E3 06: Tekken 6 Trailer Impressions

LOS ANGELES--As part of Sony's pre-Electronic Entertainment Expo press conference, Sony rolled with a lengthy series of brief game trailers demonstrating some of the titles currently in development for the system. One of the more highly anticipated of these was Tekken 6, first revealed for the PlayStation 3 at Sony's press conference a year ago. The game was shown very briefly in the form of a trailer during the press conference, which was cut from a longer version shown by Namco Bandai. From it we at least picked up on a few new pieces of information and got a sense of what sort of hard-hitting action the game is aiming for.

The trailer seemed to blow by in less than a minute and consisted mostly of a one-on-one fight between demonically possessed karate expert Jin Kazama and a new blonde-haired female fighter. She must be Lili, a new character who'll first be playable in Tekken: Dark Resurrection for the PSP (see our story). It was difficult to tell what was so special about the female fighter's moves since, early on in the fight, Jin delivers a crushing punch to her abdomen. Jin's signature power attack sends the poor girl flying backwards, crashing through a wall into what seems like an entirely different arena. Jin pursues his victim, who miraculously regains her footing as they continue the fight. A few parried moves later, and all of a sudden a motorcycle crashes through a stained-glass window high above the fighters. The rider on the motorcycle appears to be tae kwon do master Hwoarang. The trailer ends on this surprising note.

[UPDATE] The full-length trailer Namco Bandai is showing off reveals that this sequence is really just the middle portion of a longer trailer. While the Tekken series is known for its extremely impressive and intensely action-packed cinematic cutscenes, this one for Tekken 6 is surprisingly deliberate in its pacing, starting off with a long shot of a dusty old cityscape. Eventually a mysterious figure, whose face is concealed by a wide-brimmed hat, slowly appears, walking calmly. Cut to Jin Kazama getting sent careening through a wall...in walks Lili, looking smug. Jin struggles back to his feet and the previously described sequence with their fight plays out just as in the Sony press conference. Hwoarang leaps off of his bike, which explodes...but during this bizarre entrance, Jin unleashes his hidden power, switching to his intimidating devil form. Hwoarang isn't fazed, though, and proceeds to kick some of the stuffing out of Devil Jin. So Devil Jin does what any winged fiend would do in this situation. He flies up, gathers a whole bunch of energy, and fires a massive beam of light towards a nearby tower, which cuts in half and collapses on his two opponents.

That's basically the end of this story, though there's some vaguely incoherent text afterwards: "The flaming arrow of wrath shot forth from Devil Jin and ripped through the air. Rubble was turned to dust... As if it were fate... The story has already begun...." Brief glimpses of what seems to be Lili's face can be seen in the background here. The Tekken 6 logo appears, with a PlayStation 3 logo underneath. The entire trailer is close to five minutes long, though a lot of the time is sucked up by this lengthy outro and the establishing shot. It's an odd trailer for a fighting game, since there isn't a whole lot of fighting in it. Though what's there of the fighting is good stuff. We're eagerly looking forward to seeing more of Tekken 6 in action.