In between playing Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition and Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, I spoke with Seth Killian, Community Manger, about "what ifs" for Marvel vs. Capcom 3’s roster and balancing patches. The most surprising part of the interview involved Monster Hunter. The super popular series was considered for Marvel vs. Capcom 3, but didn’t make the cut because of a decision from the Monster Hunter team.
Since Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is out can we talk about Gene [from God Hand]? Was he really a fringe character?
Seth Killian, Community Manger: We talked about Gene, actually, at several times during the development process. Nothing against him, it’s always we have X amount of time and basically you’re guaranteed to break someone’s heart whenever you make decisions like this. Gene was talked about and Amaterasu sort of beat him out in some ways, so hopefully people like Amaterasu as well. Gene is a natural fit for an MvC type game, a very over-the-top, crazy kind of character. Still, he’s not out of the running in whatever we do next.
What other fringe characters were there on the Capcom side?
Oh man, you could go anywhere. The area of discussion was across all brands, really. Literally, we had hundreds of potential characters when we first started the list. You couldn’t name a franchise that we had not considered. Auto Modellista I think was not on the list. Under the Skin also didn’t come up, so there were a few! But, other than that, yeah, there were a lot of them.
Considering its popularity, I was surprised Monster Hunter didn’t make it into Marvel vs. Capcom 3 in some way.
Certainly they were on the list and we actually made a proposal to the Monster Hunter team and producer. The answer I believe came back was no. You don’t just have to have the idea to have the character. You also have to get permission from the producer of that series to include the character and however they are implemented. They thought it wasn’t a good fit for the game and maybe they’re right. The hunter is sort of a malleable personality, rather than a super strong character in Monster Hunter since he’s so customizable.
From there where do you go? Like a Felyne? A Poogie? I don’t know. A Lagiacrus or something like that. I don’t know what you’re going to put in there from Monster Hunter. So, anyway it didn’t work out. They’re just too cool for us.
What about Dead Rising. We heard Frank [from Dead Rising] was cut at the end, but how about Chuck [from Dead Rising 2]?
We thought about both of them. We have a little bit of work that went into Frank. Actual development work, not just lists on paper. We didn’t have time to wrap that one up, but Frank and Chuck, both of them are pretty popular.
What about Strider?
Strider is definitely popular. He is one of our top fan requests period. Awesome character. Harder to model in 3D, but the other challenge is there are licensing issues around him. It’s not a purely owned Capcom IP, yeah. You try to break less hearts while keeping it fresh and surprising with a little flavor there.
Since the game’s release some players have found balancing issues and exploits within Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Is Capcom thinking about, perhaps, patching or revising the game?
Yeah, of course. We talk about stuff like that, so we’re sort of tracking everything that is going on and you’ve got to make judgment calls. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is of course filled with tons of similar bugs, which ended up ultimately contributed to gameplay. That’s the decision you have to make as a group – is something contributing to gameplay or detracting from it, ultimately. If we think its in the negative, the it’s something we would consider patching. We’re trying to take a relatively light hand to patching. If we feel something is not as we want it to be, we’re going to let it ride.
For the Capcom vs. series, just your own personal thinking, who would you like to see the Capcom characters challenge next?
That’s part of the challenge that I’d like to see happen that I don’t want to jinx by [laughs] talking about them now. Ono-san has talked before about Nintendo and they have a huge roster of great characters that would be fun to match up against.
Another fun request has been Kellogg’s, the cereal company. You could fight Snap, Crackle, and Pop. Then like Tony the Tiger. I was thinking the last boss could be the big K from Special K. You just have to punch this giant letter K. Really, the fun part is when you get Vs. series moniker in there you can go anywhere. People still talk about Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat or something. Now we have Street Fighter X Tekken. We’re very happy to try to reach out and find new opponents for the Capcom group.
Will there ever be a Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition upgrade pack for PS3 or Xbox 360?
It’s certainly possible. We’d like to see something like that happen. There are a few challenges, but I don’t see anything insurmountable.
Published: Mar 11, 2011 05:09 pm