Guilty Gear Strive is now entering its fourth year of content updates, and despite gaining a reputation as an “oldie” in the industry, especially compared to newer titles like Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, and Mortal Kombat 1, Strive is still as popular as ever.
Which brings us to Evo 2024, where Arc System Works made perhaps its biggest Guilty Gear Strive announcement yet: In addition to two returning characters, Dizzy and Venom, and one brand up-to-date character, Unika, they’d also be adding their first guest character to the roster: Lucy from Cyberpunk Edgerunners. I had the chance to catch up with Guilty Gear Strive producer Ken Miyauchi to find out how this surprising collaboration came about, as well as get some insight into Strive’s future.
IGN: We’ve heard that Lucy from Cyberpunk Edgerunners will be in Strive. Can you talk a little about how long that’s been in the works and how that collaboration came about?
Ken Miyauchi, producer of Guilty Gear Strive: So, we were trying to find someone who would be a good guest character for Guilty Gear Strive. And we’ve actually been doing that since 2023. We talked to CD PROJEKT RED because our lead artist, Hidehiko Sakamura, is a huge fan of the Witcher series. We talked to CD PROJEKT RED and then there were a few conversations that led to the decision to bring Lucy from Cyberpunk Edgerunners.
I’m not against the idea of Lucy, but Lucy is not the main character of Cyberpunk Edgerunners, David is. What made you want to choose Lucy over David?
Is there any collaboration between you and Studio Trigger, who created the Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime? Are you working with them to make Lucy a part of Strive?
The other thing you announced that you’ve talked about before is the 3v3 mode. Can you talk a little bit about how that mode is different from something like Dragon Ball FighterZ or Marvel vs Capcom?
Miyauchi: So eventually you will see the game mechanics explained on our website or in a community post. So what makes Team of 3 different from other games is that people will be playing at the same time, instead of just you controlling a character and doing 1v1 on one screen. So I will just explain the first layer of this game mechanic. A team will be formed with one main role and two support roles, and the two support roles will be able to choose their skills to interact in battle.
Interesting.
Miyauchi: And of course, during the battle, the assist players can switch with the main players, or the assist player can interact with his own character in the battle under certain conditions. Well, as for the game mechanics in the open beta, I think people will be able to find out in the tutorial, there is a Team of 3 tutorial mode in the open beta. So I hope people will find out how they can employ the up-to-date game mechanics that are exclusive to Team of 3.
And then another character that I’m sure people are really excited about is Dizzy. Can you talk a little bit about what Dizzy will be like in this version of Guilty Gear? Specifically, I saw that she was Queen Dizzy, can you talk a little bit about what that means?
And then other characters were announced, like Venom and Unik from the anime. I know they’re probably in early development, but can you tell us a little bit about how those characters will play out in Strive?
Did you expect Strive to be this sturdy for this long? There were a lot of entries at Evo this year.
Can you tell us anything or give us any hints about what we can expect mechanically from the updates you’re making in Season 4?
Miyauchi: In the Developer’s Backyard that I did a month ago, I mentioned what’s coming in the next few months, which is the Battle Balance updates, the minor release that’s coming out at the end of this month. And the major release that’s coming out sometime… I don’t remember when I said that, but I think around October, end of October.
But the minor updates are more focused mainly on those characters that are less likely to access their potential. So more buffs for those characters. And also adjusting some universal mechanics like the explosion gauge buff, as well as positive bonuses. And also we have some changes to the Roman Cancelling mechanic on some invincible moves. So that will come in the next character balance update. And I think that this update will shake up the meta a bit in the current competitive scene and I hope people will look forward to it.
Beyond the up-to-date mechanics, is there any intention to improve some of, let’s say, the core features of Strive? Will we ever get frame data in practice mode? Will we ever get matchmaking that doesn’t go through the lobby system? Is something like that in the works?
Miyauchi: So those are the updates that I always thought I wanted to do, I mean, implement at some point. That’s just from a producer perspective, I’ve always talked about that with the director. And we always talk about when we can do that update. And right now we’ve announced up-to-date updates that are coming next, which is Team of 3, and Team of 3 development is going really tough right now. And when we release that, I think we’ll be able to get our hands on those updates. So I want players to look forward to them as well.
I apologize for this in advance because I feel like I’m asking you this every time I talk to you, but instant kills, the fans love them. It’s one of the things I think the fans love the most about the Guilty Gear series. What are the chances that they’ll still make it into Strive? And if you’ve thought about it, are there any unique challenges to bringing instant kills into Strive?
Miyauchi: So, the introduction of instant kills is something that we would also like to do, and I agree that it’s kind of, how do you say, a very, very unique mechanic that Guilty Gear presents. So we would like to do that sometime in the future. I can’t say when it will be possible because instant kills actually take a long time to develop. And also the character animations, the emotions that make instant kills very, very unique and chilly, will take a long time to develop.
We’re trying to make it unique because we’re animating it frame by frame. And if the instant kill moves are long and chilly, that means we have to have more time to make sure that every pattern looks chilly, right? And if we decide to implement instant kill for all characters, that means we have to develop it for all characters, which is almost equal to developing maybe two characters. So we’ll try to find an opportunity. Our team is still growing, we have our motion designers and animators recruited to our team, and our team is growing. So I’m looking forward to, please, future updates if we can do that.
Last question, I ask almost everyone I talk to at Evo, but we just passed the Rollback netcode milestone, everyone has Rollback netcode now. It’s become the standard for fighting games now. I think fighting games are so much better because of it. What do you think is the next step in the evolution of fighting games in the genre as a whole?
Miyauchi: This is something that we’ve also discussed in the development team. Of course, as you know, Arc System Works makes fighting games and we’ll continue to make fighting games. And if we make up-to-date fighting games, we’ll always discuss what we can bring, revolutionize fighting games, how to say, the industry. And I don’t have the answers yet or I can’t share them, but I’ll always think about it. And I honestly think that the community, the fighting game community, is in the best shape right now in this era. In the past, it’s always been… I mean, I would like, if I were a player in this era of fighting games, people are expecting more and more fun things in fighting games and we’ll try to figure out what we can provide to the community.
Mitchell Saltzman is a senior producer at IGN. You can find him on Twitter @JurassicRabbit
