One of the cast members of the first Guilty Gear, Millia Rage has been a fan favourite and a mainstay in the series for her fast, close-combat mechanics with few options for ranged attacks. In this way, she’s similar to Jam, but does not need to rely on wall bouncing and card stocking for high damage. Her most prominent design feature is Forbidden Beast Angra, her hair, which takes all sorts of forms as she attacks. Millia is named after the band Meliah Rage, and the hair probably comes from their constant use of skeleton of Meliah tribe member with the iconic Indian chief headdress. However, her most prominent and famous musical reference is her Instant Kill, Iron Maiden. She’s essentially a rock and metal band reference package, Winger, Emerald Rain, and even Angra are all band names. Millia may be easy to handle, but just like her namesakes, she hits hard.
With the intro out of the way, let’s get on the design business.
In a recent interview, ArcSys’ Daisuke Ishiwatari and Toshimichi Mori were discussing the company’s different fighting games and what they’ve learned from them. What they see is that the less complex and easier to master mechanics of their two other big titles, Dragon Ball Fighters Z and BlazBlue, are selling more than Guilty Gear, and the next title will have less complex mechanics. Because, y’know, everyone is supposedly having hard time with them and everything.
Which isn’t the case.
Guilty Gear as a series found its place with the X and XX titles, something Ishawatari has historically being rather against, first trying to remove these games from his beloved story with Guilty Gear 2 Overture and then reinstating them back as side-stories due to fanbacklash. Let’s not forget him telling the fans that they’re too old for games, essentially doing a Shattner bit where he told Trekkies to get a life. Considering how BlazBlue helped him to regain Guilty Gear‘s license and was considered the fighting game franchise during the time when Capcom’s fighters were absent, Ishiwatari & co. really should reconsider their approach to the series if their first realisation is downgrading the game.
This lesson of theirs isn’t anything spectacularly special, both Mori and Ishiwatari have grown into businessmen first and businessmen tend to be reactionaries instead of trailblazers. They see certain kind of aspects selling well, wagering their bets and materials, and then changing existing products with an aim to cater for larger audiences. After all, once you’ve achieved a popularity within a niche, it’s much easier to expand outwards. The niche’s positive view on a product often travels outside this smaller section, and can catch on if the marketing and product meet with larger audience’s expectations.
The main problem with Guilty Gear being that the genre it is in itself has always been in the middle of being popular with the masses and being within a niche. As a franchise, Guilty Gear has a prestige spot of being recognised as damn good by most consumers into the genre and gained a small pop-culture status by the mid-2000’s.
In short, Guilty Gear as a franchise is a deluxe product. As a game it’s easy to get into despite its complex mechanics, but in the end they are hard to master. It may have generally lower consumer base as BlazBlue, which took GG‘s spot during its absence, yet neither series will never reach the popularity of Dragon Ball Fighters Z due to sheer amount of Dragon Ball fans out there.
Being a deluxe product with a limited consumer base isn’t anything bad, especially if the general view towards the product is highly regarded. ArcSys did a great job at building one of the best tutorial modes in fighting game history, but they can’t force consumers to get into said game. As mentioned, Guilty Gear‘s appeal is in its complexity, which really has been overstated. The sheer amount of options and unique methods to realize those options per character is rather unpresented in other fighting games, and by that extension does take a bit more time to learn. That goes for every fighting game, really. Games are, after all, all about learning the rules and trying to become the best you can. It has always been counter-intuitive for gaming for the games to hand-hold the player through them, as that’s essentially removing playing from the game. Some people just don’t want to play, they just want to spectate or walk around a house in search for a diary.
ArcSys would be doing damage to the franchise if they began to move against its established fame and history. Guilty Gear‘s complexity is not damaging the franchise, but as a businessman would rationalise it, it’s not for everyone. Naturally, the answer is to lessen those systems to make appeal the wider audience. Ishiwatari claims that it’s a difficult issue to balance with the controls and trying reduce the systems in the game, but in reality it isn’t. Keep Xrd as a series as it is, there’s no reason to muck around it. If they want capitalise on Guilty Gear while still appealing to the general audience, ArcSys should consider creating a sub-series. They actually have one they could re-use all the while poking fun at the fans and the franchise as a whole in good faith. Guilty Gear Petit is a thing.
You might want to turn the volume down, WonderSwan’s sound is rather spartan. The game looks better on a real screen, believe it or not
ArcSys won’t give two cents about this idea, because it is much easier just to recycle everything they have now rather than plan a new, more wider audience friendly entry in the franchise. Of course, a game like this would be considered a toned-down, dumbed down second rate entry by some, and because of this it would require a solid, well thought approach to make it competent. This being ArcSys, this will never happen in a million years, they’ll make more money on releasing most characters as DLC and concentrating on milking whatever they have left for now.
It’s a good idea to expand a company’s market, sure. However, it’s not a good idea to do this at the expense of your product. The market where most fighting games are, and all but one ArcSys games are in, is in the Red Ocean. You can’t expect to expand within this limited area, you’ll end up cannilibizing. The best option often is to offer more alternatives. A Metroid to Mario and Zelda, all three sharing different sections of the overall market, all offering different play. Expansion means you need to expand the lineup as well and maintain it, not take an existing piece and mangle it up for general markets that were not interested in it in the first place. Keeping your current consumers market is easier than trying to appeal to a new one, especially if you’re using the same damn product, just not even trying to keep it the same anymore.
May’s one of those characters that were there from the beginning. Not really sure how to describe her but as the Dan of Guilty Gear, where she puts the joke where others are dead serious, except she’s actually viable character to use.
Some say May’s design hasn’t really changed. It’s true that her overall silhouette hasn’t changed, but the design of her costume went through rather significant design overhaul when Xrd hit around. It’s not a total change of outfit, but it is the little bits a total sum is build upon. She’s a pirate, and that’s what her design reflects. There isn’t too much anything deeper to it, though her name, May, is probably an allusion to Brian May, the lead guitarist of Queen.
X, Isuka and Xrd
While the above omits original and XX‘s designs, May’s one of those characters that didn’t exactly change during the Midnight Carnival haydays. Interestingly, she has few takes in the original, with slight tweaks to her design, one of which is probably an earlier picture that got used.
The two above May’s are different in tones and details. While the one of the left has two clips on both sides of her front flat, the right one does not. The skull on her hat doesn’t have a nose on the left one either. The belt is also shorter, as we can see it flapping much freer on the right one. It also lacks the metal end cap on the right card. This is the level of things we’re talking about when it comes to May’s details, but if you’ve read any of my previous comparisons, you know this is par for the course.
Baiken is a hodgepodge of samurai tropes. While her initial design does come from Kenshin of Rurouni Kenshin (whom Ishiwatari thought to be a woman at first,) Baiken is quite a lot more than just that. She gets her scar and lost arm from the literary character of Tange Sazen, though which eye has been scarred has been switched around. While Sazen is a man, the very second movie the character starred turned things around and starred Michiyo Okusu as Lady Sazen in Lady Sazen and the Drenched Swallow Sword.
She may lack the Demon Tools, but Lady Sazen cuts people down like grass
Certainly we can trace some elements of Baiken’s designs to characters like Tezuka’s Hyakkimaru as well, but all this really is to show that Baiken encompasses characteristics from an archetypical ronin samurai stories, including her traumatic past and thirst for revenge. Hell, she even kicks tatami up with a special move, and let’s not forget she gets her name from Baiken Shishido, who probably influenced her use of Demon Tools through his proficiency with the kusarigama, the sickle-chain. However, I do argue that Lady Sazen and Kenshin were the main influences here, and everything else was more or less a supplement to fit popular samirai tropes. Hell, she even has a pose where she holds her chin like Sanjuro from Yojinbo. Let’s get it on after the jump.
Johnny Sfondi didn’t enter the series until Guilty Gear X, but what I remember from that time he quickly became the favourite on many feminine guys who played the game. To some Johnny has always been part of the series, if you jumped in during the XX craze. Of course this was to be expected from an adolescent audience, but it does tell volumes of Johnny’s design overall. It may be rather simple without huge as hell belt buckle thrown into the mix, but his shades combined with that self-confident as hell attitude just works and has a balance to it. Johnny is, after all, an eye candy that works both in visual flavour and in gameplay.
The reason why both Dizzy and Jam get so much attention from me is that they were the characters I mained. Seeing them back is great, and I got to pay my respects to ArcSys for going through and respecting the poll they had about what should be the character to be added.
This is gonna be an image heavy entry.
Dizzy as a character was set up to be a tragic one. Born from one of the most hated Gears in history, fathered by a hellhound roaming the Earth and being targeted for the sake of being a Gear, most stories would’ve end up her hating humanity or have her meet a bloody end. Instead, Dizzy was shown compassion by numerous different characters who couldn’t give less a damn about the world history and the fact that she’s probably one of the strongest Gears in the story. She was allowed to have a chance at a normal life as an air-pirate alongside May, until she had an accident due to an enemy and met Ky. Now, she’s probably one of the best mother’s out there, despite that one situation where she needed to seal herself.
Xrd, X and AC respectively. Remember to click for full-sized versions
Kuradoberi Jam is an interesting character in Guilty Gear Xrd. Not because she got a new voice actor or new moves, but because she is a good example on how 2010 character design sensibilities often clash with late 1990’s/early 2000’s. Jam was designed fifteen years ago, and the time shows itself.
Jam’s overall visuals have stayed relatively same to the point that she can be recognised as the same character, much like how Ky can be recognised despite all the little changes. Unlike Potemkin and Millia, Jam’s design follows the same school of updating as Sol’s; tweaks and exaggerations. I’ll be using Jam’s Guilty Gear X and Accent Core designs to contrast her Xrd design. In reality, her design went through a lot of small changes with each new illustration, changing little things here and there, like touching up the can on her head, but let’s just stick with the original and AC design. This entry will be long as it is.
From left to right; Xrd, X and AC. While the Xrd illustration makes Jam look a bit scrawny, her in-game model is much softer and fuller
The main points we notice from Jam’s design is that her sleeves have grown again. Originally, they were low key, but you still noticed them. They’ve now grow to half of her body length and have a kanji for centre on them with cooking flames above them. This element is very much something BlazBlue would have. Litchi’s main theme may be mah-jong, but her outfit and theme carries some elements from Jam. It’s not too farfetched to assume that the centre kanji 中, which happens to be the red dragon tile in mah-jong, was put on Jam’s sleeves to reference Litchi back. Hell, Litchi’s name itself is a reference to riichi, thou the name is directly taken from Lychee, the Chinese plum. Fits her colours and all. Speaking of sleeves, the straps that kept them together are now connected with one bigger buckle rather than two, despite there’s still two straps. It must have a some sort weird locking mechanism inside. There is also an additional piece under armpits that connect to the sleeves somehow, leaving her shoulder exposed. This most likely has something to do with keeping hose sleeves better in place. It’s a nice additional detail.
To keep with exaggerations, Jam’s hair has more volume now, especially towards the bottom and top. The hair that’s coming from the oolong tea can has now consistent shape, making it look like an upside down omega. Her forehead hair is sleeker and she wears a pink pin to keep it in place unsymmetrically. She had shorter, wilder forehead hair before. Hair in general has been a point in character design that changes a lot, and currently we’re in an era where sleek, unruly and even hair is most utilised. Compare to either GGX or AC Jam to see how there’s less strands and more even mass. Speaking of the can, it also got a visual update. The can itself reads 烏龍茶 for oolong tea, and was originally modeled after Pokka oolong cans in colour, but the current one seems to be revised to look similar to Suntory’s oolong can. While the can carries that metal sheen-rye colouring to it, the black shield where the text is placed can’t be mistaken. The kanji also dropped 茶 for tea, simply reading oolong. It even has that small underlining text to it, reading OolongTea. What is important that with these changes the can is more prominent detail than before.
Jam’s makeup is far more feminine than before, which fits her vain nature. Then again, she is a headstrong character that does her way and does it the best she can
Jam’s face has gone through some revisions. Much like every other character contracted some sort of face cancer in GGXX until AC’s revisions, Jam’s face went from quote round to sharply shaped to this modern pseudo-round with visible bones. In-game Jam’s face is much rounder, much like her eyes and mouth. While you still recognize her, they’ve done some significant tweaking. For example, Jam’s jawline has been revised completely and her cheekbones are of different roundness. Similar tweaking was done to her qipao’s collar, where it has a black angular design on it to expose it. Before she had a very traditional high collar.
A closer look at her hair as well as her collar
Similar things have happened elsewhere in her design as well. Jam has always had an attractive physique, and as that’s something that changes with time, her physical appearance has become slightly rounder from before. Jam’s frontal assets i.e. honkers have gained a bit more volume to, and in-game that actually changes her overall visual balance. Combined with the larger hair and longer sleeves, Jam’s a much more filling character on-screen. This contrast is best seen in her Asanagi no Koukyuu (Morning Calm’s Breath), (22+K/S/H), where before her breathing and circular hand motions kept it tight, but the Xrd version has a lot more happening in there, mostly due to the sleeves and her hitting fist to palm at the end with a slight knees bent stand. For those who don’t know the idea behind the move most likely just see Jam waving her arms around, which is sad to see as the whole idea behind Asanagi no Kokyuu is that Jam uses a breathing technique to control her chi in order to charge her moves up. I haven’t found if the form she does is on any wushu system, her older animation charges the chi at middle tan t’ien at the level of her heart. This fits, as the middle center is place of storing chi. The newer animation implies that she breathes for the lower tan t’ien located just below the navel. This center is more about the root of all things, where the purification of essence into qi begins. As such, it’s a place of regeneration, but also for sexual energies and is an essential spot for life. Worked for Jam. It should be noted that the effect animations have shifted too, as the old one vanished in Jam’s lower center while the new one finishes higher. The new effect also has a taijitu to it in red and blue.
Jam’s GGXX guidevideo shows the same basics that still pop up in Xrd
That CHESTO-ARU! is spot on from the new voice actor
Breathing has been part of Jam’s idle pose from the beginning, her taking sharp inhales and exhaling out while lower her arm. Xrd version of her still has this in, but it’s a bit toned down from previous. Her breathing rate has also been upped a slight amount, but like before, there’s no real sign of her controlling her breath during moves. It’s nothing major, but breathing is often described as one of the main methods of controlling one’s chi. Another example for this sort of approach would be Hokuto Shinken’s Tenryuu Kokyuu Hou from Fist of the North Star, which results Kenshiro losing his shirt. Jam actually had a parody Overdrive of Hayakuretsuken in GGAC in form of Tosai Hyakuretsu Ken.
From this angle you notice that there are a bit more sharp corners on her, like on the upper parts of the sleeves. The extra black knotted lace also is very visible
Her qipao is in overall shape the same. Main changes are the little tassels on her chest are again more exaggerated. I’m glad they’re not gone, but they could be far more animated in-game like the sleeves. Jam’s overall design is very simple, and details like this add character to her. Modern Jam is still simple in comparison to some others, but the few spots where that simplicity has been exaggerated gives off another kind of flavour. Sometimes these details aren’t even all that big but add information, like the new little straps in her qipao’s sides. On her left hip she has an additional tassel, which looks really nice, but again could be bit more animated. The skirt has lost its black trimming and the round emblem has been changed to straight hard angled variant of it. She also wears a black underskirt instead of white. This actually throws her colours scheme off-balance a little bit. Previously she had black in places to further enhance the rest of colours on her outfit, the red and yellow, but with the sleeves being bigger and her shoes getting more exaggerated with black line on them, she’s darker than before. The black underskirt also cuts the light visual cue from her upper body to her legs. Arguably this brings her legs out a bit more.
Jam’s in-game base stance is very similar to her original. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s not exactly different either. The center kanji is visible from this angle
Her shoes’ collars were already exaggerated in GGAC’s design, and in Xrd those and the belt have ended up being even larger. Her shoes are also a shade duller than the rest of her outfit, which is really strange considering the red on her has been consistent to this point. In-game model still uses the same pallet, which is only a good thing. She’s also wearing a red garter on her left thigh, and while we’re going into this territory, Jam still retains some panty shots. Like previously, her qipao’s skirt doesn’t bounce around too much and is almost strategically placed at times. At times you don’t see any flashing, but seeing how Jam’s design is a bit more full this time, rest of her design shines through, especially with legs and torso. I’m not complaining, I’m just pointing it out. While Jam has been accused of panty flashing, this isn’t really the case. Most remember one of Jam’s winning pose where she goes over the opponent to wonder on stuff, but outside that one there’s not many spots where there’s gratuitous flashing. Her fame is a bit undeserved in this regard. She is a flirty character, being flashy in every aspect is to be expected.
The changes to Jam’s facelines are pretty jarring when they’re not in a right angle. Compare to the previous screenshot
In gameplay Jam hasn’t changed in how she’s approached. Still a rushdown character, still doing only bits of damage that you need to combo together, but she’s gotten some new moves, some moves have been changed to look different, but these changes make her feel like she’s been progressing with her style. The same can be said of GGX Jam compared to her GGAC iteration. During GGXX Jam got a whole slew of new options to work with and tweaks how she works, and in GGAC she became a character that was fun and easy to pick up, but required good execution skills to utilise her moveset properly. Since GGX, Jam has been my choice of character because of these points.
Jam’s new voice actress is Rei Matsuzaki. While she does good job and everything, I do have a personal preference towards Manami Komori’s way of pronouncing things and having an interesting depth to her yells. They’re both fine really, it will just take some time to get used to how Matsuzaki ends most move names in a very, very different fashion from her predecessor. I do love her Chest-aru! yell a lot already.
One last point I want to make is about her Instant Kill, Gasenkotsu. The kanjis used are 我羨惚, standing for Self, Admiration and falling in love with. The last one also can stand for Idiot. As with names like this that play with words, Gasenkotsu is something like Admiring One’s Self-love, but as per her IK animation, it might just as well be Admiring One’s Idiocy. Narcissism doesn’t really cut it, but fits in the allotted slot.
During Gasenkotsu kanjis for Tenjou Tenge Yuiga Dokuson, 天上天下唯我独尊, appear. This line is traditionally translated as I alone am honored in heaven and on earth, and it can be transliterated as Above heaven, under heaven, I alone am worthy of honour. It is believed that Buddha Śākyamuni said this after his enlightenment. Thus, Gasenkotsu is Jam proclaiming her admiration for herself in how she has gained enlightenment. Because of the kanji 惚, she’s also proclaiming her stupidity and self-conceit on the matter. You always knew there was a reason why Jam looked like an idiot during her Instant Kill. All in all, as Jam’s character is about having her own way and seeing it as the true one out of all, Gasenkotsu reflects this attitude. She admires herself for choosing what she sees as an enlightened path.
Her stuff always gets screwed up ever since she got the reward in GGX…
It’s been some time since we discussed Guilty Gear Xrd’s comparative character designs. This is because the rest of the characters they put in are, more or less, the same design. Bedman didn’t warrant his own post, and Ramlethal was out of my radar at the time. With the latest new character addition, Elphelt, it would look like it’s time to make another Guilty Gear Character design post.
The thing we need to remember that the original Guilty Gear is very much mid/late 90’s game in visuals. The visuals in Guilty Gear have always had an edge to them with heavy musical influences, like Sol wielding his sword like Queen held his microphone stand in one of the iconic shows in his life. However, just like any long standing franchise, additions reflect their time. Jam Kuradoberi is a very much early 2000’s design with her modified cheongsam. With Xrd we’ve seen how the 2010’s has affected the game from ground up with the use of 3D models. Of course, the designs also reflect their time, and everything has become more clean, clinic even, as compared to the roughened, sketchy nature of the first two games. XX series already had a motion towards for the cleaner and removed a lot of the charm the garage like feeling GG and GGX had to them.
With modern style, the new character designs need to balance with the preset Guilty Gear visual choices and with the new addition they are to bring in. On one hand we can’t have a generic character with Guilty Gear sensibilities that are rather out there, but we also don’t want characters that are just full blown stupidly unique little snowflakes.
We won’t cover Sin Kiske, because his design hasn’t changed significantly from Guilty Gear 2, so we’re left with the rest of the three.
Bedman
Bedman’s most likely a reference to Bedemon, but I’m most likely off with my guess
Bedman is… strange. Guilty Gear has had a slew of strange characters before, Zappa being the prime example. I can’t decide whether or not Bedman is too strange, or not strange enough. His design is very Guilty Geari-ish so to speak, but there a lot that don’t make sense, even in Guilty Gear’s terms. One of these elements is the giant screws that protrude from this shoulders. While this explains how he just doesn’t drop from the standing bed, he is also bound from his hands. This is perhaps one of those points that is completely up to the opinion whether or not it works.
Despite Bedman’s somewhat busy appearance, it is surprisingly sparse and lacks certain amount of detail. The bed’s limbs are the main concentration of points of interesting, and the sleeper himself, as well as the platform he is bound to, lack any proper points of interests outside the aforementioned screws. Well, the person does have a pink arrow on his forehead, but that’s not all too interesting. However, what is interesting is the crown the bed’s head wears. What it represents may be that either the person or the bed is considered some sort of king of a dream realm. Most likely the two are one. This is not really supported by anything and I’m just musing myself over the issue.
There are scriptures around Bedman, and in Guilty Gear scriptures have always represented the character and their motif. Sol has Free on his belt, whereas Ky has Hope. Robo-Ky has Ennui. On the bed’s head is etched Dreamlike Reality, which most likely is some sort of music reference I don’t get. The screws that hold the person on the bed real Déjà Vus, which may or may not have some sort of meaning. It just may mean that within the Dreamlike Reality, the person relives something over and over again. The wheels read ONEIROI, which could be translated as one colour. This would reflect the colour scheme Bedman has, where the pink, or washed out royal purple, is the governing colour with only a dash of gold here and there. Black is used to fill in areas with steel gray in order to balance the certain complex simplicity. Speaking of wheels, despite the bed being wheeled in to the fights, it lacks any sort of wheels before the bed takes it fight stance.
Outside these Bedman feels like it’s a character designed to take advantage of the 3D models. In most promotional illustrations Bedman looks towering, a character with an imposing height, but in-game he is rather normal sized. Because the character’s design lacks typical Guilty Gear accessories outside the screws and the arrow on the person’s head, it leaves me rather cold. It lacks the same bold design choices most Guilty Gear designs are known for, and all for its uniqueness Bedman looks something like what could be a good background or a non-playable character rather a straight out newcomer. The concept has solid idea, but the execution leaves something to be desired.
Ramlethal
Condescending petite girls? Now where have I seen this before…
Be it Ramlethal or Ramletherl, this Valentine continues to proud mainline Guilty Gear tradition of having a female boss character. Ramlethal’s design mirrors very much a certain type of female character we’ve seen in Japanese media for some time now. She is somewhat a character archetype with a cool and emotionless front, but then just turns bears a row of monster teeth and proceeds to devastate the player. Unlike I-No who was a sadist, Ramlethal seems to enjoy defeat of weaker ones as per rich lady like persona.
Ramlethal’s motif is teeth. She enters the stage from a mouth that her cape forms, with saliva and all, and her familiars carry her two swords with their highly visible rows of teeth. The cape’s teeth are used in a throw as a buzz saw. As with Justice and Dizzy, Ramlethal has a giant beam as one of her Over Drive moves, where we see the two familiars combined into one big blob with teeth. It would seem like that all Valentines and bosses related to them share this Voltekka kind of attack. Ramlethal’s beam Over Drive reminds me of Gradius’ Core for some reason.
All the main series bosses have been rather contained. Even Leopaldon, despite his huge size, didn’t take too much screen estate outside his body. Ramlethal’s design is spread into two main elements, which naturally are her main body and her swords. The swords themselves are nothing special, having elements from traditional katana and Zone of the Ender like aesthetics otherwise. One could almost make a comparison between them and Type-74 PB Blade from Muv-Luv. However, the similarities between the two are purely coincidental. However, overall the amount of space Ramlethal takes is about the same as previous bosses because of her petite body size.
Ramlethal’s body design, however, is where the you get a nice mix of old and new. Ramlethal has nice amount of details here and there. All around her body one can find golden locks holding straps in place. Black locks hold her shoulder amours in place, which adds some colour juxtaposition to her. It should be noted that her normal colour is very much ganguro, with plain white contrasted against her tanned skin. Green is splashed here and there to balance out, and the inside of her cape is naturally flesh shaded as per the whole teeth and mouth thing going on for her. This is similar to Ky’s clothing, where strategically placed blue is contrasted against plain white, but there’s nothing to that outside the interest of note.
Her certain lack of clothing is nothing new in video games, or even Guilty Gear, but it should be noted that it’s not fetishised either. Then again, everything is somebody’s fetish. Combined with the cape, Ramlethal has a nice balance with nigh weightless body and heavy weighted paraphnelia.
The hat she is wearing has same round locks that could be holding the belt straps. The hat itself has similar feeling to the previous Valentine’s hat, but this time it’s somewhat clear that Guilty Gear has a bit more emphasized animal ear element.
I haven’t found any proper screen shots or promotional pictures of what the scriptures around her body say, but her right sword has something like Right Here is * I’m Left. If you can make out what the * says, drop me a message. The left sword seems to have the same scripture, so I’m Left could mean leaving.
Ramlethal is a good design overall. Guilty Gear has seen a healthy number of female contestants through the years, and her design stands out from the crowd just as much as the rest. It’s not intentionally over-strange like Dizzy’s and manages to balance between bringing in something new and sticking to the preset aesthetics. There are numerous nice little details, like her cape being a gaping jaw and does impossible things for a clothing, that keep her interesting and wholesome design.
Elphelt
A bride rabbit , I guess?
Even a music illiterate like me recognizes the Guns & Roses motif going on here. And the animal ears. And the wedding gown. Elphelt is the latest addition to the roster, and like Ramlethal, Elphelt’s main colour is white. Perhaps subduing the plain white with a hint of red to make it more rosé in colour could’ve been a better option, as now you’ve got around six or seven characters with white as main coloured, accented with something else. Well, alternate colours exist for a reason.
Elphelt ‘s rose motif carries over to her main body, not just to the bunch of three on her hip. Her skirt has spikes around the lower rim, the belt straps’ ends have rings with three spikes, her wrists have three spikes protruding outwards from her body and even her head has three spikes. Three could be one of her motifs, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. There are five pink four-leaf clovers on her body. There’s only one spike on her shoulders, has one bow tie under them. There’s two metal straps on her upper arms as well for no other reason than Guilty Gear accessories. It could’ve been an interesting thing to do with the character to have three of everything and it wouldn’t have been hard to accomplish. Outside having a consistent numbering motif, there wouldn’t been anything more that.
Incidentally, she has three guns. Huh.
It should be noted that Elphelt has two points where your eyes may be drawn to; her eyes and her bosom. Elphelt’s eyes are icy blue and strand out strikingly well from otherwise reddish colours scheme, and combined with her larger breasts create a certain kind zone that stands apart from the rest of the body. The skin coloured area is nicely broken down with a pink strap and a green clover, which is also repeated in one of her guns. Naturally, the eyes and overall shape of her dress, open bosom and all, represent femininity to a large extent. She also wears overknee socks with straps going up her main body, further solidifying her feminity. Also, her rifle is pink and a pink bow on it. Her shotgun, while pink too, has a red rose and a green clover on it. Her handgun has a pink cover with an underside of dark metal gray, but with golden wings attached to above the grip. Elphelt also carries a pink sword with a bow tied to it, and seem to use it in her Instant Kill, where she places the opponent atop a wedding cake and proceeds to cut in half.
I’m getting a bit mixed messages here.
And oh, she has a broom she flies on. Or is that her flower bukee?
The front of her skirt has some sort of scripture there, but no shot, promotional not, shows what it says. What interest in her the most is that she seems to be a departure from the melee weapons used in Guilty Gear. I won’t go into her gameplay at all, as I would need to play as her first to say anything.
Elphelt’s design is rather generic, but it works to the needed extent because of the added Guilty Gear flavour. There is less strangeness to her as much as there is a grandeur. Even from her design we can deduce that she is a sort of klutz. That is what good design conveys; elements what the character is like without giving any proper hints. That also may say that the character archetype is overused at this point, but I’m giving her the benefit of doubt this time. There’s a chance that she will see quite a lot of doujin made out of her.
Elphelt is a character that couldn’t have been made for any of the previous games. Her very clean cut look sits very well in this time. Bedman could’ve been made at any point of the franchise, Ramlethal to lesser degree, but both of them would’ve seen much more sketchier appearances with either 90’s or 00’s thrown in. Even during 00’s Elphelt could’ve become a gun wielding nun with nunchucks rather than what she is now. Because of Xrd new take on the franchise, mixing old with the new, Elphelt managed to be what she is now. Her design wouldn’t work in BlazBlue either because of the aesthetics in that series.
It would be interesting to see more character getting major overhauls with these new characters. However, it would seem like ArcSys got cold feet from the divided fan reaction over the previous changes, or hasn’t got any time to redesign most of the veterans. Xrd is still a good place to make changes to the visuals as long as they are kept true to the core, and the tree newcomers show that the visual direction of Xrd is still true. I hope they will keep it that way in the future.
So, the new HD twins are around the corner. I see no reason to talk about them yet as they have no games to talk about. That’s pretty much every console launch ever. The only different launch was the NES, where it had few years of Famicom games to back it up. Japanese PS4 release was pushed to Q1 of 2014, and that’s an advantage for them. In the meantime more games are coming out and SONY most likely will sort out bunch of problems and hopefully pre-patch the machines.
I really should write a review of the machines’ appearance one of these days.
But Guilty Gear Xrd saw some added characters to its roster, and we’ll take a look at them. Sadly, no new characters have been revealed as of yet, but I hope the roster will see at least one or two new characters. I’m sure it wouldn’t be surprising to see that the devs decided against any new characters, and only limited characters from past games. If I may so, I hope ABA won’t be included until the second version of Xrd. There’s also possibility that Jam won’t be included due to her not really being a core character, like all the ones revealed thus far, but I really do hope she’ll appear with heavily altered movelist.
Speaking of the movelists, there seems to be little to no changes thus far. This is a little bit disappointing, as the difference between Guilty Gear, Guilty Gear XX and finally Accent Core was rather hefty, especially in the case of the two first mentioned. It would seem that ArcSys is playing safe and mainly just importing existing lists rather than revamping them. Too bad, I would’ve loved to see total revamps with few of the characters just for the sake of change.
Since our last check up, I-No, Dr. Baldhe– Faust, Axl Low and Slayer were added in. Much like Chipp and May, their design is not really wildly different. Or are they? Let’s take a look.
Axl’s design got a total overhaul. Thus far I haven’t seen one completely negative comment on his redesign, and there’s a good reason for it; his new look is spiffy. Well, sort of.
Xrd – X+XX – GG
The new look is a mix of Axl’s Guilty Gear and X/XX look. The most prominent element from his previous fashion is the shorts and the flag flaps hanging off his belt. While the GG Axl didn’t have Union Jack as a prominent element in his clothes, it now seems to define Axl’s look the most. A flag shirt wasn’t good enough for him, I suppose. It should also be noted that he wears St. George’s or St. Patrick’s Cross scarf in his head, but with opposite colours. The red cross should be red while the background should be white. Overall, the balance between blue and red has inverted as well, mainly due to the his shirt being white now. It more resembles his old GG look than X/XX look.
Axl also learned to be more like a British gentlemen as well, as he is now wearing a leather tie with trinkets punctured on it. He also has two buckles on his belt and few belt straps in his jacket’s sleeves to boot.
Axl’s new look works with him. It uses the same elements that existed before, but toys with them and add the Guilty Gear flavour in there as a final touch.
The rest of the bunch really don’t have any changes with their attire. Slayer keeps his double belt buckles, I-No’s still a red-cladden sex bomb, thou her hat is less crumbled and its brass details have seen a slight redesign. Her boots also have new brass plaque at their tip, but these are nothing major. These details are just adjusted detailing rather than redesigning. The guitar also got more detailed, but it’s essentially the same one.
Faust too shared the same with I-no. that is he got adjusted details. The straps on his arms have now red crosses to further sign his (ex-)profession and his green pants are now striped. His tie is also yellow rather than black. It would have been an interesting twist if the devs had decided that Faust was redeemed himself at some point and had returned to be his old self. That, or taken him a step further than before.
There’s one empty slot in Xrd’s webpage to be filled. [As of 16th of Feb 2015 the site has been revamped and this does not apply]. I hope this doesn’t mean that we’ll get one more character, as twelve characters seems a bit poor seeing how the series has a rich pool of characters. The site does have the disclaimer And more… which would promise at least small handful of characters. Hopefully some new ones too.
It took CAPCOM a little while to realize that they should include character across the Street Fighter history in SF IV, whereas SNK was doing its best to pull every character they ever had into the King of Fighters. It would be a good thing for CAPCOM to pull off a dream match like game and just shove all the Street Fighter, Rival School and other fighting game characters into one, massive ’bout. That will never happen, because they’re in deep shit and if they won’t make anything insanely successful, they’re most likely going down. Anyway, in a perfect world, Street Fighter X All CAPCOM would have been a massive fighting game with almost hundred characters to choose from. Ah, the things we can only imagine about.
It’s a bit underwhelming to see that ArcSys has decided against redesigning most of their characters. While I’m always all in updating character’s look properly, it looks like they thought the negative comments they were getting from Sol, Ky and Potemkin has made them to steer to a more traditional path. Of course, it might’ve been that they only decided to redesign few selected characters, which is half-assed attitude and only serves the purpose to fulfil the designers own desires, and we all know what I would say about that.
Guilty Gear’s an old franchise at this point. It has a slew of main series games and their updates, it has spin-offs on three different hand held consoles and it was almost replaced with another weaker franchise. Much like other fighting game franchises from the 90’s, Guilty Gear’s visual direction has changed only slightly throughout the years, for better or worse. The character designs have mostly stayed the same. 2D fighters rarely change the designs of their characters, mainly because that way they can then reuse the sprites in pretty much everywhere. Whenever characters go through under a redesign, it’s a refreshing breeze of something new while still having the same core in there. Then again, King of Fighters’ Kyo got changed from his fight style few times around, ranging from tweaks to acomplete revamp. Still, changing how the characters look makes sense from thenatural point of view. None of us wear the exact same set of clothes day after day unless forced.
By changing character’s clothes you don’t lose the character’s own design as long as the new clothes fit the already set look of the character. The aforementioned Kyo is a good example here, where his white jacket design fits how Kyo is portrayed. The design is slightly arrogant, bold and Kyo mostly fights in a way that it won’t get dirty. Later Kyo’s design was revised to have a black leather jacket, that looks less pompous but still has that air of arrogant bravery in there. Good changes overall. This kind of changes in character’s appearance are always good, as it gives a sense of evolution and a level of progression. Then again, the redesign can backfire horribly if not done properly.
The actual reason why the new visual direction was chosen most likely lies with the fact that the game is now in 3D, and to represent the characters properly they needed a different, more sleeker and comical style for that. In the upcoming comparisons you can see more plain areas than those with details, especially with muscles. It was also a clear intention to take the visuals towards more contemporary comic style now in Japan whilst sticking to the Guilty Gear design elements… which clash with each other to an extent. Guilty Gear always had certain sense of grittiness inspired by Heavy Metal and other Western comics, but those are absent here.
Guilty Gear Xrd is a changing point in the series, where pretty much everything is new from platform and engine to music and designs. Like it or not, Xrd always meant a changing point for the series ever since they started running the XX mill. This is a good thing overall, as the series has been on hiatus a bit too long and it needs to attract attention outside the core fans. It’s expected to see core fans to complain about the revised designed, especially if they’re drastically different, but then again these are the same people who would hate to see this game becoming a hit with the general public. No fear, no fighting game will be the new Street Fighter II with current gaming paradigm. As such, this time we’re going to take a look at three Guilty Gear Xrd character designs and see if the visual direction has evolved or just changed. However, Guilty Gear has been out there for a long time, and it’s style has never evolved or changed, so a lot of core fans will hate most if not all redesigns simply because it looks different. Well, let’s get to the show.
Sol got tired of the long loincloth
Well, of course we need to start with Sol, the main character of the series. Guilty Gear maintained it’s 90’s aesthetics for a long time, and the new Sol design mainly updates the old look for a new decade. You can make a point about muted colours right off the bat, as Sol looks a bit brownish everywhere. They should’ve left the reds alone. Overall, the design hasn’t changed, just the style it’s drawn in. The details have been arranged and changed, but at a glance you know what character its supposed to represent. Fireseal, Sol’s sword, has changed the most, from somewhat grunch-realistic square sword to more a giant lighter with razor edges. Granted, Sol’s sword always had that lighter element in there, but with the redesign they decided to overblow those elements. Then again, redesigning swords isn’t anything new in Guilty Gear, just check how it looked in Guilty Gear 2. Sol actually lost a belt from his waist, which was replaced with acomically large one. That actually describes Sol’s redesign in a way; sleek and slightly comical. Not a bad one, but nothing good stands out from it, which on the other hand gives stage for all the bad ones.
Now some of you may start thinking why I’m saying that Sol’s design is the same while I’m arguing that TSF designs are different. The differenceis that this is a redesign of one character using the same elements. TSFs have been designed to be astep above the previous unit.
Potemkin’s design isthe one that got changed the most here, basically getting a complete character design revamp. Gone is the bare dark skin, replaced with German inspired attire in military green. The gauntlets went through slight redesign, while the legs… the shoes are pretty horrible to be honest. Whoever designed those needs a slap in the face. To be honest, If you wouldn’t know it beforehand, you wouldn’t recognize this as Potemkin. This also shows asomewhat hilarious contrast between the two worlds of colours andbetween the two visual directions; theold one has muted colour in the hair and bright colours in the body, the new one has them the other way around. Staying with muted colours is asafer bet for sure, but looking at the two side by side like this really makes me miss the bright red even more. I’ve heardthe location testers say that whilehe might not look like Potemkin, he does play like him.
Potemkin is a drastic change. It doesn’t really tell much about the character outside the military aspect. Then again, the old one just tells that he is big and strong. On one hand, old Potemkin did look a bit dull with interesting points here and there. On another hand, the new Potemkin is ageneric German brute with horrible shoes.
Funny thing with Millia Rage; I really love her new design. Her old design is good by its own rights, but overall it’s rather uninteresting. The new one plays some Russian tones in there with the hat, but the hair is a bit too overplayed. Sure, Millia has had a flower theme before, but now the amount of her hair is in excess. Then again, that’s nothing new. They’re both good designs from different starting points, and they contrast each other well enough. It looks like the designers aimed to make Millia more into a high class maiden than the pure maiden she was portrayed as before, and that’s fine with me. Seeinghow she has acted before does give leeway to her character to grow to that direction, if we even will have any sort of character growth in these games. We can always say that this is Millia’s take on taking a stand to be apart of the Assassins’ Guilt she isn’t part of anymore.
Surprisingly, Millia’s redesign seems to be most dividing at the moment, with some hating the hat, belt and button on her collar while other people just like it. By Guilty Gear standards her redesign is very toned down in bullshit accessory department; she even lost some belts, which is a bit surprising as Millia’s original design was rather bare bones to begin with. I don’t give two shits about shoes in general, but dang those shoes Millia has look hot. Unlike with the previous, Millia didn’t really lose her colours, but her hair did go through some muting. If I wereto change one thing from new Millia, it would be the plaque on her forehead. I’d change it to some ornate gem or similar, or just remove it altogether. Then again, we haven’t seen license plates used as accessories in Guilty Gear yet.
I’m eagerly waiting for Jam’s redesign. I make it no secret that I main Jam simply because I’ve always played rushdown characters in fighting games, and Jam is just perfect with her Chinese arrogance. I’d also like to see Dizzy, and I really hope she’d get similar redesign as Millia did. Actually, I hoped every character getting a complete overhaul.
Aaltomies 
