So. Heihehachi is back. HIs fans are very happy, most of them anyway. Thing is, I'm one of his fans. He's one of my favorite fighting game charachters. But the thing is, Tekken 7 was supposed to be the fucking END. Thats what we were told, "the Mishima story is over, he's dead now, for real this time".
WE never should have believed it lol. But here's the thing. IT didnt have to be this way.
Fighting game designers are scared to kill off charachters becuase people main them and want them to be in each game. OK, cool. Here's the thing, bringing back a character does not mean they have to be part of the plot lol. You can just... have them be playable? But their prescence is totally extra canonical?
Thats what i wanted to happen with Heihehachi in this game. But no like. They couldn't do it. They HAD to bring him back "in story". Stupid.
They did the same thing with M Bison in SF6 this season but at least there's sort of a new twist on how they're doing it and at least I wasnt told that it was DEFINITLY the end of that charachter lol. For that one I'm just annoyed because there's a ton of characters id rather be brought back (Dudley, Makoto, Poison, Menat, Alex, C Viper, Laura, Ibuki, Yun, Yang, Sagat, Vega, and Balrog all come to mind. Also Skullomania if they can get the rights). But its fine overall there.
I can't really think of a character in fighting games that was supposed to be dead and didn't come back in some form. Charlie, Guile's buddy whose whole thing is that he died? He's back now, in zombie form or whatever? Geese got knocked off a tower? He's back, in ghost form. Vice and Mature were killed by Orochi Iori? They're back too, and I don't even know if there's an explanation.
Well, the rights are pretty unambiguous, Arika owns the character. I think they're open to working with Capcom, though. If you want to play as him in the meantime, there's Fighting EX Layer.
Yeah by "get the rights" I just mean make a deal with Akira like any other guest charachter (like theyve already done with SNK for Terry and Mai lol).
Well Mortal Kombat at least has the decency to go for time travelling shenanigans to bring their characters back.