Fighting games are notorious for having awful stories. I'm pretty sure that's one of Newton's less publicized laws. And I say this as someone that adores the genre. However, my love for all things narrative trumps my enjoyment of fighting games, so I have to shoot straight here. Fighting games just suck at storytelling. Except for SNK games, they're brilliant at crafting a quality plot.
One of the main elements that prevent fighting games from reaching narrative greatness is their propensity to become convoluted over time. Almost every title starts as a tournament in their first entry but invariably becomes apocalyptic in scale by the fourth game. No franchise personifies this better than my favorite game series: Tekken.
Tekken's story is one of the most confusing, contradictory, and needlessly complex plots in all fighting games. It's also pretty rad for exactly the same reasons. For those who haven't experienced it, Tekken's story has moments of unbridled brilliance sandwiched between more trash than a hoarder's bedroom. In short, if a creative team, backed by an insanely profitable streaming service, was adventurous enough to streamline Tekken's disjointed plot, the game could probably furnish an entertaining series.
Netflix shares the first trailer for the upcoming Tekken anime in the video linked above. Here's the kicker, though; it looks pretty good.
