Is there a way to improve how Story Mode works in a fighting game?

[Jonathan Lanza]

Partly inspired by the Guilty Gear Strive announcement; it would seem the 2 solutions for story mode in a fighting game are...
A. Cutscenes with fights occasionally
B. Just cutscenes
These have been done in response to the fact that story modes usually tend to be too short as you quickly exhaust all the people you can fight if there's not long enough intermissions between fights and of course fighting the CPU can be a lackluster experience since Fighting games are primarily a multiplayer genre so it's understandable to maybe just get rid of them.

But is this really the best possible approach to this? Both approaches seem to have the huge issue in that you are barely playing the game at all and even when you are the AI is far too rudimentary to pose an interesting challenge.

I understand that there's also the Smash Bros approach with Subspace Emissary but that is reliant on the fact that Smash Bros is a mix between fighting games and platformers where the latter can take up the slack of the former. A traditional fighting game doesn't have this luxury but I suppose you could argue that there's no way to improve on it if you stick to tradition.

Is what we currently have just the best we can get or is there a better way to move forward?

 

[Transistor]

I think cutscene -> fight -> repeat is the best way to handle it for purely fighting games. I love how Netherrealm handles theirs.

 

[Sargerus]

Mortal Kombat/Injustice is still the best way to go.

 

[nsilvias]

Take what mk mythologies sub zero did and expand on it. A fighting game 2d open world/metroidvania hybrid

 

[Foot]

I think cutscene -> fight -> repeat is the best way to handle it for purely fighting games. I love how Netherrealm handles theirs.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, it's what I always dreamed of.

 

[Leo]

Have an overworld and make it like a RPG.

...just kidding (kind of).

 

[Boy]

My fav story mode was konquest mode in Mk deception. It would be cool if Netherealm bought that back.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Find a way to make it rogue-like

Or craft a narrative like Def Jam: Fight for NY, and add in a few branching paths depending on wins/losses

 

[HotHamBoy]

The worst is the Arcsys way. I don't want to read a novel.

 

[Nickgia]

I think master weapon mode from Soulcalibur 2 is the best. So something like that.

 

[Jaded Alyx]

Incorporate parts of the tutorial into the story mode and give the player more to do while actually teaching them how to play the game. By the end of the story, they should be far more capable and understand the mechanics of the game much more than going in. Have fights that focus on specific elements of fighting games like needing to properly anti-air or needing to block high then low attacks quickly otherwise you'll have no chance of winning etc. Have boss battles combine several recently learned elements together so you actually feel like progress is being made.

 

[Malajax]

Cutscene > Fight > Cutscene > Fight seems to work for now.

Hopefully in the future we can weave training and tutorials in the story mode. Them's Fighting Herds had a unique idea with having special npc fights in which each type of npc had a specific kind of attack. So if one character constantly attacked from above, you'd have to learn to anti air. It'd be a great way to increase engagement if handled properly.

 

[Laser Ramon]

I think NetherRealm is the closest to getting it right. My ideal would have the story change depending on outcomes of battles or who you choose to play (More so than the occasional choices or picking between two endings in NetherRealm games).

Maybe throw the occasional non-fighting gameplay in there like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure PSX Super Story Mode for good measure.

 

[Deleted member 36578]

Maybe it's because I'm deep 20 hours into 13 Sentinels, but a fighting game making its story mode like 13 sentinels would be great.

 

[OhSatan]

Find a way to make it rogue-like

Or craft a narrative like Def Jam: Fight for NY, and add in a few branching paths depending on wins/losses

Click to shrink...

Guilty Gear XX worked like that, you lose or destroy on certain fights and you branched over.

 

[Wrexis]

Mortal Kombat/Injustice is still the best way to go.

Click to shrink...

I would do questionable things for a deep story in Soul Calibur using the Mortal Kombat format.

 

[Kidgalactus]

Fighting game story modes should be full featured beat-em ups.

Anything less is a compromise

 

[dancingphlower]

I think Granblue tried an RPG mode with side scrolling elements that seemed really cool in theory but I heard it wasn't executed that well. But something like that would be cool.

 

[Zen_Master]

Dating mechanics
/s

As a start, give me a good overarching narrative/reason why I should be fighting X or Y character.

 

[Foltzie]

Subspace Emissary really highlights the limits of taking a fighting game engine and applying it to a platformer.

 

[Ehoavash]

I think cutscene -> fight -> repeat is the best way to handle it for purely fighting games. I love how Netherrealm handles theirs.

Click to shrink...

Idk I hate when they make say good guys in the Justice league fight one another for no reason but to pad out their games, it makes the story feel even more nonsense

 

[Deleted member 17210]

Take what mk mythologies sub zero did and expand on it. A fighting game 2d open world/metroidvania hybrid

Click to shrink...

I agree. Exploding Fist 2 did that back in the day and I always hoped more fighting games would go that route.

 

[Ferrio]

Dating Mechanics, but instead of gifts you have to smack them in the face with the correct attacks/combos.

Serious answer:

Make the stories are only character driven, no overarching "story mode". Have it so characters have branching paths and not all endings are canon if any. Let the fans/community figure out the story from there.

 

[Lube Man]

Netherrealm handles it well.

I just wish fighting games also had beat-em-up sections for Story Mode.

Anyone remembers "Tekken Force Mode"? That was my FAVORITE mode in Tekken, and truly felt like it was going to be the future of Fighting Game modes.

Give me a mix of "Tekken Force Mode", and mix it with MK style story-telling (so e.g. Story, Fight, Story, Force Mode, Story, Force Mode Leading to Fight, etc), and you've got a permanent fan.



I won't mind something like Gacha games like KOF: All Stars as well, but on a bigger scale without compromising the fight aspect of it.

Fighting game story modes should be full featured beat-em ups.

Anything less is a compromise

Click to shrink...

You are my hivemind! :D

 

[SolVanderlyn]

I hate the new Guilty Gear way of doing it. Netherrealm has it down perfectly. The newer Mortal Kombats are so fun to follow because they are interactive stories.

 

[Shiz Padoo]

Make it like Animal Crossing where you have to pay off a huge debt to a mercenary landlord by winning prize money from fights.

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

So what IS the Mortal Kombat way? I've never actually played the story mode in any of them but is not the usual cutscene > fight > repeat? Not to sound reductive or anything.

Fighting game story modes should be full featured beat-em ups.

Anything less is a compromise

Click to shrink...

Red Earth/Warzard comes close. It's not exactly a beat em up but it's mainly a boss rush game. However that style is only doable because it's entirely from the ground up supposed to be a singleplayer game right down to only having 4 characters. Still it's a valid approach.

 

[Powdered Egg]

Fighting games don't need a crazy story.

Whatever SFV tried to do should never be done again. It was an obnoxious waste of developer time and money that was ultimately corny as hell.

Instructional manual lore, cutscenes before certain fights, and an ending after the last boss, however nonsensical, is the way to go.

 

[Jmdajr]

Mortal Kombat/Injustice is still the best way to go.

Click to shrink...

I am fan of their implementation.

 

[Lube Man]

So what IS the Mortal Kombat way? I've never actually played the story mode in any of them but is not the usual cutscene > fight > repeat? Not to sound reductive or anything.

Click to shrink...

Watch the first 15 minutes to get an idea of MK style story-telling.

It's essentially a full-on story, with moments that lead to fighting, rather than fighting and then it leading to story.

 

[zoodoo]

Fighting game story modes should be full featured beat-em ups.

Anything less is a compromise

Click to shrink...

Exactly
Like Tekken Force or Guilty gear Judment

 

[flashman92]

Make the Yakuza team make a fighting game that takes place in Kamurocho. Make it exactly like a Yakuza story, but make it a fighting game.

 

[Kidgalactus]

So what IS the Mortal Kombat way? I've never actually played the story mode in any of them but is not the usual cutscene > fight > repeat? Not to sound reductive or anything.

Click to shrink...

It is cutscene/fight/cutscene, but it's just integrated, and executed really well

 

[Jaded Alyx]

So what IS the Mortal Kombat way? I've never actually played the story mode in any of them but is not the usual cutscene > fight > repeat? Not to sound reductive or anything.

Click to shrink...

It's just that. Long cutscenes and then whenever characters fight, it turns seamlessly into you controlling one of them. SFV attempted the same thing.

 

[Platy]

I personally prefer more minigame focused stuff like the beat em up mode of tekken or the more rpg focused stuff of old mortal kombats
"Cutscene -> Fight -> Cutscene" also works but please don't take themselves too seriously.
Textboxes on sprites works better than a shitty cg story mode.

But i personally prefer for games to have a small "one image at the start one at the end" of arcade mode and focus on more minigames or weird shit, like most smash bros games have made. Give me the Tekken Balls or Home Run contests .. or even a beat em up mode without story =P

 

[Renteka-Bond]

I think Granblue tried an RPG mode with side scrolling elements that seemed really cool in theory but I heard it wasn't executed that well. But something like that would be cool.

Click to shrink...

As someone who played it, it doesn't work because the core gameplay in Granblue is pretty sluggish and (imo) unfun. Not to mention the long loading times between everything. The RPG aspects of the RPG also really suck, since it's, like most mobile games, just about increasing 'Power' to do decent damage. I don't recall there being any 'fun' rpg stuff like Poison and whatnot, just stat sticks.

 

[mute]

I guess my answer would be a bit different depending on if the story mode is somehow acting as a replacement for the traditional "arcade" mode or if it is a separate thing and the arcade mode is still present.

Ideally I don't really want different genres of gameplay or anything (beat em ups, platformers, etc). I still would prefer it be the standard gameplay best 2 out of 3 matches type of deal, just come up with some (meaningful!) way of choosing opponents, have some (reasonable!) amount of dialog before and after the fight, and let there be some sort of decision making that has to happen based off of the dialogue or how the fight ended.

If the choice of opponents isn't meaningful (say it is just a pass/fail kind of tree) then that might as well be your arcade mode. Some puzzle solving/mario world kinda map maybe type of thing would be preferable. And don't do the SFV thing where you have a comparatively long amount of dialog and then you do a 1-round fight before the next long amount of dialog. Hate that.

 

[Instant Vintage]

Incorporate parts of the tutorial into the story mode and give the player more to do while actually teaching them how to play the game. By the end of the story, they should be far more capable and understand the mechanics of the game much more than going in. Have fights that focus on specific elements of fighting games like needing to properly anti-air or needing to block high then low attacks quickly otherwise you'll have no chance of winning etc. Have boss battles combine several recently learned elements together so you actually feel like progress is being made.

Click to shrink...

This sounds like heaven and I wish games would follow this method.

 

[Mr_Zombie]

I like the Mortal Kombat / Injustice way (cut-scene -> fight -> cut-scene), since it forces you to try various characters and those three or four fights you have to play as those characters are often enough for you to learn their playstyles and give you enough info to decide whether or not you want to main them later.

 

[Iori Loco]

I think Granblue tried an RPG mode with side scrolling elements that seemed really cool in theory but I heard it wasn't executed that well. But something like that would be cool.

Click to shrink...

The execution was a bit off since the battles took place in the stages used for regular fights so it was a bit too cramped and you really didn't move anywhere. They could have made scrolling stages, like the one you fight Colossus in, but they didn't.

What Granble did better were the boss fights, which had their own mechanics and were pretty unique from each other and were more interesting than just regular fights against the normal characters.

 

[prodyg]

Fighting game story modes should be full featured beat-em ups.

Anything less is a compromise

Click to shrink...

this gave me flashbacks of Tekkens awful force mode

 

[Tathanen]

Write a story that's actually just about fighting a bunch of people in a row.

 

[Squirrel09]

Personally, I've never cared for story modes in fighting game. Just give me a solid single player experience for when I can't connect online and I'm good. I love the different challenge modes in SSBU.

 

[lightning16]

I like Soulcalibur's story mode where you create a character and just fight a bunch of battles with a story linking major battles but there also being a lot of optional smaller battles too. I put a lot of time into Libra of Soul in Soulcalibur 6.

I don't mind the idea of the "VN with battles" thing. The problem is that the writing in the few I've tried has been bad. Didn't get very far into Persona 4 Arena with how bad and dry the writing was.

 

[MikeProtagonist]

I kind of like what Soul Calibur VI and Street Fighter V did, with a story that often makes you fight regular dudes, because it doesn't make sense that the same 20 people will fight each other over and over.

However, what both games failed miserably in, is making those generic story people playable at least in versus. SC6 has a character edit so you could theoretically make them yourself, but come on. I don't care if they're not particularly balanced.

 

[Deleted member 12009]

Incorporate parts of the tutorial into the story mode and give the player more to do while actually teaching them how to play the game. By the end of the story, they should be far more capable and understand the mechanics of the game much more than going in. Have fights that focus on specific elements of fighting games like needing to properly anti-air or needing to block high then low attacks quickly otherwise you'll have no chance of winning etc. Have boss battles combine several recently learned elements together so you actually feel like progress is being made.

Click to shrink...

This is such a no-brainer solution and I really have to wonder why it hasn't been done. There must be some technical reason that I'm not aware of. It probably comes down to focusing entirely on competitive balance and having no time for frills. Street Fighter 6 should do this instead of reinventing the mechanics every game.

 

[zoodoo]

this gave me flashbacks of Tekkens awful force mode

Click to shrink...

Say what??

 

[Liam Allen-Miller]

I think I really dig stuff like Weapon Master in SC2 and world of Light in Smash Ultimate. Just like, really gameplay focused with story beats as highlights. I'm not as into the Netherealm style because I feel like I'm too frequently interrupted by either gameplay or cutscene depending on the moment of the story. I think those types of thing can be appropriate for finales or openings, though!

 

[prodyg]

Say what??

Click to shrink...

Force mode, I think it was Tekken 3 or something. It was a beat 'em up story mode that was just terrible. i hated it so much.

 

[Neoxon]

SugarPunch actually did a video on the topic.