When you look at the character designs for Street Fighter V, they’re not the most humanly accurate proportions that you can find in a fighting game, or any videogame for that matter. However, it wasn’t always the stylized fighter that many would see it today. It was originally conceived to become a complete makeover in terms of character design, wherein Capcom used photorealistic graphics that are very unlike any of the game’s previous titles.
Street Fighter V Once Featured Photorealistic Character Designs
In a recent interview with Game Spark, and translated by the FGC community site EventHubs, the producer of Street Fighter V, Koichi Sugiyama, stated that at the beginning of the project, the game was planned to be a complete redesign from previous iterations. It was said to offer lifelike visuals, which was very unlikely since the fighting game has character designs that are heavily stylized and anime-influenced. It was soon scrapped as the developers did not really take a liking to it.
The produced stated that when they put together the build of Street Fighter 5, they were rendered in the photorealistic graphics. However, once they’ve gotten a glance of it, they realized it was not something that they would really want to put into the game. In other words, they have realized that it won’t really look like Street Fighter if the game wasn’t using the bold, anime-esque look and feel. Therefore, they have decided to shelf the idea of photorealism altogether.
In the fifth installment of the game, the game developers were working with Unreal Engine 4. The engine is known to be very good in rendering photorealistic visuals. However, the team had to work hard in trying to recreate the anime-esque visual style that the game is known for. Hence, they have made a lot of experiments before finally setting their feet down in adding “oil painting-like touches.”
There were also some early concept artwork that were recently revealed that were supposed to be used for the game. These include a work-in-progress of the iconic Ryu in action, along with some other early character designs. The early character design of “Hot Ryu” featured a photorealistic build of the iconic character. Sugiyama said that Ryu had just gotten back from training in seclusion from the mountains, hence the beard and his body covered with cuts and bruises.
Street Fighter V is already out for purchase and is available to be played via the PC and PlayStation 4. However, there are still some bugs and issues that need fixing that many would decide not to pick up the game until these are fixed. There are matchmaking problems, and rage-quitting is also an issue.
