Capcom might be setting up Street Fighter 6 as the big reset button on the franchise's story that it kinda desperately needs
Capcom dropped a surprise bomb on Street Fighter 5 players in Rose's character story, which has big implications as to what the future of the series has in store for us and the world warriors.
Rose's scenes with Oro, Menat and G sure sound like the developers may be heading in a very different direction for Street Fighter 6 than we previously thought and one that may reset (and fix) the timeline as we know it, which has been building in the background for years now.
Even with the defeat of M. Bison and Necalli by the end of SF5's main story, the fortune teller still sees that the future is still doomed, but this time there's nothing she nor anyone can do.
Whatever this calamity entails, it appears the mysterious G is at the center of it all, and the latest story release postures him as the most threatening we've seen him yet.
The only answer Rose can potentially find to save the future is to instead look to the past and 'start it all over again. From zero.'
That line is pretty clearly a reference to the Street Fighter Alpha series, which was titled Street Fighter Zero in Japan, with the character postulating that she could get into contact with her past self to make her aware of the situation and stop its arrival before it's too late.
Stop me if this is sounding a bit too much like 2011's Mortal Kombat reboot.
In NetherRealm Studios' first release, the thunder god Raiden sends a message back in time to a younger version of himself to prevent the events of Armageddon from taking place, which just goes swimmingly.
Former Street Fighter Producer Yoshinori Ono has stated in 2017 that Capcom should "take advantage and mimic" NetherRealm's cinematic story style.
This of course led to SF5's attempt at a movie-quality tale with A Shadow Falls though it mostly failed to live up to the mark. Perhaps future plans of the past were already in the works.
Should Capcom choose to go the route of pulling an MK9, we'll likely be looking at either a complete reset of the established lore or at least a shift in canon, which is huge for a series that's been running for over 30 years now.
Something along the lines of a new timeline would be a tough pill to swallow for many fans, but it might be necessary at this point to bring everything together from past games in a more cohesive package.
Most of Street Fighter's story prior to 5 was told in arcade intros, endings, brief bits of dialogue and flavor text, which made it near impossible to know what actually occurred in the games until the next installment came out.
"When incorporating Gill into SF5, we took into consideration his role within the story. In past titles within the series, we had parallel storylines where the ending would change depending on who won," said SF5 Director Takayuki Nakayama in an interview last year. "However, since SF5 doesn’t follow that same narrative style, we utilized Gill as a character who appears as an embodiment of what that opponent desires. For Kolin, it’s peace for her country. For Urien, it’s a brother. For Ryu, it’s a stronger opponent."There are so many conflicting details over the years from who defeats M. Bison in Street Fighter 2 and Alpha for example with every character having an ending where they win the tournament.
Capcom's also previously established that they'll just straight up change the story like they did with Alpha 2 replacing the events of the original Alpha in the canon followed by doing the exact same thing with SF3.
Going back in time to change events does usually lead to most story beats still taking place the same way in recent video game fiction like we saw in MK9 and a certain Square Enix RPG released last year.
This could finally allow fans to see the battles and rivalries as they "actually" unfold instead of trying to put together puzzle pieces that don't fit because they weren't supposed to or we don't have all of the information because of poor translations or bits that we never made widely known outside of Japan.
Sure, part of the fun of this series and other classic fighting games is trying to mash that puzzle together with the breadcrumbs tossed all around, and those would still be there.
Getting to see real story battles like Ryu and Sagat's first bout would be pretty darn cool and give us an answer as to whether the Muay Thai boss got his scar from a sucker punch Shoryuken or in a clean fight.
There are so many rad events that take place in the SF universe that have mostly been left up to imagination at this point, but sometimes it can be difficult to come up with 'cooler' than what you pictured in your head already.
It wouldn't be easy to push aside a lot of that lore we've grown attached to over the decades, especially in titles we may feel haven't been fully fleshed out yet like SF3, but it might be time for a new chapter.
Capcom hasn't exactly proven themselves in the fighting game story mode department yet with neither SF5's nor Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite's attempts really living up to their potential, but the direction the developers seem to be going in now appears to have more thought care building up to what's on the horizon.
If the team's really feeling ambitious, they could even try their hand at a split timeline story where Rose in the past has to solve the problems of whatever's going on with G alongside younger versions of the world warriors while those in the present day could be preparing to take on the final threat and connect into Street Fighter 3.
Before this, we had already postulated what a potential Street Fighter 6 could look like as a "greatest hits" collection of the series' best moments, which could lend itself well to a time-hopping tale that can showcase events that have only ever been mentioned and never seen before like M. Bison's rise to power and recruiting his generals.
The road Street Fighter appears to be on now is one with changes and forking paths.
We don't know what the future holds, but the answer likely lies in the past.
