Street Fighter 5's Story Timeline Is as Complex as Star Wars, Says Ono

Street Fighter V producer Yoshinori Ono has discussed the effort Capcom is putting into providing a satisfying story in the game, and has said he believes fans will not be disappointed by what the development team delivers.

In an interview with VentureBeat, Ono said the decision to create a full narrative experience was inspired by the passion for the series' expanded fiction, which has been explored in comics, movies, and mini-series such as Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist. After considering these, and looking at what NetherRealm has done with Mortal Kombat's story, the team decided to "put [its] efforts into something genuine."

"Since starting interviews in the summer, a lot of fans and people in the press have said, 'Hey, isn't it about time Street Fighter has a real story experience?' We have all this stuff happening on a tertiary level, with Street Fighter movies and [the] Street Fighter anime. We have Assassin’s Fist out there. So isn't it about time to provide something on that level in the game?

"As a result, we talked about this in earnest on the R&D side, putting some real effort into this. Looking at Mortal Kombat, what they did with their story mode was pretty amazing," he said.

Continuing, Ono explained that Street Fighter V's story is being designed to bridge the gap between Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter III, a task which he described to be as difficult as making sense of the Star Wars universe.

"Talking about each individual Street Fighter title, they all take place in their own spot on the timeline. It's not one cohesive straight line ... In the timeline, it goes Alpha, then Street Fighter II, then Street Fighter IV, then Street Fighter III. We'll bridge the gap between the events of IV and III in the timeline. That will finally close in all the gaps and create a nice, clear story across the board."

He added: "This is probably a bit more difficult than Star Wars."

Despite the complexity of the task, Ono said he was confident fans will be satisfied with the result: "There have been people who've been disappointed with the way our story content has been handled in the past. This time we can say very firmly that no one will be disappointed with this level of story.

"When they see this they'll realize, 'Wow, Street Fighter is a real contender. This is an amazing brand with an amazing story.'"

Street Fighter V's story expansion will be delivered as a free download in June. According to Capcom it will contain over an hour of "cinematic content." When it launches, the game will have character stories delivered through the arcade mode. These serve as a prologue to get people up to speed with what's happening in Street Fighter 5.

The story expansion will use in-game models, as opposed to the static images and voice over used for the character stories.

"This is not going to be typical illustrations," Ono previously explained. "This is going to have in-game models, everything will happen in real time, and it's also going to have an hour plus of cinematic content."

Street Fighter V will launch on PlayStation 4 and Steam on February 16.