Schrödinger's Fighting Game is Alive

Have you heard? Dead or Alive is back. Your reaction to this may be excitement, indifference, or confusion. Excitement, because Dead or Alive is one of the classic 3D fighting game series. Indifference, because it looks like a horny fan service game (this reason might put some people in the first category). Confusion, because… did Dead or Alive ever really go away? After all, there was a new one just last year, wasn’t there? The problem is that Dead or Alive has had a bit of an identity crisis over its history, and that means there’s a lot to ask about what this new one will be (the new one is as yet untitled, but for convenience, I will be referring to it as Dead or Alive 7). So, let’s take a look at some history.

The first Dead or Alive was released in arcades in 1996 under the leadership of Tomonobu Itagaki. It came about in the wake of Virtua Fighter, the original 3D fighting game, and Dead or Alive had a lot in common with it, even down to using the same arcade board as Virtua Fighter 2. But it had a few distinguishing features. For one, the game featured Ryu Hayabusa of Tecmo’s then-dormant Ninja Gaiden series, meaning it could be considered a Ninja Gaiden spin-off. Or, Ninja Gaiden could be considered a Dead or Alive spin-off. More on that later. But another distinguishing feature game in the aesthetics of Dead or Alive. Put plainly, the female characters were depicted in a rather sexualized manner. One some level, this aspect of the game has been exaggerated. Out of eight playable characters in the original arcade release, there were only three women. The over-the-top breast physics have also been commented on a lot, and they certainly are prominent, but Dead or Alive was hardly the first game to have them, with Fatal Fury 2 introducing them in a 2D game and Soul Edge being the first game to render the jiggle in 3D. Regardless, it was the developers of Dead or Alive who were credited with coining the term “breast physics” so it’s their cross to bear, even if they were just following the zeitgeist.

Over time, Dead or Alive received sequels that made it a more sophisticated game, all while the sexual angle became a bit more pronounced (it was also around this time that the developers became known as Team Ninja). More female characters were introduced, they were given lots of new outfits, and there were plenty of promotional renders showing them in bathing suits to really drive the point home. But this still wasn’t too out of the ordinary for fighting games (Capcom and Namco were no strangers to titillating promotional art), and the balance of characters in the roster still favored the men. The reputation of the series would forever change in 2003, however, with the launch of Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. It’s… pretty much exactly what you would expect. The women of Dead or Alive play beach volleyball, wearing skimpy bathing suits that the player can ogle from whatever angle they please. There are also some light dating sim elements, but it’s mostly about pandering to horny guys. It suddenly became much harder to deny that Dead or Alive was the shameless fan service game so many saw it as. Sure, it was just a spin-off, but it gave a pretty clear image of what the developers thought was important.

And then they made another one. Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 arrived in 2006, fresh of the heels of Dead or Alive 4. Notably, the title removed even the pretense that this was a beach volleyball game. The volleyball was still there, but the game became even more gratuitous in its pandering. This would end up being the last Dead or Alive game that series creator Tomonobu Itagaki would contribute to.

Following his departure, Yohei Shimbori was promoted to the director’s chair, and there was a noticeable effort to rehabilitate the series. Dead or Alive 5 would release in 2012, marking the longest gap between entries, and it came with a different look. The characters now looked much more realistic. No longer did they have anime-like doe eyes or tiny button noses; they now looked like human beings. They still had the voluptuous figures they were known for, but the proportions and animation were made much more lifelike. There were new graphic systems to simulate dirt, sweat, and blood, showing that the ladies are not immune to their beauty being tarnished. The game was marketed with the tagline “I’m a fighter”, usually accompanied by an image of one of the iconic female protagonists, in an effort to redefine these women as powerful instead of just being porcelain dolls. Despite the delicate balance required to pull this off without alienating long-time fans, it proved successful. The changes were broadly well-received and helped to rehabilitate the series.

Except, there were a few problems. For one, Koei Tecmo chose to capitalize on the audience of horny guys with money to spend and sold them additional costumes after launch. There were a lot of them. Sure, nobody was expected to buy all of them, but it was far more than reasonable. It could be said that this was a way to keep the money flowing from the whales without compromising the experience for everyone else. A reasonable argument. But it wasn’t the only weird thing in Dead or Alive 5. That came with the additional characters released for the game. Most of them were inoffensive. The first very noteworthy one was Marie Rose. She is characterized as a very petite girl (only 147cm tall) with a very childish disposition and a taste for gothic lolita fashion. Now, the developers were quick to remind people that she is 18 years old (past games had run afoul of questionably-aged characters), and her childish personality does seem to be an act to disarm her opponents. None of that could change how uncomfortable she made a lot of players. Even if you weren’t weirded out by the tiny girl with a frilly dress, she seemed like a character that existed only for the fan service angle.

It didn’t stop at Marie Rose. The other was Honoka, who is also very short (150cm) but unlike Marie Rose, she is exceptionally curvy, outdoing even blonde bombshell Tina Armstrong. Contrasting with Marie’s gothic lolita dress, Honoka is content to wear her school uniform. Like Marie Rose, she’s 18 years old, so nothing they can get in trouble for, but in a series known for gratuity, the shortstack schoolgirl was still beyond the pale for a lot of people. To make matters worse, her fighting style was purely self-taught and consists of amateurish imitations of other martial arts. At least Marie Rose seemed like an actual fighter when you ignore her outfit. Predictably enough, Koei Tecmo would eventually come out with a Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 that featured Honoka and Marie Rose as its flagship characters. All of the work to reshape the brand image of Dead or Alive seemed to have ended up in the exact same place.

Did Dead or Alive 6 change anything in this regard? Not really, no. Despite a lot of hand wringing over comments from developers about making a more competition-oriented game and making the characters more realistic, it wasn’t all that different. The biggest change was that most of the characters were given new outfits, many of which were less revealing than before. But the old ones were still in the game, so it doesn’t really matter, does it? Otherwise, you still had revealing outfits and bouncing breasts, and plenty of DLC to purchase should you desire even more revealing outfits. The newcomers this time around included Tamaki, who actually first appeared in the Xtreme subseries but was surprisingly not that gratuitous, and NiCO, who is proportioned similarly to Marie Rose but is less childish in demeanor. But the game failed to commit to either the fighting game community or the crowd that’s only in it for the fan service, and the game underperformed.

A big part of why it didn’t do much for the fan service crowd is that they were already satisfied. See, Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 was hardly the end of the line. It was followed by an updated version subtitled Scarlet and later by a free to play gacha version titled Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation. Most recently, there has been a completely new entry that’s more of a dating sim titled Venus Vacation Prism: Dead or Alive Xtreme. Not for nothing, the title has been reversed, indicating a shift in emphasis away from the Dead or Alive series. This isn’t just an empty gesture, either. The roster of Xtreme 3 and its derivative releases gradually featured more completely original characters, eventually outnumbering the Dead or Alive originals, and the only character in Prism to originate in the fighting games is Honoka. Furthermore, it was announced recently that Koei Tecmo are transferring the team responsible away from Team Ninja and into their subsidiary Gust, which is more well-known for developing the Atelier series (that’s a topic for another day). Therefore, it stands to reason that their vision for the future of the series may be to keep the fighting games and the non-fighting games separate.

So, with the history out of the way, let’s talk about that future a bit more. How can they navigate this identity crisis? To address the elephant in the room, it’s a non-starter to suggest that Dead or Alive shouldn’t be sexy. For what it’s worth, I don’t think anyone has ever argued that it shouldn’t be sexy, but in the gaming world, it can be hard to critique anything overtly sexualized without being characterized as a prude. Furthermore, there’s certainly no reason to believe at present they’re going to be making Dead or Alive 7 more modest than previous games. The brief teaser trailer we’ve seen shows Kasumi’s new outfit, and while it doesn’t show us everything, it’s also apparent that they’re not shy about revealing Kasumi’s cleavage. For another, it’s not as though sex appeal in games is dead. Other fighting games like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 as well as non-fighting games like Marvel Rivals and Overwatch 2 have gotten away with selling swimsuits, so it’s clearly not nearly as taboo as some of the culture warriors want you to think. So, sex appeal isn’t going anywhere.

It’s a mistake to think of sex appeal is a binary, however. Even if Dead or Alive has been the standard bearer of sexy fighting games in the past, it’s execution has often left a bit to be desired. For one thing, the men tend to get glossed over. Aside from Zack, they’re completely absent from the Xtreme games, and they consistently get fewer outfits to choose from than the women do. Even when they do get swimwear options, it’s usually just perfunctory swim trunks. I don’t expect perfectly equal distribution, but surely they can do a little better than they have in the past in regards to letting the men be sexy as well as the women.

Secondly, the women do not represent a very broad range of body types. At present, you can divide the women of Dead or Alive into two categories: the slim/curvy category, and the “less than five feet tall” category. The only complication to this system is that Honoka fits into both. There’s not much they can do to change existing characters without causing an uproar, but when creating new characters, hopefully they consider something like a more heavyset woman, a more muscular woman, a woman who is more than 30 years old, or a smaller breasted woman who is not less than five feet tall. No disrespect to the under five feet women of the world, of course, but we need a bit more variety in here.

Lastly, we have the outfits. It’s always important to remember that outfits shouldn’t be sexy just for the sake of being sexy. They should have some specificity to them and suggest something about the character. Furthermore, being suggestive is often better than just being revealing. Leaving something to the imagination can make the outfits more interesting. The Dead or Alive series has generally been pretty good for having a variety of outfits for each character, but post-launch, the DLC outfits leave a lot to be desired. Giving all of the women the exact same skimpy outfit is, among other things, very boring.

When it comes to the character roster, I think there are also a few considerations to make. Remember earlier when I suggested that there’s a chicken and egg relationship between Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden? Well, the short of it is that Ninja Gaiden was rebooted in 2004 by Tomonobu Itagaki and Team Ninja, and this reboot happened to feature Dead or Alive’s Ayane and slotted the established the two series as sharing a common continuity. Over time, the relationship deepened, with Kasumi joining Ninja Gaiden and both Momiji and Rachel joining Dead or Alive. With that being said, a lot of people are wondering if Dead or Alive 7 will feature any of the new characters from Ninja Gaiden 4 or even the 2D spin-off Ninja Gaiden Ragebound. Personally, I don’t think this is a good idea. It’s fine for the two series to be related, but I don’t think there should be too many Ninja Gaiden characters filling up the roster. As it stands, Ryu Hayabusa has already seemingly been confirmed. Neither Momiji nor Rachel were in the launch rosters of Dead or Alive 5 or 6, so I’m not counting them as likely to be in Dead or Alive 7 at launch. For the same reason, I’m not counting on any of Ninja Gaiden‘s newer characters, either, which may be for the best. Dead or Alive has a rich history of its own without needing to draw on other games.

Which brings me to my usual hobby horse. My stance on guest characters is well-documented at this point. If it were up to me, there would be no guest characters from other publishers in Dead or Alive 7. But these things aren’t up to me. There will probably be guest characters. If they need to exist, hopefully they will be reasonable choices. Dead or Alive 5 did well to draw from Virtua Fighter. Even aside from their shared history described above, these characters made a good aesthetic and mechanic match for Dead or Alive, aside from the horribly low-quality sound effects ripped straight out of Virtua Fighter 5. With a new Virtua Fighter on the horizon, maybe they’ll return to the well. Or maybe not. In that case, Tekken 8 would also be a very reasonable collaboration. It has no shortage of recognizable characters that would be natural fits for Dead or Alive. But the further you get away from 3D fighting games, the more likely you are to run into trouble. Many of the popular suggestions seem to come down to sexy women from other games, but I think that would only reinforce the negative stereotypes surrounding the game. So, let’s keep Stellar Blade away from Dead or Alive 7, shall we?

And for my final point, if we really want to shed the stigma, there’s one controversial suggestion I have: It’s time for Honoka and Marie Rose to go. Some will balk and say these are popular characters, but it must be asked, are they popular among the people who will play a fighting game? The Venus Vacation crowd loves them, and as far as I’m concerned, they can keep them. If Dead or Alive is to be taken seriously as a fighting game and not be stuck in the fan service ghetto, then it’s time to say goodbye to these two. To myself and many others, they’re annoying and unappealing as fighting game characters, and Dead or Alive 6 demonstrated that even the people who do like them are not reliable customers. There isn’t much to lose from cutting them from the roster in my estimation.

I can’t speak for the rest of the roster. Dead or Alive 6’s Diego is probably not coming back on account of nobody liking him. Rig and Mila from Dead or Alive 5 are much more well-liked, but with limited budget available, it’s hard to say if they’ll make the cut. I’ll leave that speculation to others. Similarly, there are other people far better inclined to discuss the mechanical failings of Dead or Alive 6 that made it a less popular game among the fanbase than 5 was. But I stand by my assessment of the so-called sexiest fighting game series. It can still wear that crown, but it isn’t enough on its own.