Friday, October 21, 2011

Ezio is All Set for Stabbing Dudes....in Soul Calibur

So, it was announced today that Ezio Auditore de Firenze is officially appearing in Soul Calibur V as a guest character after pretty much the entirety of the internet knew already from rumors and leaks.  Not to mention the Penny Arcade comic that put the idea into people's heads that likely don't even keep up with game news.  While I would've liked the header image here to be of Ezio actually in Soul Calibur V, IGN's gone way out of their ways to appear incompetent today and have confused me greatly as to their whole image situation here.  I guess I can off off on a little mini-whinge here for a moment since it's still topical.

This is the IGN article that announces as much as the Joystiq article above (admittedly with more text and less video), which, hey, it looks fine, right?  Pictures, somewhat, then on the sidebar you have where it says "Latest Images" and you see two thumbnails of pictures with Ezio in it.  Of course, right?  News broke, they wanted to update the database of images and the latest images section reflects that.  (By the way, I understand that a month, hell maybe even a week from now, this entire whinge will be irrelevant, but as of this writing, this is how it's set up)  So I click the latest images section on the lowermost because I like that picture the most of the ones I saw.  It takes me to the images section....where the latest image was uploaded August 17th.  Which presents the thought that if those thumbnails are not actually being hosted from the Images section, where the hell are they being hosted?  It's....honestly and absolutely ruined my thought process.

Anyway, onto the actual issue itself being discussed rather than my annoyance with IGN.  I brought it up with Saki-Chan that I was a little surprised that it was just one Guest character this time, rather than a couple or the, er...."Console exclusive" situation from Soul Calibur IV again and we talked about it a bit before reconfirming that The Apprentice (I'm not calling him Starkiller because 'The Apprentice' sounds lowlier and that's what he deserves) sucks as a character.  Not....quite sure how we got to that point after bringing up Ezio, but here I go again getting distracted.  I guess the point here is that I care....but in a sense, I -don't- care.


When it comes to fighting games, Soul Calibur as a series has always been one of my favorites simply because I have fond memories of playing the first three alone and with friends before I decided that, as a whole, fighting games just aren't for me.  That fact surprises even me sometimes, but whenever I think about chaining combos together and having strategies and preferred characters and this and that, I just....I can't be brought to care, really, since at that point is where the fun kinda drains out for me.  Regardless, I still like the series and I want to see it succeed, I just.....I'm not putting too much stock into my ability to support the game personally by getting it and getting into (shudder) online matches.  Which, nowadays is half of a fighting game's purpose it seems.

Ezio's inclusion to the franchise, in all honesty, is pretty much one of the few that really make sense (I would suggest Kratos in the PSP Soul Calibur is the Guest Character that makes the most sense) if only because he matches the 'period' they're really trying to create as setting.  While it's hard to argue such a thing as a timeline exists when it comes to Soul Calibur, they do make a real effort for it (especially in V, as several of the characters are going to be either older or replaced by their offspring...or perhaps fighting alongside/against their offspring, hard to tell) and the setting is always kind of the same era as the Ezio series of Assassin's Creed games.  Why Ezio would be going after the Soul Edge....well, that's something I have a harder time trying to try and justify unless he's looking for another sword for the armory at the Auditore Manor.  (Just saying, since his appearance, from what I saw, looked to be his Early-Mid AC2 design)

While I wouldn't put it past Team Soul to have another Guest or two in the wings, I would imagine they'd have announced it by now if that were the case, so it's hard to say if we'll have someone a little more out of place when the game comes out.  Still, as I said, Ezio is a pretty smart addition even though I don't exactly care for him as a character for my own reasons that have entirely to do with the entirety of Assassin's Creed 2's story line, and I can't help but hope that Soul Calibur V is well-received so we can start to wonder on just who the guest character of Soul Calibur VI is going to be.

No comments:

Post a Comment