Two more fighters have joined the Tekken 7: Fated Retribution roster, though neither is new to the King of Iron Fist Tournament, leaving fans wondering just how many combatants Bandai Namco will be available to the community when Tekken 7 hits PC and consoles next year.
With the 2016 Evo Championships now over, one could hardly be blamed for assuming it might be a few weeks before the fighting game community had anything to get hyped about. Thankfully, that doesn’t appear to be the case, following a pair of new Tekken 7 character announcements on Monday morning. Turns out, Bandai Namco isn’t finished adding new(ish) fighters to the Fated Retribution roster ahead of the game’s early 2017 debut.
Longtime Tekken fans can now look forward to (or dread) the impending return of Bob, a large (but shockingly fast) fighter originally introduced in Tekken 6 . Unfortunately, there’s no word on whether or not Slim Bob, the alternate character model from Tekken Tag Tournament 2 , will be will also return in Tekken 7. But we wouldn’t be shocked to see Bob’s slimmer figure included as an optional costume when Fated Retribution hits Western retailers.
Master Raven falls somewhere into the gap between old and new characters. The first Raven originally appeared on the Tekken 5 roster, along with every Tekken game released since. The game didn’t offer much information on Raven, a covert agent for an unidentified organization, but semi-frequent conversations between Raven and an offscreen ally confirmed the spy was working for someone. Now, it looks like we finally know who that someone could be.
Given the name of Tekken 7 ’s latest combatant, Master Raven, it seems fair to assume we’ll be meeting a ranking member of the organization that employs Raven. Bandai Namco hasn’t given us much information about the character yet, other than a short gameplay video, but it looks like the presumptive leader will use a very similar fighting style. It’s not entirely surprising. After all, there wouldn’t be much reason to keep the Raven name unless the Tekken 7 dev team wanted to create an obvious connection to previous games (and characters) in the series. That said, let’s hope Master Raven is a bit easier to play than the fighter we met back in 2004.
For a closer look at the latest additions to the Tekken 7 roster, take a few minutes to check out both of the new character trailers published by Bandai Namco over the weekend. Then head down to the comments section and let us know who else you’d like to see in Tekken 7 at launch.
Tekken 7 is being developed for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. The game is expected to debut sometime early next year.
Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes.com and follow Scott on Twitter for more Tekken 7 news throughout 2016 and as long as Bandai Namco supports Tekken 7 in the months following launch.
