Street Fighter 6 probably won't look nearly as 'hyper-realistic' as the teaser trailer may first appear

Street Fighter 6’s reveal last month sparked a good bit of debate amongst the fighting game community, and one of the loudest is the game’s apparent shift in art style.

Many don’t like or have concerns regarding SF6’s apparent push into “photorealism” or “hyper-realism”, but is that really going to be the case?

For anyone who’s played any of the recent Resident Evil titles, it should have become immediately apparent that Street Fighter 6 is running on the RE Engine.

Capcom’s Reach for the Moon Engine has become fairly well known at this point for its push into more realism and pushing graphical fidelity for the company.

That’s partly thanks to the unique way that textures can be created in the engine by scanning real world objects into it as well as the fact that the last few RE titles and even Devil May Cry 5 used real models / actors to portray in-game characters.

On the surface, it would make sense that Street Fighter would follow suit now, but there’s things we do and don’t see in the SF6 teaser that have us believing otherwise.

We’re not saying that Street Fighter 6 won’t be pushing for “realism” at all, but there’s more to it than that.

While it’s pretty wild that you can see the individual pores, wrinkles, tiny scars and drops of sweat on Ryu and Luke, there are other aspects of their design that show Capcom aren’t wholly ditching style.

The biggest indication probably comes from Ryu’s face where his signature eyebrows can still be seen going above his headband, which would be pretty funny to see in the real world.

There’s also the veins absolutely bulging out of Luke’s arm, which you could arguably find on a real person though it’s still definitely pushing it.

Capcom aren’t shying away from making the dudes ridiculously beefy either, and while it may be seen as more realistic next to what’s come before, you’d be hard pressed to find someone as jacked as Ryu walking around a martial arts tournament.

It appears to us that the designers are likely pushing a more stylized realism approach that may fall somewhere between Tekken 7 and Mortal Kombat 11, and those games weren’t shy about having weirdos and freakazoids on the roster.

Even if you try and make world warriors like Dhalsim and Blanka more lifelike, they still won’t look like real people unless Capcom decides they want to absolutely butcher those characters’ identities.

We can’t tell for sure if Street Fighter 6 is using real models for their characters’ faces, but even if they are, Capcom is sculpting and stylizing them quite a bit more than what they’ve done in RE and DMC.

Another concern about pushing any sort of realism in SF6 is the loss of the series distinctive vibrant color usage, and past RE Engine games would only go to further that.

The Resident Evil and Devil May Cry titles of the past few years have featured much more muted color palettes, and things were looking a bit drab and dark in SF6’s teaser.

That very likely won’t be indicative of the actual game, however, as the scenes were very purposely placed in a dark, empty room with only a few overhead lights illuminating the fighters.

It’s a similar approach to what Capcom did with Street Fighter 5: Arcade Edition’s opening cinematic, and that certainly is not what the game looks like in practice.

We’ll have to wait to see actual gameplay to be sure, but it’s hard to imagine Street Fighter abandoning bright, eye-catching colors just to chase realism.

There is a strong splash of color surrounding Luke during his final attack of the teaser too, which will likely be implemented into gameplay somehow if SF4 and SF5 are anything to go by — and clearly shows they haven’t forgotten what colors are.

While the first handful of RE Engine games were seemingly pushing for that grittier realism too, the most recent releases have branched out and gone more nuts with the tools.

No one can really argue that Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection or Monster Hunter Rise aren’t stylized as hell, so hopefully Street Fighter 6 will try and find a happy medium between the different approaches.

There’s no real denying that SF6 will be the most realistic Street Fighter game ever made, but it doesn’t mean the title will leave behind everything that makes the series stand out.

We’ll be getting a much better look at the game in a few months, and it’s going to be very interesting to see how Capcom is handling female fighters for Street Fighter 6.