What I just realized are they going to do this to female fighters as well? I can not imaging how this will end here
Mortal Kombat has worse happen to the ladies, but a child character like Marie Rose taking a shot like this might cause pause for some. She's listed as "18" but her design is clearly based off current anime trends for young magical girls, maid girls, and the like whom are in there junior high/middle school years, the appeal being their charm, innocence, youth, and cuteness. It'll be interesting to see how TN handles her as she is arguably, at least in the east, the current most popular character in the series, and TN is trying to expand the audience beyond their current fanbase in the west. Do they keep her out the game? Grow her up more? Leave her as is? Add a custom animation where, say, she raises her arms to block a direct physical contact, but still receives the damage? Very curious how they'll handle her.
Famitsu interview.... Tag Mode is being removed, no guests in base roster, and they said they're toning down the sexiness and going in this focus on cool direction because of…….esports players! Specifically comments from ones at Evo 2017. That might actually be a dumber reason than the one we thought.
https://www.dualshockers.com/dead-alive-6-wont-use-soft-engine/
Focus is on "Fighting Entertainment." Their approach is similar to Harada's Tekken 7, trying to create moments that are just as exciting to watch for a viewing audience, as it is to play for the players. They want characters, female and male, appeal to be primarily on how "cool" they look and fight, with the belief that this element was overshadowed by the sexual tones of prior games.
The pre-launch and DLC hype for all fighting games right now is on characters, how they look, who they are, and how they fight. Smash has gaming icons to sell it's game-play. BlazBlue tried to use a visual novel style narrative to sell audiences on their various characters. Narrative has been a vehicle for other fighting games too, such as Mortal Kombat, that had a short web series prior to it's revival, to help get players interested in their characters. Guest characters have become a norm due to their background appeal and abilities outside said fighting game that help sell the people to their game mechanics.
Right now, I don't think Dead or Alive's characters appeals reach far beyond it's current fanbase whom enjoy the fanservice the series provides. Ryu Hayabusa's popularity has fallen over the years, and the ladies of DoA don't seem to have anything much going for them outside their bodies. A simple story mode like DoA 5 had is not going to change that. It's also why I think brand new characters will be important for Team Ninja to advertise in trying to sell this "cool" new Dead or Alive to a bigger audience. The old characters will, by and large, still only appeal to the old fans, and they are too many other fighting games out their right now craving audiences money and attention.
I wish Team Ninja luck. They're a lot of hurdles to overcome, but Dead or Alive is a pretty cool game with a lot untapped potential. I do hope more people look toward DoA 6 as a cool upcoming fighting game they'd like to try out.
