Meet him. Shake his hand. Study his movements and question his methods. He's sort of new around here, after all.
Ok, of course you know who Dhalsim is. He's a mainstay of the Street Fighter series; a perennial fixture of the roster lineup, and the Patient 0 of what has collectively come to be known as "zoning gameplay." Dhalsim is as new around video games as Sonic the Hedgehog.
But in about three weeks, Dhalsim won't be the yogi you know, and this is both as profound as it is assuring for the direction that both fighting games and maybe gaming as a whole will go.
They say that all successful sequels are the sum of the following equation: 80% old + 20% new. Street Fighter IV, the 2008 sequel that dragged the head-to-head fighting genre into a new found renaissance, practically had this tattooed on its metaphoric neck. Of the 25 playable characters (in the eventual home release in 2009), 19 were from previous games in the vast Street Fighter series, and of those, 15 were lifted straight from Super Street Fighter II Turbo, the final iteration of the seminal 1991 title. Of these 25, 10 were all derivations of the basic "Ryu concept:" that is a character that can throw a projectile to bait an opponent into a jump, and then counter that jump with upward attack (like a Shoryuken or a Somersault/ Flash Kick). Street Fighter IV was a game with new mechanics that was fashioned to play comfortably with old ones, and your nostalgia was the primary selling point. It was a game meant for you to comfortably slip into that old t-shirt, and maybe add another layer on top for fashionable effect. By design, you already knew how to play Street Fighter IV.
By design, then, that will not be Street Fighter V. Sort of. We'll get to that, though.
Comparing sequels to Street Fighter II is like comparing sequels to Ridley Scott's Alien. On the one hand, they are competently-made science fiction films in that they all share the same conceit that whatever is happening, and it is happening to (and around) a woman named Ellen Ripley in some distant future. In practice, it is a horror movie followed by an action movie followed by a suspense movie followed by gobbledygook. Much like Street Fighter II, the first Alien movie was not the first movie of its kind, but it was a masterpiece of synthesizing what inspired it. Sure, there were probably other haunted house movies in outer space, but this was the haunted house movie in outer space, and all sci-fi horror flicks will be measured against it until I am cold and in the ground. 1997's Street Fighter III and the updates that followed it took these elements and altered them in a way that broke how fighting on a 2-dimensional plane is played. The fighting was more tactical and measured, and precise play was rewarded with easy wins. It's not a 1:1 comparison, but like Alien to Aliens, Street Fighter III took the foundation of its predecessor and rejiggered it into a superb video game (at least, by the time they got to Third Strike). Again, like your preferences in sci-fi film franchises, your palate can appreciate the tastes of both of these meals, but whichever you might consider "best" is up to the person whom experiences it.
In that respect, it's good, then, that each fully numbered Street Fighter game is different than the last. Variety's the spice of life, you know. Not so dramatically different as, say Final Fantasy XII to XIII, but comparing Third Strike to Ultra Street Fighter IV is certainly more than apples to apples. However, now that we have a little bit of history behind us and the release of the various "true" sequels, it's important to note these games' problems, especially in regard to our new old friend Dhalsim.
The first is re-acknowledge how fundamentally close Street Fighter IV is compared to Street Fighter II, which we're going to go ahead and cite as a major symptom of a gaming industry problem. Yes, SF4 has it's own complex system that players need to have complete mastery of to play at a tournament strength, and high level matches are littered with attack links that require stupid timing to perform (and absurdly stupid amounts of practice to perform reliably). Yet, at its most base level, it's the same game as Super Turbo with a few added layers to the onion: jump in to attack, hit an opponent with a low normal, and then chain it into a fireball. Not a flashy, high damage combo, but the Old Faithful of fighting game mojo that even a novice can perform rote. But again, this was the plan, and for good reason; fighting games had gone underground in the years between 1999's Third Strike and SF4's release almost ten years later, and the video game world had changed rather dramatically. Development costs for HD consoles had such a well-publicized spike that the middle class, B-tier developers of the world were fading away, and every large publisher of yesteryear were hemorrhaging money from one big budget flop to the next. Even though Street Fighter IV was comparatively modest in its development cost beside other Capcom games of the time like Lost Planet and Dark Void, it needed to be a hit for the publisher so it could be distanced from games like those specifically for their costly thud of a critical and commercial reception. SF4 needed to appeal to the old fan and the new.
Dhalsim, then, fit into this mold like that old t-shirt. His presence was easily recognized by old timers, and his inclusion in the game made him a dramatic shift away from the rest of the cast. He played like always had, though. Fireballs from across the screen used to dope foes into defending while he teleported behind them. Stretchy limbs could keep frustrated opponents at a literal arm's reach at mid-screen. Closer confrontations were handled by a signature Yoga Flame. This is how you could play 'ol Sim in Super Turbo, and once you got used to the movement in SFIV, this is how you could play Sim there, too. It was reliable. It was safe. It was boring. It was the norm of a console generation made manifest.
Street Fighter III was made at a different time with a different staff using different money that was, comparatively, flowing like a river, and our buddy Sim was there, too. Of course, it really wasn't the Dhalsim that we knew and loved, but that's just how SF3 was initially concocted: include Ryu and Ken, and then let's bake this whole thing fresh. But Capcom were already in too deep. They had created the archetypes for this whole fighting game thing, and they did too good of a job. Even if they started completely from scratch without a Ken and Ryu (which, depending on what you believe, was originally in the cards), most characters would hew pretty closely to what had already come before. Sure, Capcom's rivals and contemporaries were making new and interesting characters for their fighting games in terms of play style and mechanics (just look at the mess of characters in the King of Fighters series), but even most of those fall into a few loosely-defined roles that they themselves had created. Just to make it tougher on themselves, they were doing it with a game that fundamentally made "zoning" characters like Sim obsolete: the Street Fighter III series let you swat away attacks, making the risk of jumping over a fireball shot at you from across the screen much lower for an average player and practically non-existent for a pro.
So, while the SF3 games created a handful of players that were wholly unique like Makoto and Oro, it was crowd of reasonable facsimiles of older, better-established characters. Our man Dhalsim, then, was right there in front of you. He just had a new paint job and some reshuffled moves. Oh, and his name was Necro. But that was the beauty of it --Necro was a guy with just about all of Sim's normal attacks (or at least, the majority of the ones you'll recognize) coupled with none of the special moves. No fireballs. No teleports. No goddamn Yoga Flames. All of a sudden, these long limbs don't mean as much as getting inside for spinning punch combos and maybe a Magnetic Story super Hail Mary. Corner juggles were more the norm than distance setups and subterfuge. Necro was Dhalsim, but not Dhalsim. And at this point, not enough people really gave a damn.
Street Fighter III and its updates did fine for Capcom, but they didn't set the world aflame like its predecessors and the various spin offs had. Too little, too late, people cried. The 32-bit era was firmly upon us at home, and we could play our Tekkens and Virtua Fighters without dumping quarters into a "backward thinking" sprite-based 2D game like Street Fighter III. A new generation had looked upon a New Generation and shrugged. Besides, these weren't the characters that we fell in love with, so why bother, right? It was challenging and beautiful and fluid, but even as a Triple-A game of its time, it was just a little too left of center.
So Dhalsim languished. And then he perceived.
On paper (if this is paper), it's reasonable to say on a very base level that Street Fighter V's Dhalsim will be the best Dhalsim of three worlds; or, at least three distinct generations of Street Fighter games. I personally haven't used him in the betas, and we're still a few weeks away from the game's official release, so I can't really tell you for sure. But what a little more navel-gazing can tell us is that this is gross oversimplification. Street Fighter as a series has finally come to terms with its audience, and as a series, come to terms with its market.
This begins and ends with Dhalsim. Yes, he will play roughly similar to his older versions, but subtle adjustments to some of his fundamental attacks evolve him into a different character. Fireballs will now travel in an upward arc toward the opponent, and only by burning precious EX meter will they move horizontally across the screen. This sounds simple, but will be a drastic reeducation for older Sim players. Simple floating options will alter his movement, not unlike Oro from Street Fighter III, throwing off the timing of a defending player or one on the attack as he sails over projectiles beneath him. But he is not Necro. This Sim will still keep his opponents at a distance, and on their toes with misdirection that is classic to the character.
The roster for Street Fighter V small, all things considered. But it is this consideration that makes this new Sim, and every other character present, so measured and well-thought. Gone are the sea of "shoto clones" where now only Ryu and Ken exist. And between the two of them, the gulf between abilities is so much more pronounced that it's highly illogical to play them similarly. Each character, from new to old, fits a specific, purposeful niche, and though each character has their own specific mechanic tied their V-Skill. Most of these are pulled from various Street Fighter games of years past, giving older players something to easily tinker with and new players something to easily learn.
But the characters themselves are what's most telling, and what's most affirming. Though there are only four new characters in the game, each returning character have noticeable changes. Some are less subtle: Cammy isn't as far removed from her life in Street Fighter IV as Ken is. But that's ok. There are more alterations than not, and that suggests a level of trust that Capcom has had in its audience and development staff than it has for a long time. It suggests that, even though you know and love these folks from different games from across the vast Street Fighter-verse, you will be fine with re-learning this new game, character by character. It's a Capcom that learned its lesson from the rebellious Street Fighter III adolescence, but still has significantly retooled characters that a player that may yet recognize.
This is a good sign for fighting games as much as it's a good sign for the larger gaming spectrum. Like the games industry of 2008, the industry of 2016 is evolved and nuanced. It took Sony to bankroll SFV, after all, and this is turning into more of a necessary evil than people seem to be comfortable with. But that's a different discussion. What we're seeing are games that push its audience, like the SFV roster will do. Games that will push technology, content delivery, and DLC options, like SFV will do. Games that welcome community, and player sharing, and competition like SFV will do. All of these are healthy. All of these are necessary.
So. Say hello again to Dhalsim. Learn things from him. Buddy-punch his shoulder like the old friend that he is. He's an important guy.
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