Guest Characters in fighting games

Over the many years, we have seen characters from other games coming into a fighting game. A perfect example is in Street Fighter Alpha, we see Guy from Final Fight joining the cast. Now, I wasn't around during the arcade era but I know that if I were a big Final Fight fan and they bring in one of the fan favourites into another game, I'd definitely be curious to see how he fits in!

In recent games, there have been many guests coming into games such as Soul Calibur II having Link from The Legend of Zelda on the GameCube version, Heihachi from Tekken on the PS2 and Spawn from his own comic. Namco kept up this tradition with Soul Calibur IV having Star Wars characters (which had extremely mixed reactions), Broken destiny on the PSP having Kratos from God of War and now with Soul Calibur V coming out, Ezio Auditore from the Assassin Creed series.

I would make a more detailed history on guest characters in fighting games but I really wanted to express my thoughts on Ezio in Soul Calibur V and comparing it to the Star Wars characters in Soul Calibur IV among some other examples like Street Fighter X Tekken.

Star Wars is a very big franchise with a hexology of films with many spinoffs and game iterations. Even to this day it is still selling with the Bluray release, many Lego Star Wars sets and games and of course the recent MMO The Old Republic. This must've made those many fans interested in Soul Calibur so a very unique marketing scheme especially since they included the new Star Wars character named The Apprentice. He was the main character in the Force Unleashed which was released around that time so it was beneficial for Star Wars fans on a little teaser of a mysterious character.

However, there were many issues with it in that they had played very differently to the rest of the cast so they had been banned in tournaments. Another issue was that there was option for Japanese voices but Yoda and Darth Vader just didn't sound right so you either had to stick with English or put up with it (this is more of a personal problem with it). There were many other problems with them being in the game but I will not speak for everyone that had a problem with it.

I personally didn't mind it as it had the Star Wars music which I liked. It didn't really add much for me but it didn't really take away anything as I never really used them but they had the one thing that made them stand out from the rest of the cast and it is the fact they can use the force. No other character except these three characters could use it so it made them quite powerful if in the right hands as they can control spacing and the distance between them and the opponent.

Now with Soul Calibur V coming out, Ezio is the newest guest character. With the Assassin Creed series having so many fans who are already gamers, I find it is more fitting that he is in. He doesn't have his own separate silly force meter or any particuar mechanics different to other characters making him in my opinion, a viable character in the roster. Sure he has crossbow but with the new system mechanics, it makes it easy to avoid. I believe that he will be a tournament viable character from what I've played so far but really, it comes down to the community to decide whether he should be used in tournaments or not.

From a marketing point of view, he is a brilliant addition as Assassin's Creed is one the of the biggest names in the charts and has a very big fan base. It is almost certain to attract the attention of the Assassin's Creed fans as it is out on both Xbox and PS3 and those are the consoles Soul Calibur V is coming out on so put 2 and 2 together and there are hopefully more sales and if those fans stay, there will be more Soul Calibur V fans which can help drive future Soul Calibur games.

So if you did skip the wall of text, here is my little conclusion:
Ezio is a great addition in my opinion and I think he can fit in tournament play as well as increasing the Soul Calibur fanbase. As to whether the theory meets reality, we'll have to wait and find out!

Thanks for reading

E