Tekken 8 had another big year at Evo in 2025. Arslan Ash won his sixth Evo title, his third in a row; Bandai Namco showed off a brand new extended gameplay trailer for Teken 8’s next DLC character, Armor King; and it also showed a small tease for the final character of Character Pass 2, Miary Zo. Just like last year, I got a chance to sit down with the Tekken team to discuss these announcements, whether or not the current surge of tag fighters has the team thinking about dusting off the old Tekken Tag Tournament IP, and the current state of Tekken 8 after a tumultuous Season 2 launch and subsequent emergency patches.
Read on to find out what Kohei Ikeda (Nakatsu), Game Director on Tekken 8, Katsuhiro Harada, Tekken Project Director, and Michael Murray, Tekken 8 Producer had to say.
You guys just revealed Miary Zo at the finals. You mentioned you took a trip to Madagascar to do some research for the character. What kind of things did you learn on that trip that helped inform the design of Miary Zo?
Kohei Ikeda (Nakatsu), Game Director on Tekken 8: [We] researched a bit on the internet, but there wasn’t that much information. So actually going there and learning about the people and culture, the history of the country, not only that, but just to walk around the city and see what actual people look like, the heights, what their hairstyles look like, the color of skin, just in general what the general population looks like, it gave us a very good idea of where to start.
Katsuhiro Harada, Tekken Project Director: One of the first things – there were several stages to the research – was first to visit the historical sites and to learn about the history and the past of the country and how it actually developed. And not only that, but then also through employing local guides, actually hearing about the background of this and to learn about the local population and to see what they look like, and also to be able to ask them about what’s important to them, what kind of values they have, what kind of religious aspects they have, and all of these kinds of things about modern Madagascar. Not only that, but the population.
It’s an island, so there’s not a huge population, but it’s quite unique in the fighting game community as in, they have these tournaments locally where you can earn points for the Tekken World Tour, obviously. We first saw that they actually had it quite often, once a month or so, which is quite a bit for such a small community. So we wanted to learn more about what motivated them to be participating in the game so much. So there are several facets that we actually got to hear about directly from them. And actually to view the population and see the characteristics from our point of view, but to ask them as your people go, what are the typical visual characteristics, whether that’s the style of hair or the color of their skin, et cetera. To hear this directly from their perspective of what signifies someone from Madagascar.
We didn’t actually get to see the combat style of this character, but we did see that it is African martial arts. Can you describe, or paint a picture for us what this character will fight like?
Harada: So the fighting style is basically labeled as Moraingy, but it’s quite different than what most people think of as a structured fighting style, because it’s more like a fighting tournament or a gathering to fight. It’s more loose, I guess, because there’s more room for individual interpretation as far as techniques, et cetera, go. Not only that, but other African martial arts are being used by this character. So various different ones that come from the main continent of Africa. So it’s an amalgamation that associates with, and takes techniques from several things.
Nakatsu: Yeah, basically, like Harada said, Moraingy is the base, but then there’s also famous arts in Africa, such as Dambe, which is a unique one. Some of the techniques from that have been included as well. But the setting of this character is that she’s liked by animals, like various wild animals in the ecosystem. And so not only has she learned from these martial artists, but also from animals. They’re taking their unique movement and characteristics and try to implement them into her fighting style.
Between a character like Armor King where you’re taking an existing character and updating them to Tekken 8, or Clive where you’re adapting a character from another property into Tekken 8, or Miary Zo where you’re building a whole new character from scratch, what kind of character design process do you enjoy the most and what’s the most challenging?
Nakatsu: It’s quite difficult to choose one because they all have their unique processes that I enjoy. For example, Armor King, taking that heel archetype pro wrestling and being able to flesh it out more in Tekken 8 by doing the poison mist, not only as reversals, but various ways to use that to lead into throwing. And also just to kind of portray him as a different type of pro wrestler in the way where he has more brutal strikes and very visceral, violent, striking capabilities compared to King, for example, while also being able to weave in there some throws and things like that. So making him really significant as what people are seeing on TV for the heel pro wrestler, doing that is just something I really personally enjoyed.
That said, someone like Clive where you take a IP from somewhere else and you try to faithfully recreate that in our game as much as possible, but you still have that little part where you have a little bit of freedom to add stuff to make it fit more naturally into the game, working within those constraints is actually creative and a lot of fun. But then with Miary Zo, making a brand new character from scratch, just to be able to use our full resources – we’re quite good at creating the animations – for example, in particular, and just working as a full team and having several people contribute ideas and to be able to coherently bring that together into an original character itself is very fulfilling. So it’s hard to choose one.
Harada: First and foremost, I really enjoy creating these brand new characters, creating from zero. But also there’s a different type of enjoyment in creating a guest character. For example, when bringing Akuma from the Street Fighter series, to be able to look at it from a different standpoint, not that of a developer per se, first you have to put yourself in the shoes of the fans of that particular character and think why is this character so beloved and what makes this character unique and stand out and to start from there. So you start from that fan’s perspective and it’s really enjoyable to then flesh out the character in that manner. Or for example, when you’re taking a character from the Final Fantasy series and you actually become part of that fan base of those games as you’re going through that process.
Switching to more general Tekken questions, one of the big stories in fighting games right now is tag fighters. This renaissance of tag fighters from Marvel Tokon to Invincible VS, 2XKO tag fighters are the rage right now and you guys happen to have a tag fighting game in there. Has there been any kind of desire to revisit Tekken Tag Tournament?
Harada: That’s a very difficult question. Back in ’99 when I made the original Tag Tournament… each character has so many moves in a 3D fighter, right, compared to these other games that there’s so much to learn just for one character. And then to pair that with two, even though back then in Tag 1, a lot of the characters were called compatible or you’d have versions that look different, but they share a similar type of move list. Whereas the Tekken series progressed, the characters became more unique in their move sets, etc. So it’s even more involved to try to learn and master a character, and then another one on top of that. And then when you throw in the combination of the two and your opponent’s characters, there’s just so much more knowledge that’s necessary to enjoy the game.
So the hardcore, they ate it up, for example, in Tag 2. But for your average player it was very hard to gain a more casual audience, I guess you could say. So if we were to do it again rather than have a standalone game, it would probably be better to have it as some kind of a separate mode within a normal Tekken franchise, right?
Michael Murray, Tekken 8 Producer: Nakatsu and myself, we probably grew up in the arcades playing while he was making Tag 1, so we really enjoy the game. I guess we’re more on the hardcore side of being able to use several characters and such, and we loved Tag 2. But we are fully aware that there were just so many people that couldn’t get a handle on it because of all the knowledge that’s involved.
Let’s talk a little bit about Season 2. There’s been a lot of urgent updates that you guys have released to update Tekken 8 after the initial launch of the new season. Where do you think the game is at right now? How do you feel about it? Do you feel like it’s in a good spot or do you think that there’s still work to be done?
Nakatsu: For Season 2, as I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve realized throughout the talks that we’ve had, that many people in the community were expecting a different approach to maybe enable more defensive options and things like that, and I regret that the changes in the game didn’t meet those expectations. The thinking originally behind Season 2 was that the team, the Balance team, for example, the tuning staff were really trying to go after something new to make it feel quite new for Season 2; to make a lot of changes, but that didn’t necessarily turn out in the way we had hoped and I’m aware of that. So we did indeed do several rounds of patches to try to bring the game closer to what those expectations were from the community.
And we are still here watching the competitive scene and keeping an eye on how matches play out to see what changes we might still need to make to bring the game more in line with expectations. So yeah, it’s a very difficult situation.
Murray: In addition, I’ve had so many talks with Nakatsu about the game. I also believe it’s gotten better. We’ve addressed many issues that the community has had. So if people haven’t played the game in a while, I hope they will because a lot has actually changed through these patches. And as Nakatsu said, I believe we’re still playing the game and watching the scene closely. And I also feel that it’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than it initially was. So we still continue that process and… We’re very glad that people are sticking with us and being patient while we’re going through the process and we hope to continue to try to meet those expectations.
Harada: Tekken 8 was a brand new challenge, it’s especially important to note that the Tekken series has always had the arcade version first, where we had about two years to really let it simmer. When people first got their hands on the console version, that was quite evolved from what the initial released game was. But this time, since we didn’t have the arcades and went straight to console and everyone got that initial version from the start around the world. And the team is quite young as we’ve had a turnover of members age-wise, etc. So the goal, also just to keep in mind, is that we weren’t trying to make a Tekken 7.5 or something like that. It was supposed to be a brand-new game. And we think that people really realized that at launch because it did quite well.
It got fighting game of the year, 9 on Metacritic, I think as well. It just happened that with Season 2, we tried to make the concept even more pronounced, I guess you could say, and we went too far in a certain direction. So obviously we’ve been trying to have communication with the community and to try to bring it to a ground where everyone’s happy about that. So it was quite a challenge and we’re continually working with the community so that… We want to do new stuff, but at the same time, if something doesn’t feel like it should be in Tekken, whether that’s a brand-new concept, Tekken or not, that’s something we’ll review. But the idea is a brand-new game. So hopefully people will keep an open mind about that regard.
Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit
