Tekken 8 is especially anticipated among fans of Bandai Namco's long-running fighting series. It's been nearly six years since the home release of the previous entry and Bandai Namco is making a big splash with the new game, as it set aside a larger budget for it than the last one.
TheGamer recently previewed Tekken 8 and came away impressed by the detailed visuals and exciting combat. The new game is developed in Unreal Engine 5, for current-gen systems, and it's evident in the particle effects, character models and the stages. Fans too have been remarking on the graphics, even joking that it makes Tekken 7 resemble a PS3 game. But apparently, the producers of the new title reckon its graphics could still be improved.
Veteran of the series, game director, and executive producer Katsuhiro Harada and his colleague Michael Murray spoke with German games site Cerealkillerz (via TKMGMR) recently and revealed that they were less than satisfied with Tekken 8's graphics at this point.
Explaining that UE5 has been used especially to boost the game's graphics, with the character animations and gameplay mechanics underpinned by the developers' own scripting and programming, but that when it comes to Unreal Engine 5 it's a lot more to think about when it comes to the lighting.
"It seems like most game companies can achieve a high level of quality regarding the textures that they use, or the shaders or those kind of basic components", Harada told Cerealkillerz via Murray, who translated. "What really sets them apart this time for this generation, and also UE5, is the lighting.
"And that's been a very difficult thing for us to fine tune. Even the build you have here today, you have hands-on I believe, we're not very happy with the state of the graphics at the moment. We think we can do better. And one of the things that has been difficult is the lighting. This is what really changes among the developers in different games".
The producers explained that the lighting has been a challenge for the studio to tune to the standards they have set themselves, and that they remain unsatisfied with how it currently looks. TheGamer spent a day playing Tekken 8 recently and liked the game's graphics, even as it stands as an alpha build, so when the game does eventually release perhaps we can expect a further boost in visual quality.
For those interested, the producers elaborated that it is about fine-tuning where individual lights are placed in order to achieve the look and feel they want, and that they can achieve a desired effect with how a character looks by the light placements on an individual stage. And it has to be considered differently for each stage since one set-up might not work as desired on another stage. But the team will continue to work on this, even if it's "been difficult", Harada said.
Tekken 8 is coming to PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5, and while an exact launch date is not yet known it is expected 2024.