Capcom is running damage control after its newest Street Fighter 6 DLC revealed a fan favourite character had impregnated his cousin.
If you don’t keep up with Street Fighter 6, you might not be aware that its latest DLC update has been, shall we say, contentious. And not for any gameplay reasons, but for its story additions.
Last week saw fan favourite character Alex (who debuted in Street Fighter 3) added to the game. In the run-up, fan reception was largely positive, thanks to his fighting style and redesign as a wrestling heel.
However, when interacting with him in the single-player mode, fans discovered that he was now married and had a pregnant wife. A sweet development for his character… except the woman in question is his cousin.
This detail has dominated the conversation surrounding Alex since his release and it’s now reached the point where Street Fighter 6’s director Takayuki Nakayama has addressed it and implied a retcon of some kind is on its way.
‘We apologise for any confusion that recent topics regarding Alex’s story may have caused,’ reads an X post by Nakayama. ‘While we have not changed the characters’ backstories, after internal review by the development team, we plan to revise certain text passages that may have been misleading in the near future.’
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In Alex’s backstory, his parents died when he was a child and he was taken in and raised by a man called Tom. He grew up alongside Tom’s daughter Patricia, who he ended up marrying before the events of Street Fighter 6.
It’s not uncommon in Japanese media for adopted siblings to enter romantic relationships, but Street Fighter 6 establishes that Tom is also the cousin of Alex’s late mother, which makes Patricia the second cousin of Alex.
While it’s been pointed out that marrying one’s cousin, even a first cousin, is legal in some US states (Alex and Patricia are American), fans have understandably not been taking this development well.
It’s also not entirely clear if this was deliberate or if the writers weren’t aware of the consequences of making Tom the cousin of Alex’s mum, but whatever the case, the team at Capcom is now taking steps to course correct.
Takayama also added a link to a newly published short story set after Alex and Patricia’s wedding, where Tom drunkenly discusses the pair’s history in a bar.
It doesn’t really change the cousin issue, though, and only offers a throwaway line to say the two had drifted apart when they were younger and only reconnected when Alex saved Patricia from the ‘wrong kinda people’, which perhaps sparked their romance.
Elsewhere in the fighting games space, Tekken 8 fans aren’t thrilled with its newest update either, but it’s entirely down to the patch notes and balancing changes than any story related content.
It’s prompted a surplus of negative player reviews on Steam and caused the Tekken 8 development team to apologise and promise further adjustments, saying, ‘We recognise that the battle experience we intended to deliver has not fully met your expectations.’
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