Tekken 8’s second season is just about to begin with its first character Anna Williams releasing next week on Monday for those with early access privileges (meaning those who bought the pass) and on Friday for those who didn’t.
A few days ago, the developers held a special Tekken talk to preview some of the upcoming changes and while doing so, they showed up an updated graphic for the upcoming Season 2 and mentioned that there may be a few hints for the returning characters in there.
In the new image of the upcoming Season 2 pass, it was clarified that the next two characters are the ones who are returning cast members while the final addition coming in Winter will be the brand new original Tekken character.
On top of that, colors were added to represent each character in the pass with Harada remarking (as translated by Michael Murray) “also, you’ll note the coloring of this might serve as hints as well.”
This does give us some information to work with, though it’s definitely not enough to decipher exactly what’s coming our way.
It also harkens back to the Tekken 7 downloadable content, where we did indeed see colors representing characters as well, though I believe only after their full reveals had taken place.
With the returning characters being marked with blue and purple colors, respectively, that gives us some ideas of who they could be… so let’s have a look at which characters seem likely for representing these.
When I think of “blue” in a Tekken context, there’s one guy who pops up immediately in my head — Lei Wulong.
One of them ore popular and recognizable members of Tekken’s cast of characters who isn’t yet in the game, he’d seem like the obvious choice. I do think he’s the most likely, but there are a few things that might talk against him which I’ll cover further down in the article.
Another strong contender for this spot is actually Bruce Irvin, one of the few older Tekken characters who missed out on Tekken 7’s massive roster.
Originally debuting in Tekken 2, Bruce was the main Muay Thai fighter of the franchise and served as Kazuya’s bodyguard, which makes his absence in Tekken 8 even more striking since Kazuya is basically going into an all-out war… but his bodyguard is nowhere to be seen.
Perhaps if Bruce is the addition we could get some clarification on why he wasn’t around to help his long-time employer during all of these conflicts, similar to how the additional story content for Season 1 filled in the blanks for characters like Eddy Gordo and Heihachi Mishima and what they were up to during the story’s events.
Another character who fits the blue theme quite well would be Bob Richards, the heavyweight fighter who debuted back in Tekken 6. Although he doesn’t have much story significance, he’s been quite a popular fighter since his original inclusion.
You could also make the case for some others like Fahkumram because of his blue trunks or the animal fighters Roger/Roger Jr. or Alex based on the color of their boxing gloves (though Roger Jr. tends to have red ones), but I’d be less inclined to expect them, personally.
I was a bit surprised when I looked at purple for characters who aren’t in the roster yet since I didn’t consider it to be that common of a color, but Tekken actually has a lot of it in their past rosters.
Although I’d be more inclined to associate green with him, Craig Marduk always had purple as part of his color scheme, for his gloves in particular, so he’s definitely a contender.
So is Christie Monteiro, who often has purple clothing as part of her ensemble, though in her case I doubt it more so because her and Eddy have basically the same moveset and it would feel like a redundant slot.
An actual strong candidate based on purple is series producer Katsuhiro Harada’s self-proclaimed favorite character Ganryu, Tekken’s central sumo wrestler who received a massive glowup when he was added towards the end of Tekken 7’s post-launch support.
Even before then, though, he usually battled in a purple mawashi (basically loincloth), so it’s long been the signature color of him.
However, the by far most likely candidate to fill the purple spot in my opinion is Kunimitsu, more specifically Tekken 7’s Kunimitsu II, the daughter of the original fox-themed ninja.
The character received a very warm reception when she was added to Tekken 7 and had a high play rate and was popular overall, so with such a successful relaunch of her I was honestly surprised they didn’t put her in the launch roster already.
While it is another character who was DLC in the previous game, given the sheer size of Tekken 7’s roster that is honestly quite difficult to avoid.
Kunimitsu seems like a very likely pick, all things considered, and when I looked through characters who have strong associations with the color purple, she’s the one I gravitated the most towards.
However, there’s actually one more character who doesn’t really have anything particularly purple about him but still needs to be looked at… Armor King.
See, back in Tekken 7 for Season 2 we also had colors representing the characters being added and despite not having anything purple attached to him, that was the color assigned to Armor King as you can see below.
The fact that Anna Williams, the first Season 2 pass character in both games is represented by red both times, though admittedly somewhat different shades of red, does lend some credence to this line of thinking.
Besides Armor King being purple, there’s another thing of note here… Lei is in the Season 2 pass for Tekken 7 but the blue he has here is a notably lighter shade than the blue we’ve been presented with for Tekken 8.
There could be several reasons for this — Tekken 7’s Lei design has him wearing a lighter shade of blue to begin with, whereas the classic Lei clothing tends to be a darker shade of blue, meaning that if Lei has a more classic design this time around, this blue would fit him better.
It could also mean that Lei isn’t represented at all by this new blue and it’s meant for an entirely different character. It’s hard to say.
Another variable that needs to be mentioned is Julia Chang, a character who traditionally had a blue denim skirt for most of her appearances and in Tekken 7 has a purple jacket. She’s one of the few characters who actually fits both color schemes.
However, she also has a green background for Tekken 7… which might eliminate her from contention, but at this stage it’s really hard to say.
The biggest issue with any of these more likely picks is that it’d essentially be a full repeat of what Tekken 7’s second season already was, which has been one of the main criticisms with modern fighting games, seeing the same fighters appear over and over again as downloadable content.
At the same time, Lei, Armor King and Julia are probably the most popular characters in the Tekken franchise who aren’t currently in the roster… so from a business perspective or just a “pleasing fans” perspective, they make the most sense.
Of course, there’s also the off possibility that Bandai Namco have entirely redesigned the color schemes of some returning characters and that the colors here match their new outfits, with no way for us to know it would. I doubt that’s the case given Harada’s comments, but as the story’s banner suggests, my conspiratorial mind has been going haywire on this one.
My final predictions would be Lei Wulong and Kunimitsu, though I can definitely see the case for many other picks as well.
Which characters are you hoping to see join the roster for Tekken 8’s second season? Are there any blue or purple picks you think I missed out on talking about? Let us know in the comments.
Source: Event Hubs
