Requiescat en Pace...
Oh yes, that's right. Ezio is coming to Soul Calibur V, and we go hands-on with the Renaissance assassin, plus the rest of the newly-revealed cast. Xiangua had a daughter!
Published: October 21, 2011
So is it one word, like the last game, is it two words like the second game or is it some kind of unholy InterCap situation (which would, admittedly, be pretty fitting on the PlayStation): SoulCalibur V. Given the break in the logo and the fact that Namco has a habit of ALLCAPSING their titles in official documentation, we're going to have to just stick to Soul Calibur V, which is just fine because when we attended a special press showing of the game this week, the only real mystery that needed to be solved was how the game played.
So we did. For a few hours. And now we want more.
Things kicked off, like most press events, with a formal introduction by Carlson Choi, Namco Bandai Games America's Veep of Marketing, who took us through the sales figures for the series (6 million copies just here in the States), regaled us with the basic setup of SCV (it takes place 17 years after the last game in 17th Century Europe across two different generations of fighters), launch date (now set for January 31st of next year) and generally just got most of the usual facts and figures out of the way before introducing three new characters.
The first was an updated version of Raphael, brought back to life after an unfortunate end during the course of Soul Calibur IV, a new, chunkier version of Nightmare (of course he's in it, as is Siegfried, naturally, but we'll have the full roster list for you later in this preview) and newcomer Leixia ("lay-shee-ah"), who is the 15 year-old daughter of Xiangua and actually plays a little faster than even her speedy mom ("speedy" was used multiple times by series producer Hisaharu Tago when explaining her, though for some reason that wasn't directly translated).
And then the bigger announcements happened.
Through a couple of trailers, Namco demonstrated the newest additions to a series that has seen Yoda, Darth Vader and his Apprentice from The Force Unleashed series, Link, Spawn and Tekken's Heihachi in games past. This time, they include (as a pre-order-only bonus for an as-yet-unannounced retailer) Broken Destiny's Dampierre, the self-styled "World's Greatest Assassin" and... well, at that point the whole thing crashed, rebooting with an actual world's greatest assassin in the form of a cloaked figure stomping through a burned-out European burg.
Yup, Ezio Auditore da Firenze is playable. Yes, the dude from Assassin's Creed. And then we got to play as Ezio.
So we did. For a few hours. And now we want more.
Things kicked off, like most press events, with a formal introduction by Carlson Choi, Namco Bandai Games America's Veep of Marketing, who took us through the sales figures for the series (6 million copies just here in the States), regaled us with the basic setup of SCV (it takes place 17 years after the last game in 17th Century Europe across two different generations of fighters), launch date (now set for January 31st of next year) and generally just got most of the usual facts and figures out of the way before introducing three new characters.
The first was an updated version of Raphael, brought back to life after an unfortunate end during the course of Soul Calibur IV, a new, chunkier version of Nightmare (of course he's in it, as is Siegfried, naturally, but we'll have the full roster list for you later in this preview) and newcomer Leixia ("lay-shee-ah"), who is the 15 year-old daughter of Xiangua and actually plays a little faster than even her speedy mom ("speedy" was used multiple times by series producer Hisaharu Tago when explaining her, though for some reason that wasn't directly translated).
And then the bigger announcements happened.
Through a couple of trailers, Namco demonstrated the newest additions to a series that has seen Yoda, Darth Vader and his Apprentice from The Force Unleashed series, Link, Spawn and Tekken's Heihachi in games past. This time, they include (as a pre-order-only bonus for an as-yet-unannounced retailer) Broken Destiny's Dampierre, the self-styled "World's Greatest Assassin" and... well, at that point the whole thing crashed, rebooting with an actual world's greatest assassin in the form of a cloaked figure stomping through a burned-out European burg.
Yup, Ezio Auditore da Firenze is playable. Yes, the dude from Assassin's Creed. And then we got to play as Ezio.
