Bandai Namco has finally teased us with what’s to come for the highly-anticipated Season 4 at the US East Tekken Online Challenge.
Tekken 7 Season 4 will bring back a fan favorite in the form of Kunimitsu. Despite being a longtime fighter in the franchise, Kunimitsu’s T7 appearance is actually the daughter of the original character, at least according to her dialogue. With Tekken having a deep history in familial ties and feuds, this definitely does not come as a surprise to the hardcore fans.
Being a younger generation fox ninja, Kunimitsu gets a solid upgrade in her purple attire and even gives fans a face reveal in her trailer.
Aside from throwing her trademark kunai, the trailer also showcases her move-set, which bears similarities to Master Raven and Yoshimitsu, the two enemies she faces in the trailer. Along with Kunimitsu, players will also receive a new Vermillion Gates stage.
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As with every season in Tekken 7, director Katsuhiro Harada and producer Michael Murray gave us some insight on what’s new in Season 4. The two developers started things off with a brief discussion on online-play. With many players still playing online matches with Wi-Fi, the game will introduce a new Wi-Fi indicator across all platforms, just to give eager fighters a heads-up.
Harada also discussed Tekken’s difficulties with rollback/net-code improvement. While they try to give the best online experience with minimal delay, the optimal settings may affect how a system is able to play the game. As of now, he said that they’ll be tackling cross-region match-making with new machinery to essentially cultivate and merge competitive circles during the pandemic.
As for the gameplay, the two mentioned the usual update to move-sets that help keep characters alive and kicking, but one significant thing that was brought up was about health bars. While it may seem mundane to talk about it, Harada mentioned that there may be substantial changes to the health bar.
While decreasing the health bar may cause more in-game tension between players of all skills, increasing it would widen the gap between amateur and pro-level players. Seeing as how they dabbled with this in Tekken Tag Tournament with two separate health bars, Harada has confirmed that they’ll be seeing what they can do throughout the Season 4 patches.
Pro players can also look forward to the new rank of Tekken God Omega, the new highest rank after Tekken God Prime. When asked about the new addition, Murray mentioned that he wanted to make TGO as a hard-earned goal in which you have to consistently win to keep the rank.
For more up and coming players, Murray also introduced Tekken Prowess, a new stat system for all your matches. While we may have the Top Stats section during the fight card sequences, he explained that Tekken Prowess will give you more knowledge on such things as your use of side-steps and just-frames, allowing players to point out what is good and bad about their style of play.
Season Pass 4 of Tekken 7 will release with Kunimitsu in Fall 2020 while the next character will be set for an early spring release in 2021.
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