Not that the game takes place in the 1400s, but maybe that's why we're going back.
There's a brief segment in this episode where, when talking about Link's appearance in Soulcalibur II, Guillaume references people over-reacting to "limited" video clips of Wind Waker's visuals. He implicitly tied this to why people were so hyped to see a more "mature" Link in Soulcalibur.
Now, he messed up the timeline. Wind Waker was out at this point. But, he was right that this limited view of Wind Waker did create the whole "celda" narrative. That said, I'm glad to see that we no longer make wild overreactions to short excerpts from a game shown during a press event.
In other news, it's 2026 and the Metroid discourse still makes my brain hurt.
Thankfully, Namco didn't put Samus in Soulcalibur II because 20 years on I'm sure we'd be hearing all kinds of revanchist-sounding rhetoric about Metroid being a fighting game or some garbage.
They put Link in. And the rest history. You know what we say about history...
Transcending history and the world, a tale of souls and swords, eternally retold.
This week we have our RetroActive for Soulcalibur II. It's a very confusing thing to write about. I don't mean the game itself - we have a wide-ranging conversation on the hype, the "story", the characters, and the gameplay. We even dive into our personal histories with the game, the franchise, and fighting games.
No, it's difficult to write about because the name of the sword everyone is after is the Soul Edge. The Soul Calibur is a different sword. The correct spelling of the game is "Soulcalbur," lacking the space that is present in the name of the blade - a blade that does not seem to appear in the game in any meaningful way. Which, again, is the opposite of the Soul Edge - who is in the game.
Also Soulcalibur II is the third game in the franchise.
Right, this is our RetroActive. I hope you had a good holiday season and enjoy!
