The Devs Break Down Guilty Gear Strive 2.0

Let's go. Whoa. What's coming to Guilty Gear Strive 2.0? Oh, I did hear about this [ __ ] What? to new players and those who used to play Strive. I think this is a big deal, dude. Fighting games have to remind themselves about this. For me as well, right? There's just so much goddamn things that I have to cover and play that it's hard for me to stick with one thing at all just in general. Fighting games have to refresh themselves with content, with characters, with updates and changes for people to be like, "Oh yeah, let me go back and check that [ __ ] out." You know, there's too much diversity to invest your time into in the fighting game space, much less the space of all the other games, man. Fighting games have to like try now. They have to like go out and make you feel like, I want to go back and play more Guilty Gear. It's been a long time. That's where I'm at right now. Exactly. mission isn't to just refine and adjust or simply add new characters, but rather completely change and refresh the gameplay experience. And Guilty Gear has already changed a lot. Like Guilty Gear has been like three different games since it came out for the most part. There's been like some sizable changes that have happened since then. Chad, I can't tell you how upset I was that I was finally hitting my stride in Marvel vs. Capcom 1 and whooping good ass. And then I go into the arcade and I'm like where'd the Marvel one machine go? And it's like behind the corner in the back and I'm like the [ __ ] And like one or two people are playing it when it was the hot spot in like like the 1999 2000. I'm like what the [ __ ] is going on? And there's Marvel versus Capcom 2. And I'm like four button fighting piece of [ __ ] Get out of here dude. I'm going to play Marvel 1 and no one's playing it. I ain't going to fight the CPU. So over to Marvel this Marvel 2 game is like that's just how it is 5 years. Damn. Built a foundation. You want to take that foundation, make a big move forward. I have a I have a crazy uh prediction cuz this is usually how this goes in this industry. I think their big move forward in phase for this game is a little bit of a testing ground. I don't think they're immediately making Strive, you know, two. I don't think they're making the next Guilty Gear, but I do think that some of the stuff that they're learning right now that could be in development in the background. Some of the stuff they're learning at the end of this game or that it's tail end now is going to be used to apply towards what the hell the next game is. They did this literally with uh Ultra Street Fighter 4 with its Omega mode. There was [ __ ] in Omega mode that is was literally put into Street Fighter 5. Do I need to even mention anything about the end of Tekken 7? There was a whole bunch of mechanics and things that would go directly into Tekken 8 and also be pushed way further, you know? Luke was literally a testing ground for the next Street Fighter. Dude, they're going to take away uh they're going to take away the dude's guns. Happy Chaos won't even be able to shoot guns anymore. Sometimes he'll just aim and he'll have the gun backwards and he'll shoot himself randomly. Happy Chaos can shoot himself in the face or just pull out a gun and be like h and the gun's not there. Like it's a Looney Tunes thing, bouncing certain characters in a much more involved reworked level way. Whoa. I was just kidding, dude. It was a joke. It was a joke. I was making a joke. That was a joke in a rework level way. Whoa. That's definitely Happy Chaos, man. Speak this [ __ ] into existence. And he literally says it. That's where the exact character is getting reworked. I'm sure that if you watch the trailer, you might have already figured out which characters those are. I don't think Happy Chaos had Wow. I'll shut the shut my goddamn mouth. You know what? From an outsers's perspective, I have not had much time to engage with people that play Happy Chaos in this game or like Oscar or that man. But just from a fundamental level of seeing how you have to fight these characters, that [ __ ] seems crazy. What they do to get their win condition and [ __ ] even after it gets severely nerfed. Like Happy Chaos has been nerfed how many times? It seems [ __ ] wild. I I thought Bedman and like that kind of wild looking [ __ ] was kind of insane in Ex, dude. Seeing this dude open up his book, it's not even fun to watch. It looks like they just control too much of this too much of the screen, dude. I I feel like it this is comparable to like zero in MVC 3 where it feels like these options are just [ __ ] everywhere, man. Changing up system mechanics across the board with 2.0. Please check out the patch notes for exact details. Yeah, Wild Assault, Strive Rush being gone is nuts. I'm going to push Strive further into the next phase with this update. Did they say that's everything or they say there's more? For some reason, I got the impression that they're not done. Like this isn't everything. There's still balance changes with the individual characters. Yeah, they implied that this this is just the beginning like type of thing. What was Wild Assault again? I used it a little bit when I was playing some characters in the last season. It's pretty much a drive rush. It's like an FADC green [ __ ] drive rush. You can convert out of throw much easier and it used, correct me if I'm wrong, Strive Rush used burst gauge, right? Uh I didn't use it that much. So, it's been around for a little while off normals or in neutral only. This is kind of neat that like they're making that the burst gauge isn't there all the time, but I think they're also going to revamp how burst works and balance that out and [ __ ] It's used to extend combos or create more opportunities, but some characters literally use it like a dry brush, two objectives in mind, you set it on the current direction 2.0 rather than making a completely new game. Damn, we just talked about this separate from Guilty Gear Strive, huh? As one of those adjustments that we've made in version 2.0, actually the wild mechanic will be removed. One big lesson we learned as we kept updating battle balance as an example. Felt how system mechanics included. We kept improving and adding new abilities. The average power level kept increasing. That's one thing we felt strongly and we've learned from it. Not wrong. You can very much tell it affects the general flow of the game as well. Satisfying feels the end of the match. Um, yeah. And that's a normal thing for fighting games, right? By the time the game is over, you're just doing [ __ ] with characters that's almost completely different than what it was at the start. Drove us to replace Wild Assault with a completely different system called Counter Blitz. So, uh, and and as a reminder, like I thought counter blitz was like a thing where you can literally counter, you know, the big counter. No, it almost offers like a metered extension if you hit the right timing off of the large scale counter hits, which is weird to me because it's like the big counter hits are the stuff that lead to some of the most damage, right? That usually gives you the biggest reward. Oh, it's unbburstable. Wow, that's okay. Cool. That's a cool take. Holy [ __ ] Wild assault originally developed it with the intent of creating an easy intuitive method of pressuring the opponent. But over time, it became very clear that it's a very strong and deep mechanic. Players got better at using it. Could be extremely powerful when used optimally. That's definitely one aspect that stood out to us. That's something to improve upon with the direction we have for 2.0. I want to make the reversal of offense and defense more clear going forward. Another main goal we had for this new update. Interesting. I think that's pretty cool that they recognize that like the game is getting a little too balls to the wall. Maybe we should dial it back a little bit, you know, cuz again, Guilty Gear Strive already has very cool defensive mechanics, you know? I'm a big fan of the deepest That's really cool that it locks you out. Adding counter blitz requires the player to get a counter hit. It's a clear prerequisite for its activation uses up half the burst gauge as what it's activated. The attacking character performs a lightning attack that can knock on it. And when you use counter blitz when you're close to the wall, it will always cause a wall break. Top of that, your character can't activate burst. This is interesting. Can I say that high level players will be using counter blitz to benefit from that as well. Research that may different ways counter blitz can be used strategically. Yeah. Because if you if it locks out burst, what happens if you RC the counter blitz? You know, does the rest of it still lock them out? There's a big opportunity to cash out a [ __ ] ton of damage and all your resources to go for as much as possible that's unburstable. Maybe that we're removing wild assault, replacing it with counter blitz. Did mention this earlier as well, but there's a big difference in the effect. Wild Assault had when used by players of varying skill levels. Those who had just started playing Guilty Gear Strive, Wild Assault was something to ignore while learning, something that players will only start getting used to at a certain level. Okay, so this lines up with, as I understand, how devs kind of think about fighting games, core gameplay mechanics. They do not want them reserved for one audience. not core gameplay mechanics. Maybe some characters and [ __ ] Yeah, I understand that. So, not everybody is going to be able to gel and jive with every single character in the roster. That's normal. But the basic functionality of the game, every single person should be able to do it and understand why and understand how the game is meant to be like approached and played and you try things and see cool stuff. If even people at like a lower midlevel aren't finding justifiable reason to do it, then it's funky. You start to enter some Street Fighter cross Tekken Street Fighter cross Tekken territory. Pandora mode and [ __ ] Same time when you start learning it, it suddenly got very difficult and players would start struggling with it. That's how I see wild assault now. So with that considered, when we thought about smoothing out the learning curve so that players could learn while also consistently having fun while assault was like preventing that And counter blitz looks cool. It has all these neat new animations and [ __ ] Cost 50% of your burst gauge. Oh, it's 50% of your burst gauge, not your tension gauge. That's right. Because Wild Assault was a burst gauge usage, they have to get you spending that resource more to balance out uh how much bursting is going to happen. Make sense? All you need to do is press the two buttons at the same time. That's it. Use it very easily after getting a counter If you start So I thought it was like a reactionary thing like oh we have 20 25 frames to to press this button. It sounds like it's pretty lenient where it's like I have visually recognized the counter hit is happening. Go. You know I'm using this now. Like that makes sense. Yeah, deflex shield was added the same time frame as wild assault and deflex shield is sort of closer to like the focus attack thing that was in ex. It's practically a drive impact. It was the same patch. Yeah, I just didn't use that one as much because new mechanics. Oh, deflect shield was the push block. Okay, so I'm thinking of the exard thing which literally had a [ __ ] focus attack. It's the big push block. Gotcha. And that one also used burst gauge. I don't think I ever noticed it being used that much. Maybe I'm just not recognizing that. Oh, that is that mechanic happening. I wonder if it was just not as popular to use in general. Blitz was actually tension. Okay, makes sense. Makes sense. It's better to keep it for wild sard makes sense. Battle pass and guilty gear. Did they say what this is going to cost? Six bucks, dude. A PlayStation cost $900 now. Not bad. It's like a bunch of flavor dialogue, right? For people that are really into gear lore. Yeah, that's a great question. What the hell was the 3v3 mode in this game? What was that [ __ ] Was that like a testing ground for for Tokon? I don't know, man. Like every little bit I played it was like that I'm immediately uninterested by this. Immediately like the way this plays, immediately uninterested. It had to have been a testing ground for Tokon. Like I don't get it. It was It was weird. Like I'm immediately I did not understand why I would play this. Anyway, that happened. It's nice, dude. The new UI. Cool. It looks similar. I like soul bad guys like Monster Hunter Sword. Yeah, they're still not leaning into the route of like completely different costumes. Even games like I think we got a bit more of this in Grand Blue. It's still just too expensive, you know. Dizzy had one. Dizzy did have like the cloak we just saw, right? If anything, like even Toecon now has a whole bunch of different costumes right out the get-go, you know, and there'll probably be DLC for more later. Yeah. No [ __ ] Oh, Dizzy's just the headwear. It's the same outfit. Ah, I see. create new outfits for specific characters. And now we're ready to implement outfit swaps as a new feature. That's neat that that's on the table now, right? Of actually giving characters different costumes and stuff and changing stuff. Pretty cool. That's the way this goes. And I think they looked at things like Street Fighter, especially Street Fighter 6, and they're like, "Shit, like look how much money all these guys are making by this costume stuff." And it's a it sucks. We we created an art style that makes this almost impossible. And I'd imagine they also have some feedback likely from Grand Blue games and stuff like that where it does do well and it sells very well. People like costumes for characters, man. Yeah. This entire rendering process of how you create the visuals of these characters was never designed in a way to easily change everything out because it's so handcrafted on every frame, every lighting angle, like all this stuff. No, this is the reason why everyone screamed to the heavens and Dragon Ball Fighters for more costumes and [ __ ] and they just were like, "Nah." I think one character got an an additional costume and that was it. It's almost like making an entire new visual of a whole new character. Yeah. But maybe they came with came up with a development pipeline that allows for it and he will also be getting new outfits. Talk brand new weapons for both characters. Cool. Planning on adding even more new outfits for the other characters. That's great. along with the new outfits. Many years now, we've been hearing from players using Jacko. They want to have the option to remove her mask. Wow, that's great, dude. That that was a thing that I really liked about Street Fighter 5, how SF5 had like codes for characters if you wanted to remove certain parts of their costume. I loved that [ __ ] I thought that was incredibly cool. I don't think Street Fighter 6 has that as much. 2X KO has that a little bit, you know? I hope that comes back. I think it's neat. Just like, yeah, you don't have to have this on there. You can take it off. I was wondering if there's some weird thing in Street Fighter 6 that I didn't know about that you can remove some element of a character's costume. Oh, I I dig this, dude. they leaned into the uh the Tekken aspect of it. This is this was Tekken in Street Fighter 6. Now it lets you change the more rockin version of the UI. You know, heard a lot of these new UI skins as part of the season 5 pass we'll be releasing soon. You'll be able to get these UI skins immediately. Well, I mean, Soul in 2.0, dude. No, I haven't got it like got enough chance. Here's my personal hope, right? As somebody that dedicated a bunch of time into this game in the first like year it was out and had a lot of fun with it. But I ended up really liking Elfelt. I love what they did with her character. I kind of liked her gameplay. But as I understand it from people that are good at Elfelt whenever they come into my chat and talk about it, they're like, "She's really cool, but she gets dry really goddamn fast." So they're like, "You're going to have a lot of fun at the start, because they all did." When you're playing alfelt, you're going to get to a point where you plateau in terms of what she offers in terms of character depth, and it will not get more interesting. It'll get less interesting actually cuz you're going to be using even less of her. So I'm like, "Ah, that reminds me of Geo." Cuz when I started playing and I was like, "Go is going to be so cool. I can't wait." Uh, and like, oh, let me try Leo as well. I got bored of both characters, dude. And I was like, like at some point I was like, I don't know. Why isn't she getting a new move? I, from what I understand, like they said characters are getting like four moves each. Unless I misinterpreted that. That's a big ass change. There was already limited move sets across the board in this game though. There's four new moves IN TOTAL. SHUT UP. Four new moves for certain characters. One new move for four characters. Are you telling me that the only new moves that are added were the ones that were in the trailer? I hope not. We'll see. We'll see what they talk about. Hold on. This is fluffy stuff. How about the Korean OST? You're way too hungry. I love how person how much personality they put into her face. She looks so goddamn sassy. Super is very funny. So, four characters in season five. Do they do what they did in season 4? Lean into another guest character? Just put Cloud Strife in Guilty Gear? Here's the thing. It's possible. Like, it's definitely not impossible. We need to not only meet the expectations of our existing players, but also make it easier for new players to come into the game and make the game feel more open. We learned that we want to focus on making sure the game continues to feel that way. So going into the 2.0 update, we've been very actively pushing the game into this kind of direction. We're aware of the Guilty Gear Strives strengths, such as how satisfying it feels. We want to maintain how easy it is to understand while also making the game deeper as a competitive title. You know what? I am glad they didn't do what I thought they were going to do. And what I thought they were going to do wasn't what I wanted. I thought they were going to take the very easy route with this [ __ ] chat. It wasn't the easiest. I'd say it was the most obvious IK. Instakills would have been a very marketable thing, but it would have been fluff. IK are great. It's a legacy thing. People are into it. However, even if you do that, it will be just like IK's in Guilty Gear XR. They're cool, but they're so limited. At least in XR, they actually affect the gameplay a lot because you can combo into them and [ __ ] It's neat, but it's going to be like a thing that you check out for a little bit. They're complete novelty. Does it have an actual impact on the core game experience for like 99% of the match? No, it's just a thing that happens in the end. It's useful in Exactly like ultra combos, which is what I loved what they did with them in that game. But yeah, they serve the same purpose as like dramatic finishers and fatalities. What they're doing is way smarter. They're revamping the [ __ ] out of the game. They are looking at the game from a completely different lens, which will have a much higher level impact on the larger 99% of what happens in a match instead of the fluffy big cool astral finish. I think I appreciate that. This would be like Street Fighter 6 showing up and being like, "Here is our big change for Street Fighter 6. Are you guys ready? Another level three." And then they walk away. And some people would be excited, but that would do nothing. People want like the core game to be changed, not like the one little thing that happens at like the most minute moments. You're only seeing so many level threes in a match, dude. The rest of the game is how the whole game plays out. Like that's what they did with Strive, which is what I appreciate. They ended up making it a different feeling game that you might fall in love with a completely different way than before. Hey, that's smart. This is a good This is a good reminder that devs are starting to get connected to this [ __ ] Fighting games cannot be designed in a way that has your experience being going online and queuing ranked or queuing lobby matches. That's like all you really got. There's not enough meat to the bones outside of just queuing online and lobby matches where it's like what if this person just wants to jump on and do this stuff. There needs to be things in the game that get you to grow and progress and have fun with it outside of specifically only learning big new combos and learning how to more effectively fight other humans and [ __ ] It's like this is where games like Street Fighter 6 have found their stride because a [ __ ] ton of people in Street Fighter 6 do not play the game in an online fashion. There's so much [ __ ] to do in Street Fighter 6 outside of like just playing the game with yourself, which is they understood it. It's It's smart, dude. Yeah, there's combo trials in Guilty Gear Stribe, too. There's an entire combo sharing system in this game where people create combos and then post them and then you can you can try them yourself. See, what I like about this quote, we want people to We've seen lots of new players come into fighting games from other game genres. And so, we want those people to also feel more at home with fighting games and make them easier to pick up and play at any time. You know, we can do that with Guilty Gri, right? Smart. And guess what? You don't necessarily only do that by nerfing the [ __ ] out of characters and gameplay mechanics. Like you don't like that is not the thing that is going to keep people on boarded in a game. Like Guilty Gear got a huge influx of people at the beginning because people had never experienced Guilty Gear before at a point where it was at the right place, right time. So everyone got to fall in love with this [ __ ] A lot of people just dropped off in general and their interest waned because there wasn't much else to do outside of fighting online. the room to grow wasn't really there. You couldn't fall in love with something while playing the game, you know, in a single player setting to eventually make you fall in love with something and then go online. What I like is that accessibility, in my personal opinion, is content. Like content is literally accessibility. Give people something to do that'll make them eventually have so much fun with this or dig something about it so so emphatically that they'll want to I want to I want to dig this in even more. I want to go learn combos with this character. I want to go do this. That is the natural growth path of every player for the most part where they eventually become online players, they become ranked players, they become tournament players, like whatever. There has to be that growth path. And if there's nothing to grow from, it's like it's like you're trying to grow a plant with no soil, dude. It's like this is a pretty flower, but it's not going to become a blossom unless you allow it to grow. Like, people need to figure that [ __ ] out. I like it that it seems that, especially on the Arcs' side, that these people are getting it. It isn't just specifically through gameplay mechanics. People want to do cool things. You have to give people a way to grow into this path, right? This was a good video. Yeah, this was a very good interview. It got me even more excited for what's in this thing. I think I understand a bit more of the mechanical choices, why Wild Assault's going away, what the new thing offers. I didn't even understand how it functioned as much. I love the fact that it locks you out of burst. That's really cool. It uses some of yours, but it locks them out of theirs, so you can legit kill a [ __ ] with it. That'll change the overall like highle meta of the game because you just cannot touch as many buttons in those situations. It makes everything way more tense. If they want to make the game more interesting and like give you new ways to play different characters outside of the four new special moves, I very much want to see what they do to relatively dry characters like, and I'll just say it myself, Elfelt's kind of a dry character, but fun. Unika felt that way, too. I didn't even play Unika for more than like a couple days, but she felt like, "Oh, this is a very straightforward as [ __ ] character, dude." Like, like you're gonna be you're gonna get better with her, but I don't know if it's going to get that much more interesting. There's a good chance gets new combo routes and stuff with new rebalancing. I mean, I think that's the idea. It was kind of crazy that like I had not played that character in like a year, and I came back, I played her for like a day, like a day and a half, and I found her near optimal. That doesn't feel good. Heat.