have fun with some of their fans who are playing their games? After all, they sometimes spend years trying to make a title that gamers will like, and when they get bombarded with questions left and right, they sometimes need to “break the tension” by answering in a way you didn’t expect. One of last week’s big releases has been Tekken 8 by Bandai Namco. The fighting title wowed critics and fans alike, and many are not just enjoying the title, but seeing how deep they can take things. One such attempt led one fan to ask director Katsuhiro Harada a key question about the cast.
Specifically, he asked about how old the cast of Tekken 8 was. That’s not an unfair question to put out due to not just the variety of cast members but also the fact that some are clearly older than others, and some of them are animals. Yes, the game has multiple animals; just roll with it.
Anyway, instead of giving a complicated answer, Harada pulled a swerve and delivered one that has fans rolling:
See what he did there? He told a lie without actually telling a lie. In the “real world,” they are indeed around 30 years old because many of them were created three decades ago. However, by that logic, some of them would be “under 30” due to how they were made in later games. For example, Jin Kazama would be “under 30” by this token due to him not appearing until the third game in the franchise.
Obviously, Harada is being funny here because there would be many problems if the entire cast was 30 years old. First, it would make the family dynamics of certain characters incredibly uncomfortable to talk about, not to mention that characters like Leroy and Heihachi Mishima would have serious explanations for how old they look. Second, it would mean that there are some serious “aging issues” going on in that world, and possibly that time doesn’t move at all! But let’s not go down that rabbit hole, okay?
Harada was having fun with fans, and he did it in a very Harada way, and we can appreciate that. Fans appreciate what he and Bandai Namco did for the new game, and you’ve likely seen plenty of videos highlighting the fights, customization options, and characters since the title’s release. So, regardless of their age, this fighting game series is timeless.
