Hiya!

It’s kind of hard to believe but Street Fighter V has already been out for 3 years! Capcom officially released the game in a severely underfinished state way back in 2016, to be sure. But since then, Street Fighter V has slowly but surely been receiving a bunch of new content. Since then, they’ve added a bevy of new characters. Some really good (Urien, Menat and Akuma) and some not so good (Zeku, Falke and Ed) but generally enough so that the roster has been beefed up. They’ve also added new modes like the much needed Arcade mode, ways to get unique costumes and extra challenges like the Mission modes. While these are all appreciated, one of the things that Capcom added to Street Fighter V was a Cinematic Story mode, entitled A Shadow Falls, involving all of the Season 1 characters.

While Street Fighter’s Cinematic Story mode was rather lame and definitely not up to par when compared to the efforts of other fighting games like NetherRealm Studios Injustice and Mortal Kombat’s stories, I thought it was a good first attempt. At least they managed to write everyone into the story, even though some of them, like Alex, had practically no involvement in the grand scheme of things. Well, they managed to rope everyone from Season 1 in anyway. But a couple of years’ worth of content has already been published and Season 2 rolled in and Season 3’s new DLC characters have already been released. Isn’t it about time Capcom makes a sequel to the original Story mode?

Now, it may be dumb for me to even request that Capcom even try to make another full fledged cinematic Story. Like I said, their first attempt, A Shadow Falls, wasn’t all that great and there were some really dumb moments, such as Balrog/Boxer and Vega/Claw fighting some Shadaloo soldiers because they got bored. That fight between Dhalsim and Alex was just written in so Alex could be in the story in come capacity. Necalli was super underutilized as well. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the “epic” (note the quotation marks) battle between Cammy and Peter the Capcop. Man, that was some silly nonsense!

But there were some genuinely cool moments from A Shadow Falls. There were some new stages that were never seen and have yet to be released since then. Seeing R. Mika totally absorb one of Balrog’s punches without flinching in one of the cutscenes was amazing. Also, having the knowledge of what Abel has been doing since Street Fighter IV was actually kind of cute. All of the battles with the Bison Dolls were entertaining as we finally got to see all of them show their stuff. Of course, the interaction between Karin and Enero was particularly hilarious. I would definitely like to see Capcom try to weave a new story since they had moments like these.

I also feel that the individual character stories are just not enough. In fact, some of them are just insulting. In FANG’s character story, he fights M. Bison/Dictator twice! They could’ve made him fight someone like Vega/Claw, someone who was actually high up in the Shadaloo hierarchy before facing Bison. Instead, FANG does battle with M. Bison two times and that’s it. What’s worse is there are some character stories only have one fight and it’s all over! I can’t really remember who but that’s because there really isn’t a need to complete a character’s story mode more than once unless it’s to get some Fight Money from the weekly challenges. It’s a nice distraction and a good way to get to know the character once they’re released. But once you do that, you’re probably not going to touch it anymore.

But the biggest reason why I say Capcom should make a new cinematic story is because of all the new characters they’ve released in both Season 2 and Season 3. I think they deserve more time in the spotlight to properly understand how they fit in Street Fighter lore. For example, you do see in the individual story modes that Ed breaks away from Balrog after the fall of Shadaloo (which is what happens at the end of A Shadow Falls) and he creates a new group called Neo Shadaloo along with a new crew with Falke and a cadre of new characters. So, what happened to Ed and Neo Shadaloo? And what about what Menat’s fortune regarding Ed’s future? You never really find out because that’s when the story just ends. Capcom has been adding a whole bunch of new characters that may have some interesting stories like Ed but you never really see how it affects everyone in the Street Fighter universe. A new cinematic story mode can fix that.

Also, there’s also the matter of the poor utilization of some of the characters in A Shadow Falls. Alex’s involvement is nonexistent. You see him about to wrestle Zangief and Mika with the help of Laura but you never really see the match. He then fights Dhalsim because he thinks the teleporting, floating dude is a mugger. That’s kinda racist? Anyway, once they scrap and he gives the piece to Dhalsim, that’s the last you see of Alex. Necalli doesn’t fare that better as well. As the living embodiment of the spirit that devours the souls of strong warriors, he just gets pummeled by everyone in A Shadow Falls! Pretty lame, if you ask me. Adding a new cinematic Story mode could rectify that by making him go on a rampage all over the world, devouring the souls of other fighters.

Now, I do understand that creating a totally new cinematic Story mode would be costly for Capcom. After all, you’ll have to render new cutscenes and write some overarching narrative that involves all of the characters, right? Ideally, I would want some big story like A Shadow Falls but if they can’t, there is still a way. They break up the story into separate or self-contained stories that may not involve all of the characters but most of the new ones. You can have a story focusing on Ed, Falke and Neo Shadoloo and they face off the combined forces of Guile, Chun-Li and Cammy who want to take them out. Have Kolin and Urien from the Illuminati and have them battle FANG, Balrog and Vega to try to recruit them into the fold. You can even have my suggested story of Necalli going all over the world fighting Sakura, Blanka and Sagat as he considers them a worthy meal. They don’t have to be super long stories but they can be somewhat epic stories all the same.

If Capcom does consider doing this, I expect them to charge us some money, no doubt about it. I would rather that they make the new cinematic Story (or Stories as I described) be free of character. But, if they price it right and don’t expect us to pay out the nose for it, I have no problem forking over the dough for more cinematic stories involving the Street Fighter V cast.

Do you think Capcom should make more cinematic stories set within the Street Fighter V timeline? Let me know in the comments section below!