Why I Love: The Slow-mo [Tekken 7]
‘Why I Love’ is a series of lessons I’ve learned from my favorite game mechanics.
With the Tekken World Tour Finals over, it’s safe to say that there hasn’t been a better time to watch (and play) Tekken. For a series that’s long been in the shadows, it’s finally getting its time in the spotlight. The newest installment hits a sweet spot of being relatively easy to learn (the game needs better tutorials) and being incredibly difficult to master. Besides simplifying mechanics, one of the best changes Bandai Namco has made is transforming the replay system into something truly magical — the slow-mo.
For a viewing experience, physical sports have long perfected the use of replays, in particular highlights. They say that “seeing is believing”, but there are times when seeing it once is not enough, like a posterizing dunk in basketball. It’s like your brain can’t really process what just happened. It’s so fast and so incredible that a second viewing can still be not enough. Even when it has set in, seeing the replay again and again lets you relive the highlight.
The in-game replays for video games serve that same purpose for the players — letting them relive the moment. Some of the most popular have been Call of Duty’s Final KillCam and Overwatch’s Play of the Game. In-game replays no longer exist in Tekken 7, but they used to be just like the Final KillCam. Right after a round ends (i.e. someone runs out of life), the replay shows the lead up to and the deciding hit itself of that round.
It’s not that the replays are inherently flawed; it’s that Tekken 7’s slow-mo is way more effective in its context. Most of the time, the two players skip the replay because they’ve already processed what happened. They don’t need to relive it — one of them in particular. Compare this to the Final KillCam where most of the players may not be involved. It not only shows to everyone what happened, but also incites social emotions like fiero or schadenfreude. There are definitely times where the Tekken players would like to see the replay, but the replay more often than not just interrupts the flow of the match.
Tekken 7 replaces the replay with the slow-mo. From Brandon Sheffield’s interview, Katsuhiro Harada, the producer of the Tekken series, explains how it works: “Before a move hits, the game program predicts beforehand, and if the situation is that both characters are trading blows, the game goes into slow motion.” What’s not mentioned is that the slow-mo only triggers if both players are at a critically low health. Those trading blows can mean a win for either side. He goes on to explain why it works: “…both spectators and players still don’t know the outcome, so everyone is tense waiting to see what happens.” The key point is that the slow-mo happens in real-time and not as a replay. Harada even points this out later on in the interview, telling the designers working on it that: “It should be in real-time, and not a slow-motion replay, and that the game should return to normal speed if it doesn’t hit, or if it doesn’t result in a K.O.”.
The reason the slow-mo works so well is two-fold. The first, it happens in the moment. Why be constrained like physical sports to the boring old laws of time? Video games make it possible to accentuate the moment as it is happening. The slow-mo calls attention to the moment’s importance without killing the flow of the game. The second reason is uncertainty. The uncertainty actually happens at two levels: the outcome and the how. No one is sure if player 1 will win, player 2 will win, or if play will continue. Perhaps even more importantly, everyone gets to see exactly how it unfolds.
Lesson: Sell the moment, in the moment.
The reason polish matters to the gameplay experience is that it expresses intent. If a moment is intended to be visceral or sad or even funny, the polish exists to convey that to the player. They should know how to feel without any confusion. In Tekken 7’s slow-mo, shoulders should start to rise, and eyes should begin to widen. Everyone should feel the tension of that moment. Everyone knows that it matters.
I highly recommend checking out Brandon Sheffield’s interview with Harada here.
