It’s more than fair to say that Bandai Namco has been on a bit of a winning streak as of late. Its impressively vast library of popular anime licences, paired with the release of heavy hitters like Elden Ring and Armored Core VI, have resulted in a string of profitable and, more often than not, critically well received games. Elden Ring DLC notwithstanding, Tekken 8 is set to be Bandai Namco’s next big release – but what have the development team learned from Tekken 7’s release to ensure the sequel’s success?
Tekken 8 previewDeveloper: Bandai Namco Studios, ArikaPublisher: Bandai NamcoPlatform: Played on PS5Availability: Out 26 January on PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X/S
A preview in late November finally gave me some insight. Story mode was capped up until the end of chapter 4 and we were only allowed to play a couple of the Arcade Mode chapters, but every character was available to try out in versus, practice and the Tekken Ball mode.
There was also a chance to sit down with Tekken 8’s game director Kouhei Ikeda and producer Michael Murray – who also acted as our translator – and ask them some burning questions. Unbeknownst to me beforehand, long-serving series producer Katsuhiro Harada also made a surprise appearance – although in true Harada style, he mostly just sat in the back looking cool and only occasionally chimed in with anecdotes about things like how much he hates Macbooks.
Tekken 8 marks the second time Ikeda has served as director following his work on Tekken 7, but Ikeda and Harada have worked together on several Bandai Namco games over the years, so I was curious how their relationship had developed. As Michael explained, Ikeda was once a journalist, so he was on the side of interviewing Harada before he got to working with him. After all these years however, his impression of Harada was “pretty much the same as it was when he was interviewing him.” That said, he’s learned to avoid certain very specific topics that, he says, “Harada-san gets very angry about.”
These topics include, curiously, “Cilantro, and anything with cilantro in it,” (that’s coriander to us UK folk), as well as the topic of “blood types,” which Ikeda-san claimed was a popular discussion point in Japan, in response to which “Harada-san is just like ‘that’s horse…’ uh… ‘crap.'” And Harada-san’s also not a fan of people posing on Macs, Ikeda has discovered. “There’s this stereotype about trendy people in Japan about people going to Starbucks, getting out their Macbooks and acting like they’re doing some huge project… Harada is more of a PC user so he’s like, ‘these guys, they don’t know what they’re doing.'”