Tekken is finally adding a new Final Fantasy guest character although it’s not Tifa Lockhart like most fans seemed to be expecting and asking for.
Instead, Clive Rosfield as the main protagonist of Final Fantasy 16 is about to drop in Tekken 8 very shortly, but he could end up as more than just a guest someday.
Some of the lead developers from both Bandai Namco and Square Enix came together for a multi-part series of Dev Talk videos to discuss how they brought Clive over to a fighting game and show off what he can do in action.
In attendance were Tekken 8’s Main Director Kohei “Nakatsu” Ikeda, Yoshinori Takahashi (Tekken 8 Game Design Director and Soul Calibur 6 Director), Hiroshi Takai (Final Fantasy 16 Main Director) and Kazutoyo Maehiro (Final Fantasy 16 Creative Director and Original Screenplay).
Overall, the Square developers appear to be very impressed with Bamco’s handling of the fiery prince with Takai noting he did not think it would be possible to include all of Clive’s Eikonic powers as well as Torgal’s attacks on top of it, but the team managed to pull it off in a way that hopefully won’t be too overwhelming for players.
“All our team members, engineers, visual artists and animators played the original game and were so moved by its vision and quality that they were determined to include everything and really put their hearts into the project,” said Nakatsu in the second Dev Talk video.
And while the third episode focused more on Clive’s customization options in the fighting game, they included a segment at the end for the devs to talk about the collaboration and what the project means to them where we got some interesting statements.
Maehiro in particular says he’s also been a longtime Tekken fan and player for many years now as he sits in the studio with a Xiaoyu shirt on, but he had a request for the Bamco guys.
“Since I’m changing my main character, I would be grateful if he could continue appearing in future numbered titles” – Kazutoyo Maehiro
“Our Clive is appearing in Tekken, and as someone who has played the series for many years, I’m truly happy to see him implemented with such care by the Tekken development team,” said the Creative Director.
“From today, although I’ve been using Xiaoyu for many years, I’ll be switching to Clive. However, since I’m changing my main character, I would be grateful if he could continue appearing in future numbered titles. So please, if you would be so kind…”
Although he’s laughing while saying all of that, Maehiro brings up an interesting prospect we don’t often see in fighting games for a guest character to earn more of a regular spot on future rosters.
There’s only a few examples we can even think of where multiple companies are involved being Mai Shiranui’s appearance in Dead or Alive 5 and 6 as well as Sonic the Hedgehog being kept as an inclusion in every Super Smash Bros. game starting with Brawl.
The Tekken devs don’t seem opposed to this idea either.
“If you’ll allow it, we can certainly consider making him a regular character,” replied Nakatsu.
“Then I’ll do my best to keep hounding you to do so,” Maehiro concluded.
It doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility if both parties are down for it, but We’re still pretty doubtful that Clive could appear again in Tekken 9 and beyond.
There’s always the licensing issues to consider and what Square Enix as a whole would want to do in the future. They obviously didn’t wish to keep pushing Noctis to return from Tekken 7, but instead went with the newest face in the series with Clive.
Considering FF16 didn’t exactly set the world on fire in terms of sales as much as they hoped, the company may not be overly enthusiastic in giving FF16 more attention when there will presumably be something else that becomes the hot new thing (or they could always want to fall back on the classic icons from the franchise like that of Final Fantasy 7).
Fans are probably never going to let go of wanting Tifa in Tekken.
We also have yet to see how well Clive will truly mesh with the gameplay and world of Tekken since his large swordplay and use of multiple magical abilities make him an outlier in a setting full of technology and machines.
If this were Soul Calibur, Clive would fit in almost without question, but Tekken is a different beast.
Going outside of their comfort zone seems to have part of the appeal to bring in the Final Fantasy 16 representative in the first place, however, but is that enough to carry over through more than one game?
Street Fighter’s Akuma out of anyone would have made the most logical sense to keep as a semi-permanent guest considering Bamco worked him into the main story of Tekken 7, but they obviously didn’t choose to go in that direction for the current game.
So we’d say this is more on the line of playful banter rather than serious business propositions for now, but they’re certainly leaving the door open talking about this publicly.
The other developers also had some nice things to say about the experience and final result that do have us hopeful that Clive will turn out as fun as the amount of effort they put into making him.
Nakatsu:
“While we’ve created many guest characters for Tekken before, this was undoubtedly our longest and largest production effort yet, and with the cooperation of many people from the FF16 team, I think we’ve created the best possible version of Clive, filled with both teams’ dedication.”
Ryota Suzuki:
“For this collaboration, the staff from both Tekken 8 and Final Fantasy 16 poured passion into their work, and I believe have created something special. I’m truly grateful for that. The Clive in Tekken 8 can be enjoyed even by Final Fantasy 16 players, and you can see sides of Clive that weren’t shown in FF16.”
Yoshinori Takahashi:
“While people might have an image of the Tekken team’s leader as a scary guy with sunglasses, we actually have many Final Fantasy fans within the team. So when it was announced that Clive would be appearing, the development team members were overjoyed, and they played the game, researched various aspects, and created him with great attention to detail. We’ve also made him easy to play, so we really hope you’ll try him out.”
Hiroshi Takai:
“Having Clive appear in Tekken has made me personally very happy, and I think the implementation has exceeded our expectations. I’m truly grateful, and I’d like to express my thanks to all the Bandai Namco Studio staff involved with creating Clive. I think there are Tekken players who haven’t played Final Fantasy, but please try playing as Clive, and if you find him interesting, we developers would be very happy if you could accept him as part of the Tekken 8 world.
Clive is set to release as the final Season 1 DLC character of Tekken 8 on Monday, December 16, for pass holders though we don’t have an exact time yet for the new update.
You can check out the third round of the Tekken Dev Talk below where these discussions take place starting around the 24 minute mark.