My Fighting Game - Impossible to Make

I like fighting games. If I designed my own game, it would borrow from all my experiences within the genre. I would call it Reign: Generations, a weapon and hand-to-hand based fighter with realistic combat engines. Most likely never to be made, based on my outrageous requirements.

Reign: Generations would be a history-inspired fighter, similar to the Soul Calibur series, but with more emphasis on realism. Knights of the crusade, samurai from the Tokugawa era, Korean warrior knights, African hunters, civil war soldiers, and Roman infantry along with others would be included. I know that Soul Calibur uses the “warriors throughout history” theme, but with Reign, every character would be motion-captured using actual techniques or ones that are as close as research could define. The hand-to-hand combat would also use mocap.

Character designs would be handled by Japanese artist Range Murata and Korean artist Hyung-Tae Kim. Murata is known for Blue Submarine No. 6 and Last Exile anime series as a designer, while Kim was the character designer for the Magna Carta series, and the upcoming Blade and Soul. Characters would be designed based on the era they were from, but Murata and Kim would include their own ideas that would bond the characters together. While the design of the game would be anime-ish, the core gameplay would still be realistic.

The game engine would be designed by Project Soul and Namco Bandai; a combination of the SC4 and Tekken 6 engines combined with the mocap adding Bushido Blade realism (one hit kills) and weapon disarms. Mortal Kombat 4 introduced hand-to-hand/weapon combat and evolved it in further releases, but I want a true distinction between weapon and weapon-less combat. Included too are permanent disabilities, again like Bushido Blade, arms and legs can be broken. Taking it further, body parts like hands and ribs can be fractured - disabling punches and specific types of movement.

Gameplay would borrow from other fighting games, but not be as combo heavy. With the inclusion of one-hit kills, it would take more skill and technique than button mashing. Taking a step back from combos may turn off gamers, but the memorization of button sequences bore many gamers, including me.

Character customization would be essential. In the game, characters could be equipped with items from defeated characters. The create-a-character mode would be able to import face pictures and have creatable items. Limitations would be made; a full body shield would just be ridiculous even though tactically a good judgment.

The story of the game would be written by yours truly and Hiroaki Samura, author of the Blade of the Immortal manga. Reading his series, he knows how to write broad, intertwining stories. Of course, like all fighting games, the story would make no sense whatsoever—which would be my contribution.

Obviously, this game would never be made because no one really wants a realistic fighting game. My curiosity has always been, how would the different fighting styles compare to each other? With this game, I would finally be able to answer my own question; and never be allowed to create another game again.