Tekken 8 – What Are The Changes We Should Expect?

The long-awaited Tekken 8 was first announced at the State of Play 2022 event, along with a compelling trailer. There’s no official release date yet, but it should be safe to assume that the game will take at least two or three years to release.

Tekken 7 has been around for almost a decade. It came out in 2015 and is easily the most successful game in the Tekken franchise.

While the game turned out to be a huge success at launch, it wasn’t drastically different from the previous game in the series, Tekken 6. However, several patches from Bandai Namco improved the game in terms of gameplay and graphics over time.

Now, let’s get to the point. We’ll be discussing what we should expect in the new game judging from the trailer, the ending of Tekken 7, roster changes, and more.

The game appears to have taken a massive leap in terms of graphics. According to Katsuhiro Harada, the game director, the trailer showed in-game footage of Tekken 8’s story mode and was recorded at 60 FPS on a Playstation 5.

The graphics look insanely good. Kazuya Mishima finally looks like his age(40+), unlike in Tekken 7, where he seems maybe a year or two old than his 20-year-old son, Jin Kazama. 

The animations also appear to have been updated, and this time Bandai Namco has put a lot of effort and redoing all the animations in Unreal Engine 5. Previously, all the installments of Tekken games reused animations from past games and weren’t drastically improved upon.

However, the fight scene between Kazuya Mishima and Jin Kazama from the Tekken 8 trailer tells us that everything has been redone. Even the sound effects are different from Tekken 7 and sound more modern.

Enough about the graphics, and now, let’s move towards the story mode. Tekken Franchise features a mediocre storyline, but it still is one of the longest-running stories in video game history. The story features surprises at every turn to the point that the surprises aren’t even surprising anymore.

Not kidding, Heihachi Mishima is speculated to be dead at least 5 times in 7 games, but he still makes his return as if the man is literally an unkillable villain.

But, at the end of Tekken 7, Heihachi Mishima is defeated and thrown into a volcano by his son and is “most likely” dead for real this time. So, the story will continue from that point onwards. Tekken 7 introduced several new characters in the story mode, such as Claudio, who is an exorcist. We also got Master Raven, the master of the Raven character from previous games.

The game also introduces Kazumi Mishima, who is Kazuya’s mother and Heihachi’s wife but is dead before the story takes place but is still featured in flashbacks and is a playable character in the game.

However, the biggest surprise was the inclusion of the Street Fighter character Akuma, who makes his surprise appearance in the Story Mode and is now part of the game’s lore.

Tekken 8 will likely settle things between Kazuya and his son and finally bring an end to the Mishima Clan arc after approximately 30 years. It could even be the last game in the franchise, but nobody knows at this point, and we’ll have to wait to find out.

In the trailer, it appears that Jin Kazama has gained complete control over his Devil Gene, just like Kazuya Mishima. According to the lore, Kazuya has half the devil gene while his son has the other half, which got separated from Kazuya Mishima when he made out with Jin’s mother and now has to kill Jin to make his own Devil Gene whole again.

Whoever wins the fight shown in the trailer will likely complete the Devil Gene inside them by killing the other guy or just absorbing the gene because Tekken’s story can be highly unpredictable sometimes.

Now, let’s talk about the returning characters. Tekken 7 has a lot of characters, including guest ones, and some of them will have to be left behind because Tekken 8 will bring its own original characters, and we can’t have like 60-70 characters in the game.

There’s a lot of hate around for 2D guest characters Akuma and Geese. Eliza has the highest chance of appearing in Tekken 8 among other 2D characters since she’s an original character, not a guest one. Geese will not appear in Tekken 8, but Akuma still has some chance since now he’s part of the lore.

But, due to the massive hate the character received in the community for being overpowered, it is highly unlikely because Tekken developers take character popularity quite seriously. 

Heihachi will be present, as he’s the most iconic character of the series. All Mishima characters except for Devil Jin will be part of the base roster, but one or two can also be featured in a DLC like Kazumi due to her massive popularity.

Devil Jin is less likely to be a playable character since we’ve seen Jin being able to control his devil powers during battles in the trailer. Other than that, most legacy characters will likely make it to the base roster at launch.

It is also worth mentioning that Tekken 8 will also feature guest characters, but we might not see the ones already featured in Tekken 7. The other characters we might not see in the upcoming game are Ganryu, Kunimitsu, Lei Wulong, and Katarina since they are the least popular characters in Tekken 7.

It will be a treat to see if the Tekken 7 original characters appear in Tekken 8’s story. We might also see some past characters returning to the roster, but it isn’t very certain.

Tekken 8 is confirmed to release on PlayStation 5, Steam, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S. What changes and characters would you like to see in Tekken 8? Please tell us your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.