Tonight, at The Game Awards, we got another look at Tekken 8: the highly-anticipated 3D fighting game from Bandai Namco. In the run-up to the reveal, the face of Tekken – producer Katsuhiro Harada – had been teasing something was coming… we just didn’t expect this.
A cinematic trailer showed off some returning characters and some faces we haven’t seen before. We saw Law, King, Alisa, Devil Kazuya, Devil Jin, Jack 8 (assumedly) and Jun Kazama – although we all assumed her dead.
We saw some actual honest-to-god gameplay in there, too, showing off some shiny new graphics and a new engine (that honestly put me more in mind of SoulCalibur, at the start).
“Father. Son. Mother. This family reunion is going to be explosive,” says the blurb for the trailer. “TEKKEN8 is bringing back old grudges to the new generation – Kazuya, Jin, Paul, King, Law, Lars, Jack-8 and…the return of Jun Kazama!”
The new game will replace Tekken 7 as the current title in the series – and Tekken 8 got mighty big shoes to fill. Tekken 7 has raked in over 9 million sales after five years of support, introducing a slew of DLC characters and re-establishing the 3D fighting game as one of the best out there in the world.
The game was first revealed in a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ teaser during EVO 2022 in August. Previously, Tekken 8 was one of the games featured in the Nvidia Geforce Now datamine, suggesting that a new title in the series has been planned for quite a while now.
You can also read why we think Tekken 8 needs to learn from Mortal Kombat if it wants new players (don’t worry, we’re not talking about the fighting mechanics, chill out).
Fighting game fans are eating well at the moment; between this and the June release date for Street Fighter 6, the new-gen fighting behemoths are really starting to land.
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