Tekken 8's ending was 25 years in the making, and most players haven't even seen it
If you're a fan of the series, you'll get a real kick out of this cliffhanger.
According to Tekken 8 director Katsuhiro Harada, most players haven't seen the ending of Tekken 8. This narrative conclusion was apparently 25 years in the making.
This news came - as most Tekken-related news does - from Harada's Twitter account. There, he announced this interesting tidbit via a short anecdote. In case you didn't know, Tekken 8 has two endings, and the majority of Tekken 8 players haven't seen either.
"Statistically, apparently most players have not reached the other fateful ending of #TEKKEN8 Story mode: The Dark Awakening. (I don't have a concept of which is Good and which is Bad, but these are for the players to interpret for themselves)."
"It (other ending) was this scenario that I outlined to NAMCO founder Masaya Nakamura in the 1990s (I think it was 1996~1997 when I made a presentation in the boardroom). The president asked me at the time, 'How many more crops and how many more years will it take?' He was asked, 'Three more films and within 10 years," to which he replied, "Three more films and within 10 years,' but yeah we all know the result..2024 now."
Now, you may have noticed that Harada doesn't specifiy which of the two endings he means - probably in an attempt to avoid spoilers. Looking at TrueAchievements, it turns out both endings have been completed by a minority of players on Xbox. That's a wild stat, considering the Tekken 8 Dark Awakening is around eight hours long. Assuming those figures roughly translate to the entire playerbase, both endings can fit the bill.
As such, we're going to have to do a bit of light spoiling here. So, here's your warning if you still want to make your way through without knowing what happens.
One of the endings is shorter and has a cliff involved. This ending requires you to lose the final round of the final fight. A pretty cut and dry bad ending, then. The other requires you win the final round and resolves the storyline in a more obvious, positive way. It's basically the good ending - and makes sense as a conclusion 25 years in the making.
I don't care how funny it would be. I refuse to believe that 25 years ago a young Harada - perhaps wielding a katana in one hand and a gun in the other - pitched yet another cliff ending. I would be blown away. If that is the case, consider me flabbergasted.
There is an interesting conversation here though - on the priorities of hardcore Tekken players. Since it's a competitive game, there's a subset of Tekken players who'll jump into training mode when they grab the game, figure out a character and a few combos, and head straight online. Heading back onto TrueAchievements, roughly 35% of players have been promoted to Brawler rank. That's only a 1% drop from the good ending!