E3 2016: Harada, Michael Murray talk Akuma buffs, Eddy Gordo, making Tekken 7 ‘fun to watch’ and more

On Day 2 of E3 Tekken developers Katsuhiro Harada and Michael Murray joined the Xbox Twitch stream with host Lorien ‘Lorii’ Gogich to talk about Tekken 7. Some of the things revealed were that in Story Mode you can choose between either Heihachi or Akuma. Keep in mind, that may just be for this demo build though. As well, Michael also stated that in this latest build “Akuma has had a lot of new moves added to him.” This is great to hear because Street Fighter characters tend to be too linear when compared to Tekken characters. These moves, coupled with Akuma’s increased speed, places him on an even playing field.

“We’ve tried to make Tekken7 not only fun to play, but also more fun to watch because of these big tournaments” – Michael Murray

Aside from focusing just on gameplay, Michael emphasized that they wanted to make Tekken 7 really fun to watch, especially during tournaments. We’ve never heard a fighting game developer stress the importance of this, and we believe this will help make crowds more hype, attractive to consumers, and entertaining for eSports. Ways in which they accomplish this is with the slow motion effects that occur when two characters only have a sliver of health left. This usually happens after matches during replays, but now they happen during the battle. Another way is when rage arts are executed.

A few more takeaways is that in this interview Murray says that tail spin replaces juggling, but he actually meant to say that it replaces bound. Juggling still exists, but it is dialed down significantly.

@TekkenGamercom meant juggling is dialed down, and bound replaced with Tail spin

— Michael Murray (@mykeryu) June 15, 2016

Also, some think that Michael was stating that Eddy Gordo won’t be in Tekken 7, but when he says “not this time around” he was actually speaking of that specific build. Still, this doesn’t mean he will end up on the game. So basically, mums the word.

@viniaguiar18 I meant for now, but no one knows how the final roster will turnout 🙂 part of the fun is waiting to see who will be in 😉

— Michael Murray (@mykeryu) June 15, 2016

Enough talk. Check out this interview for yourself.

Zee the CEO

Aziz Peregrino-Brimah aka Zee the CEO | Founder / Editor-in-chief of TekkenGamer | Gaming has been a passion of Zee's since the early days of Atari and ColecoVision. His first experience with Tekken was in the early 90's, and it was Tekken 3 that sealed the deal. True story... As a teenager Zee once received his Winn-Dixie paycheck and spent it all at the arcade the same day. Needless to say, his mother wasn't pleased.