It’s weird to think that Street Fighter 6’s first year of DLC content is already halfway complete, and now we can get a sneak peek at who is about to step up to bat.
The official character portrait for Street Fighter 6’s Ed appears to have leaked online to show off what his design is going to be looking like in his second outing.
The render appears to be an official asset from Capcom that was uploaded to the Steam store page and displayed through SteamDB.
The website says the Ed assets were uploaded all the way back on November 22 though you can still view them there by hovering over the updates.
So the Ed ‘datamine’ was from SteamDB apparently and is real. Here’s the full render.
Looks like the person who first posted it (who I won’t name because they just want attention) didn’t datamine anything, they just took credit for it lol pic.twitter.com/XjuLrTt8z9
— Scotia (@Scotia834) December 1, 2023
A couple months back, the devs did share some updated concept art of Ed and Akuma for SF6, but this is the first time we’ve gotten to see the boxer in his 3D render.
Proof of it being on SteamDB, anyone can go and look at it right now here; pic.twitter.com/EEjgKOuVQr
— Scotia (@Scotia834) December 1, 2023
Like all the other veterans of Street Fighter 6, Ed’s appearance has taken a drastic change since his last outing in Street Fighter 5. Despite the attire swap, the character is still recognized to be the Ed we knew from before.
Previously, Ed wore a sleeveless, blue Neo Shadaloo uniform with MMA boxing gloves. Even without knowing anything about Ed’s backstory, his past connection to Shadaloo seemed obvious at just a glance.
Ed’s new attire in Street Fighter 6 has him looking more casual than how he did in Street Fighter 5. He’s now wearing a blue nylon jacket with a red hood. The jacket has been left open, revealing Ed’s bare chest.
Additionally, Ed is wearing either some jeans or some blue pants. It’s a bit difficult to tell since he’s in a hunched over fighting stance.
Finally, Ed also has a pair of fingerless gloves. This heavily implies that Ed will retain his Psycho Boxing fighting style, which is sort of an amalgamation of Balrog and M. Bison’s fighting styles. The purple graffiti effects seen in the render also imply the presence of Psycho Power.
In Street Fighter 5, one of Ed’s defining traits was his simplified controls, which would also be present with Falke’s moveset. As of right now, it’s unknown if Ed will continue to have this gimmick considering that Modern Controls exist for every character in Street Fighter 6.
With Capcom now uploading Ed’s assets to the Steam store page, it’s likely that they’re preparing for Ed’s official gameplay reveal. This certainly makes sense as it’s been over two months since A.K.I. was released.
Ed is scheduled to be released sometime in winter 2024 (sometime between January and March 2024). Based on this, we could potentially see Ed’s Street Fighter 6 trailer on December 7, 2023 during The Game Awards 2023 presentation.
Many contributions to this story were made by Dakota ‘DarkHorse’ Hills.