Street Fighter 6 has completed its first lap around the sun with powerful momentum as fans continue to enjoy what’s currently in front of them and look forward to the exciting new additions that have only just begun to emerge. With all that attention on the game, director Takayuki Nakayama recently sat down for an interview with Famitsu to reflect on the successful first year and begin setting expectations for a fruitful second.
We’d like to expand on the former a bit, as Nakayama had some interesting things to say about the Street Fighter Drive System, a bold new mechanic that now not only allows players to better manipulate characters on screen, but also reflects how they feel in real life time.
The interview was conducted entirely in Japanese, so thanks to Nicholas “MajinTenshinhan” Taylor for the English translation.
Street Fighter 6’s propulsion system reaches into nearly every corner of the fighting game experience, as players control a meter that allows them special abilities in the offense, defense, and maneuverability arenas. Use your gauge effectively and you can manipulate the entire fight to your advantage, but misusing or failing to anticipate your opponent’s manipulations can leave you with half your arsenal of tools.
“[I]It was a long iteration of trial and error, and the result is a system that shows the emotional state of both players and characters, which was an unexpectedly interesting twist.” – Takayuki Nakayama
While we wouldn’t go so far as to consider it perfect, the propulsion system is clearly a success, as it simultaneously gives players the freedom to approach combat from any angle they choose while juggling with intent all the relevant variables that go into combat back and forth play.
That’s a good thing, too, because the intrigue of Street Fighter 6 is directly tied to the integral system, and too much failure here would almost certainly spell failure for the game as a whole. The developers at Capcom certainly spent a lot of time trying to make sure Drive System checked all the right boxes, but it turns out they’ve had even more success than they first thought.
Famitsu commented on this to Nakayama, noting how different players can approach the same character in different ways and everyone finds enjoyment in the process. The director responded to the idea that it was a testament to a fundamentally well-made game.
“Thank you. For example, just by looking at how players do with their Drive gauge, you see a lot of individuality there. This is something we have been aiming for since the initial planning stage of the development,” said Nakayama.
“You have players who will willingly submit to burnout by aggressively using their entire Drive gauge to put pressure on the opponent, but then you also have players who will actively avoid burnout and be more defensive with their use of Drive gauge. There are also players who will keep their unit depending on where the opponent’s rush is. It’s a system that has brought out more variety in playstyle than we ever imagined.”
You really should always be mindful of both your and your opponent’s gauges, but we’ve seen so many times how easy it is to get lost in the heat of battle and show frustration, timidity, or other feelings directly through our meter usage due to how quickly it becomes part of our in-game identity.
Maybe you’ve had too many interactions that haven’t moved you and so you’re cautious and start spending your caliber on aggressive forward moves and expensive OD upgrades. Other times you realize you’re on the back foot and go too conservatively into “don’t play to lose” mode and find yourself frozen when your enemy launches a Drive Rush or Drive Impact that you then fail to react to.
Famitsu notes how the effectiveness of the Drive gauge goes beyond character abilities and can actually depict the very spirit of the player behind them.
“In fighting games, you want to try to limit the amount of different measurements as much as possible,” Nakayama continues. “The more you add, the more you have to understand to interact with the game mechanics, making it harder and harder to grasp everything. What we wanted to emphasize with the Drive gauge was that it’s the emotional strength or focus of the characters.”
“In [Street Fighter 5,] we had a stun meter that filled up the more you got hit, and once it filled up, your character would be immobile for a certain amount of time. For someone used to it, it’s easy to understand, but it felt too much like a ‘game system’ rather than something natural, so it might have been a bit hard to understand for some, I think.”
“So with that in mind, we thought about something like, ‘you lost your focus for a moment and this terrible hit dazed you,’ something where the stun happens in one hit and is easy to understand.” Wanting to create something like this is what led us to the original Drive gauge prototype. From there it was a long iteration of trial and error, and the result is a system that shows the emotional state of both players and characters, which was an unexpectedly interesting twist. .”
Do you agree with this sentiment about Street Fighter 6’s core mechanics and the layered, satisfying ways it allows players to express themselves and explore the game? Let us know in the comments where you think the system shines the brightest, as well as areas you think the developers need to address.
We also learned a bit about the upcoming Season 2 roster additions from Nakayama in the same interview, so be sure to check out that story if you haven’t already.
