Following the official announcement at Evo 2019 of the next game in the Guilty Gear series, Daisuke Ishiwatari, the lead and general director for the series at Arc System Works, spoke about how this new installment will be vastly different than what players may be expecting.
The most recent release of a game in the series was Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2, which brought the introduction of two additional playable characters and sought to rebalance the roster, something which was much needed in some cases. There were also improvements made to the online mode, and additional story scenarios added. This was the first installment in the series to receive both a console and PC release at the same time.
In speaking at Evo, after afterwards in the form of a tweet, Ishiwatari made sure to speak about how this game is seeking to break away from what players already know:
A few words from Daisuke Ishiwatari on the new #GuiltyGear...Official Guilty Gear Website: https://t.co/5t2AD9wFxi pic.twitter.com/Dh20lleKH0
— Arc System Works @ #BBTank (@ArcSystemWorksU) August 9, 2019
Ishiwatari provided almost no additional information about what exactly this refers to. Appealing to new and old players alike provides no real information, though there are many ways in which this could be interpreted. In the competitive scene, Guilty Gear has always demanded precision from their players, and to appeal to newer players, the answer may lie in emulating Street Fighter V.
This is to say that when the most recent game in the Street Fighter series launched, players noticed almost immediately a difference with a newly implemented eight frames of input lag on the PlayStation 4, which is more than double what Street Fighter IV was designed around.
This has allowed for offensive gameplay to rule the competitive scene, but also has made it easier for more players of a broader skillset to enter tournaments as this is far more forgiving in terms of an input window. If Guilty Gear took a similar approach, it might appeal to new players, though it may alienate some of its more die-hard fans of the previous games in the series.
That is one way that Guilty Gear could be reworked, but there are many other possibilities as well. For now, it is simply a mystery that we will need to simply wait out in order to discover what Ishiwatari meant. Considering that a “brand new experience for Guilty Gear” seems to be the driving force behind the development of the game, the possibilities are endless, though one wonders how exactly this would go about as straying too far what from older players know and love is also likely to drive some away.