Chatting with MTV Multiplayer, Soul Calibur IV‘s director Katsutoshi Sasaki offered some insight as to whether or not the regular cast of characters would have a fighting chance against Yoda because of his size factor:
“The influences that Yoda will have in terms of gameplay because of his height, [is that] some of the upper attacks won’t hit him,” he said. “However, we always try to make the gameplay fun, so we prepare positive demerits of choosing Yoda and also negative demerits on it. There’s always some give and take.”
It’s been a while since I’ve played as Link in Soul Calibur II, but from what I remember, he wasn’t terribly overpowered (or too weak for that matter). If Yoda ends up being created in that vein, that’d be terrific. Otherwise, I’m afraid that everyone will want to choose him for online battles and that would get annoying, fast.
Sasaki goes on to talk about “borrowing” innovative features in rival games:
“When we see some other game that has some new element that we could probably borrow in ‘Soul Calibur’ and make ‘Soul Calibur’ even better, then we will definitely look into it,” he said. “Creators are always being stimulated by all the games on the market.”
Hey, you’ve got to at least give the guy credit for being honest. A mess of other topics relating to Soul Calibur IV such as online play are discussed in the full interview, which can be found right here.