[THGS2023] Michael Murray Talks About Improving Heat In Tekken 8 And Gushes About Fahkumram

Michael Murray, Producer on the Tekken Project says that the team ultimately did have to rework parts of the Heat System to make it both accommodating for new players as well as not too powerful in the hands of advanced ones.

We caught up with the producer at Thailand Game Show, where he talked all things Tekken with us, such as what it’s like developing the first Tekken without an arcade release as well as his own favorite newcomer to Tekken 7.

With Tekken 8 being more approachable, how do you balance having the game be easier to get into as well as having more enjoyment long term?

Michael Murray: That’s a very good question. And it’s obviously very difficult because taking this a lot of legacy skills, right like wave dashing or the timing of electrics and things like this. So the pro players and advanced players want to still be able to do that with a new Tekken.

So we have to make sure that’s there but like you said, we have to make it approachable for new players so We can’t just make a game simple so we try to make it more streamline like a we may in Tekken 8 we have the movement, how to get up off the ground, sidestepping and back dashing things like this. we tweaked so its hopefully fun for both advanced players and beginners, but we try to get beginner players up to a higher level quickly so you play fighting games there’s certain phases where first you find a character you like

First you learn how to not only do the Tekken fundamentals like guard, sidestep, etc. But you have to learn it that character, right? What moves are good, etc. Then you have to learn other characters, what kind of things are gonna do to you and then finally you’re able to do the chess with another player, right?

But that is when the game becomes really fun so we really thought about how do we get these new people up to that level where they get to play chess with their opponent And for Tekken 8 especially, we put a lot of detail into first the special style.

Which I touched on today so you can just pick the special style and push just one button and continuously to do the best moves for a certain character that he picked and the aerial combos, all these things you don’t have to go dive in the move list and look for all this stuff. It’s just bam!, you could do it. You get a feel for how the character is supposed to be played

You get a feel for how exciting the game can be If you were able to do this right. But Unlike our other competitor titles, you could turn this on and off at any time. You get a hang of it. You can turn it off in the middle of a match if you want to or oh, wow, I forgot how to do this. I’ll turn it on. Maybe be able to play better.

Then there’s another one we introduced in Tekken 7 called My Replay and Tips. So until now, if you’re playing a fighting game, you have to go on the internet and look for some like I wanna play Kazuya Mishima, have to go look up on the internet what’s the best combos, what’s the best moves, how punishable are these things, etc. You have to scour the internet. But not anymore.

For this build, I play against someone for example, and then I take the replay and I put it in my replay and tips. It tells me: You block this attack, you could have punished it with this move or maybe they’re beating me up and I can’t do anything With block. It says, hey, you can duck that second hit or You got thrown by a certain thing, push this button, you can escape it.

It tells you all these problems just why you’re looking at replay so you don’t have to go look for the information it tells you how to get better. I think this is Huge and it’s something I’ve only seen in Tekken.

There’s also Ghost State. What that does is You can make your own ghost so you can fight against it and see areas maybe you’re lacking in because it’s not a first person you can see it from a different perspective

And also. Practice in general has just changed so much all the different options we have, we have My Replay and Tips we have these combo challenges to teach you how to do an Increasing number of combos

And so all these things together just make it easy to pick up the game, but also to pick up new characters.

Could you talk about bringing back Tekken Ball?

Michael Murray: Tekken, we’ve always had our arcade release and we polish the gameplay and then we’re able to add all the console bonuses like story mode and movies, etc. People always expect a lot of bonus Content for Tekken. So this time We kind of focus on modes that improve the player’s ability, whether that’s Arcade Quest or the My Replay and Tips in what we said.

We don’t want just to have a tutorial because it’s not fun for people who are in the game. [For example,] Arcade Quest is a tutorial. But it’s also kind of a story mode in other elements. But then once we have all that stuff that we have to make there’s very limited resources for other things, right?

So we have to decide out of all of these popular modes that have been a past time in Tekken, which one do we choose? And this time it’s just, it’s been quite some time since we had Tekken Ball in Tekken. And so we had a lot of fans that were asking us to bring it back

And it happened to match really well that we were doing the online lobby and we wanted these different areas and one of the ideas was to have this beach area to relax in a ticket ball would be perfect for that environment just feel so seamless. So it was a combination of those things that led us to choose this moment.

Fahkumram was a very popular Tekken 7 characters, especially in Thailand. Any comment on your reaction to how the character was received?

Michael Murray: Yes, so Fahkumram is Personally one my favorite characters. The director, Nakatsu, myself for the main ones, a lot of times Harada will come up with the design. This was the two of us. I don’t know if you all know, but I love Muay Thai but I have been doing it for over 10 years now.

And I wanted, we had Bruce, maybe people think he’s Muay Thai, but he’s not his official setting, is kickboxing. So I really wanted to do a proper Muay Thai character. So we first had to choose the look of it. How does it look interesting and stand out. But as far as the techniques, I already know what I want to do.

There was a fighter from Thailand who was quite popular in Japan at the time as well called Suakim PK Saenchai and my gym that I go to in Japan has a good relationship with the PK Saenchai so we were able to bring him over and do the motion capture and Yoshitari Nataka From my Gym as well. And so All the pieces were there and just to make a proper Muay Thai character that was what we wanted to do with it.

The overall reaction was long time fans of the series. Some people said, oh, I’d rather have Bruce because they love that he’s back, right? But people who are newer to the series I think really liked Fahkumram. He had a unique play style. He spoke proper Thai. The setting of being in prison, it dropped down at the beginning of that. I think a lot of these things were popular.

And also the timing, the way we announced him was at the finals in Thailand from GWT because it was we were holding the finals in Thailand and we announced a Thai character. I think gave him a decent boost of popularity. So I think he’s one of the more popular new characters and people keep asking when is he coming to Tekken 8. I want him to come soon but I can’t say at this point

What do you think about decades ever growing story? What do you think of its impact on player experiences

Michae Murray: I think it’s something that’s kind of really evolved over time in the older Tekken games it was more of we had these people fighting but you can’t it’s hard to connect with the fighters unless you know why they’re fighting or some kind of background about it.

So that’s why in the early days you had all these stats about their age and their height and all that and then actually Kazuya his hobby was collecting sneakers, things like that, right?

And then when you clear the arcade mode, you were rewarded with a CG movie. So at the time, it’s more about making a very high quality CG movie, have a story conveyed in that.

So it started from that. And the story wasn’t really that cohesive, honestly. It was just something to motivate people to pick up the fighters, right? But then as we go along, it becomes more of a proper Story mode.

Especially around, I think 5, we had interactions changed between the characters at the beginning of matches. You have the.Ending, maybe still 6, we had the scenario campaign mode, which is a more cohesive story and then 7 where it finally came into a proper CG Movie with seamless transitions into battle.

There was a proper storyline where if you’re aware that before it was like who won that Iron Fist tournament depended on the perspective of the character you’re choosing, right?

So it was actually a lot of work for set people on our team who are in charge of the story to go through and make sense of the story, put it together and to actually say this is that actual canon story. This is who won this is what happens. So you see Tekken kind of gravitate towards that around Tekken 7.

So At that time, I think we were a bit satisfied with the outcome of the 7 story.  People seem to like it. I think it’s more about, okay, there’s certain story arcs that have been left hanging for a long time and people want to see Jun being one of them, right? Some of the background we kind of showed in the Tekken anime that related to that as well.

So now it’s more about we’ve got a central storyline, a story arc for all the characters involved in how they interact with each other. We also have the character episodes where side stories for each of the characters. And so for 8, the challenge is more about making that cohesive story, making it continue in a way from 7.

It makes sense. And you have to find some way to bring in all of everyone’s favorite characters. But if you throw them all in one story, a lot of times doesn’t make sense. I’ll just have a central arm but here’s a cameo each character because everyone wants To see their favorite take place Right. So that was probably the difficulty of how it transition From The purpose of the story To where it is now.

Could you talk about balancing characters to make sure one isn’t too overpowered?

Michael Murray: I guess you could say this changed over the years it used to be you release the game and for better or worse people played It in that state for Until the next game came out now we can update games on the fly so you can patch things out. But since there’s a competitive scene around the title with the Tekken World Tour and other tournaments you can’t change the game too much because the pro players will not wanna learn the game because it’ll just change again the next day so you have to keep the updates to a minimum, Which means you have to make sure the game is polished to a good deal before it’s even released.

And up until now having an arcade version made that easy because we release the arcade version a lot of people are continuously Playing and then we can update the game or maybe like a 7.5 installment or something like that and we could do play test before we release the game etc but now since we’re going straight to the console in the release worldwide for everyone at the same time

We don’t have that opportunity like the arcades so the challenge was first how to balance it before we even let anyone test it and speaking on that we have most of the team has been making Tekken for over 10 years many people Like myself for more than 20.

So everyone has a really good handle of theory behind it and also what characters are supposed to play like. We even have former pro players who are on our balancing team who balance the game before the public even get to see it. So because of that it’s already in a pretty decent state before we even start play testing.

And this time since we didn’t have a arcade release, we had to make sure there was various places to test, try out the game so we had a CAT (Closed Access Test) early on where we took the game to Combo Breaker and EVO and Various places where people who know fighting games came and they were able to play the game, give us feedback.

We could also make sure that highly experienced fighting game players aren’t breaking the game in some particular way and then for a CBT were able to open it up to a wider audience of people who are not just top level players, but average and novice players because sometimes they might find something that just happens to be broken.

So these installments of being able to gradually open that up has made the game quite balanced so far, I think considerably, even though we don’t have that arcade scene anymore.

At the same time, it’s not all just about if the game’s balanced or not. We found that when we open it up to a wide audience. The pro players were loving the heat system and everything that involved in that. But some of the intermediate or novice players didn’t, it wasn’t intuitive to them the way that the design of the gauges were or the mechanics. So that allowed us to actually streamline some of that as well. So it was a good opportunity not just to balance for the pro players, but for everyone.

Considering how many different types of controllers there are for fighting games, do you ever take those into account when designing inputs for certain characters?

Michael Murray:  I guess since the game was born in an arcade at first it was a lot of people who played on arcade stick but I think it was really noticeable especially around Tekken 3. The games sold a whole lot in Europe and other places. There are to maybe arcades have declined so there’s a bunch of pad players. So even from that time I think there was a lot and it increased I think, gradually.

And then not even that you still now you have hitboxes or some people even play with keyboard but it doesn’t really fundamentally change the way the game is played. So we haven’t really had to put too much thought into changing the game for different controller types so far

There’s been a lot of hype for the Ghost Battle system when it were announced. Do you think this will help a lot of intermediate players get better and Tekken 8?

Michael Murray: I think it will this time because this type of Ghost system is totally different. Before it would remember certain aerial combos, some kind of characteristics. Right now if I wave dash, it’ll learn to wave dash. If I backdash a lot, it’ll back dash. It’ll learn so much more.

And so the way it’ll make you better is I guess you can look at your ghost fighting other people and see oh, do I really do that? No, actually maybe I do or the motivation like I’ll tell you a story the other day in the dev team, me as a director Nakatsu in the dev environment you can have a ghost versus another ghost and I made my ghost and he made his and like who’s gonna win and I won, obviously,

He was so motivated to play some more to get his ghost to learn better frame traps or better combinations and other things that he wanted to improve as a player to make his ghost stronger so it could beat my ghost

Same thing when Tekken 8 launches I can go online I’ll find someone’s Avatar I look at her profile I’ll see their ghost maybe I’ll be like, hey, I totally destroyed your ghost. They’ll go back and strengthen our ghosts and then she’ll be like, you’re not gonna be me this time and then it’s the same kind of riival type you think that will motivate you to get better set your ghosts to be a better version of you.

Accessibility is a hot-button topic right now, how is Tekken 8 ensuring everyone can have fun with the game?

Michael Murray: I Think when the community hears accessible, it depends on the person, but some people think that’s great. It’ll bring in a lot of new people some people think oh you’re dumbing down the game I don’t like it so I mean I can see there’s a lot of discourse there in the public

But as far as Tekken goes I think it’s the best balance we can achieve because the special style I’m not gonna honestly I’m not gonna beat Knee. with special style I actually tried it Gamescom had a exhibition match with Tetsuo a pro player and I was just using special style only and with Paul I took a few matches but for the most part I couldn’t beat him you so it’s not something that’s gonna make your average person who doesn’t know anything about Tekken be a pro player. But at the same time, it does its job because it allows people to at least play to a certain level of the game.

I found myself even focusing more on when I played Tetsu on what kind of techniques I wanna do, not so much like my spacing. No, I wanna be like right in that good place. What move am I gonna Smack him over the head with when he misses something, that one instant boom. You know,

Those things really, I found this special style really makes you focus on the fundamentals a lot more. You might forget after a while, right? So I think we’ve done a decent job at opening the game up to beginners but the same time if you’re a Tekken God like me you’re not gonna have to worry about somebody with Special Style.

So a very straightforward questions whatare some of the biggest changes since the 1st Test?

We’ve changed the heat system quite a bit, at first you had used to have stocks it was actually visible sounds engaged. We saw that the meta would kind of like stabilize where people would launch you and then do the Heat and get into Heat right away and then Do the Heat Dash into a wall combo and it’s just a little bit too much. So we’ve changed the presentation of the heat it doesn’t have the stocks anymore it’s just a standard timer so its much more intuitive and easy to understand.

We’ve also dialed down the combos a little bit with Heat Dash and Heat Smash etc. And then Special Style, we’ve added some cool stuff to that so it used to be there you have a square triangle circle and cross if you’re playing on PlayStation right so the square would be your standard like really cool looking attack you mash that out to do a combo. And then you would have like triangle do a very powerful attack ,maybe cross does a Super Armor move, etc.. But when I found I was playing Tetsu in a special style only,

I would block but I wouldn’t have any good moves to punish or there would be certain circumstances where I felt very limited. So after the CNT we added directional inputs to some of the buttons on the special style. So now you can press left or right or no button at all to have three different moves assigned to a single button.

But it’s still, I mean you have 100 moves per character on average. It’s not a whole lot in the special style, but it still gives you a little bit more usable moves. Like now let’s map it. Every character will have a homing attack, will have a throw, will have a Punisher. So all this basic attacks you need to fight are there. So that’s one huge improvement We made.

Also being able to map the buttons, L3 and R3, something people are asking for that we added. As for balancing the game. The combos I mentioned with the heat system was a bit too much. So we’ve changed it with the heat dash.

We added armor to Heat, When you go directly to the heat, now you have armor. So I can even attack, go into Heat, go on the offense myself. And then also just overall game balance. We looked at some of the characters that weren’t being used as much in the CNT and we gave them some new techniques or changed up their playstyle.

 So Tekken 8 marketing seems to a alternate between these more intimate ‘one character at a time’ trailers and the bigger ones like the gamescom trailer, where we saw Dragunov, Steve and others. How do you decide how many characters to show per trailer?

Michael Murray: We have 32 characters so there’s so many that we have to show before the release. So finding the perfect opportunity to showcase them is quite different. So sometimes it just means picking certain characters giving them a trailer each and sometimes it means ‘oh, there’s this huge opportunity at a big Game show, Where we can have so many people see it. Let’s get all these characters in so that everyone sees it their characters or maybe they won’t go and look for the individual trailer’.

So it’s quite difficult and Then also it just depends on who we went to show win like maybe for the reveal of the game and we want to show the story trailer part obviously we need to show Jun, so we have to we have to announce Jun by then so depends on where we are in the story a lot of times how many characters we need to show to make sure that they don’t just randomly show up in a story trailer and then everyone’s like, ‘oh wow, did you see that there was Brian? I didn’t even notice’.

So it really depends on just the opportunities we have and the timing we have to build. So but like I said, it’s difficult because there’s 32 that we have to really have like three months left I think it is. So it’s difficult.

What’s your favorite character costume so far?

Michael Murray: That’s so difficult. I mean, they look so good. Especially Kazuya Mishima. And we announced him at EVO that year, and that level of detail.

It’s hard to pick one, but if I had to pick one, it might be Jin. I was always a Devil Jin player and Jin Kazama. Just the way he changes when he goes into the Devill. But this time because he can partially control the abilities And have that one wing, and just that kind of red glow effect that he has, the feathers and stuff on his effects.

It’s just so, I think the team did a really good job on this stuff. These are my favorites. That’s why if you saw the statue, oh my God. You can plug it in and it lights up and everything is so good. So I’d have to pick it.

Tekken 8’s release is descending upon us like a bullet train, set to come out on January 26,2024. Our thanks to Michael for chatting with us about all things Tekken, as well as Bandai Namco Entertainment for the opportunity to interview such an integral pillar of the Tekken community.

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