What Your Main Character ACTUALLY Says About You

years back before I knew what a dragon punch motion or even what a cancel was a friend introduced me to Soulcalibur 2 just slapped it up on the big family TV wow Peak fiction it was a mind-blowing game for small town couch versus play two people two weapons One winner easy enough helped it was beautiful and look links there Legend of Zelda video game small town couch versus man it wasn't about oh I suck at fighting gabes or any of that crap it was just a fun thing to do I picked this guy called yunsung give me a break and that was the day my favorite fighting game character was decided I'm sure a lot of you can relate just impulse picking someone not really sure why and sticking with them forever I think a lot of marriages happen like that as a GameCube kid I missed out on Soulcalibur 3 but picked yunsung up immediately in Soulcalibur 4 like 6 years later ran him up to my highest on online ranking ever and seed for years watching him excluded from Soulcalibur 5 and Soulcalibur 6 I was genuinely upset about it everywhere I turned growing up something I loved was deemed irrelevant or not worth preserving the card game magin nation which miraculously is getting kickstarted this year some 20 years after its abandonment yunsung my favorite character for my favorite game series far far too many little fractal of an identity broadly discarded by the companies in charge of them they flourished in their brief triumphs on the stage of history but the stage of History moves on I always wondered why I ever picked that character bum ass low tier get some Frame data broke bit like why he specifically became part of my identity he's nothing like me not not really clearly a risk-taking type hot-headed athletic and even now I'm struggling to explain it because the things I like about his character things I learned when I got my own copy of the game afterwards weren't the reason reasons I initially picked him up and that Curiosity got me wondering how do we pick characters or Mains how does Avatar selection differ from person to person is there any actual meaning to the choosing I'll tell a few short stories and see if it ends up making sense thinking back to my earliest gaming experiences Avatar selection was only ever an occasional luxury in Dragon Quest you played the hero in Zelda you played link great Pro tags for a boy righteous little guys with swords bopping around wreaking havoc or like turnbas slashes yeah Pokemon was a little different everyone was the same trainer in that first game but got to pick a starter and craft their team as they went I went into this in the wow video but I'm a triplet big lore reveal okay cool I liked squirrel my brother had Charmander and the other obviously picked Pikachu because he got Pokemon Yellow you got to get the triplets different things it's rule one in the book growing up as a triplet identity mattered more to me than it probably did for your average kid triplet number 1 two and three so which one are you is this insert name of sibling I'm talking to that actually hasn't changed I still hear stuff like that and no big deal right we're fraternal triplets we don't look exactly alike but that doesn't mean random people who knew my mother knew us growing up why would they I was a Game Boy kid man I didn't say I had Dame boy get out of here man leave so being the squirt guy actually mattered to me it meant I liked the water type it meant I would not be putting Charmander on my teams or Pikachu on that note sounds weird maybe but it's ended up shaping more things than I expected in retrospect and that was all Instinct it's hard to explain but why rationalize impulse I know you ain't rationalize that fun little drink you bought Hop Off me bro I was seven Flash Forward to Mite probably the first fighting game I own even if it wasn't recognized as one back then I picked Kirby that was my guy or was until I picked Link Blue both times by the way that's important Kirby was okay but link had a sword and that's all I really wanted Mar takes me back man I remember seeing Marth and having a neuron activation moment damn bro they make blue sword dudes Marth was all I played after unlocking him for actual years he was the only Melee character I would even look at I thought he looked looked neat a dude with a single sword against the world no Bells no whistles maybe a bit of a tiara we're not in the business of asking questions about that sure he had lore and all of that good stuff but what I liked was the design it didn't really mesh with the typical Nintendo aesthetic it wasn't goober it wasn't hecking chongus it was anime I loved anime Mark felt like he belonged to another company like he was transgressive in the roster just by being a guy without a honking no yeah link was there but link used bombs and arrows and boomerangs yuck Mark didn't need any of that he ran headlong Into The Fray with a single sword and that was enough Mark was also my first proper main winning started to matter to me at age 10 I started trouncing my brothers and friends I was never good not really but there was a time in my life I was convinced that the only thing I could do okay was play Mar in Smash Bros maelee thank God I lived in a small town or I might have run off to locals and fell down the pit for real anyway Soulcalibur too when I think back on yunsung it's suddenly kind of obvious he was a dude with a single one-handed sword he wasn't overcompensating with a big Iron slab he wasn't a dainty girl without clothes even if that mid rff is totally sus he leapt into combat with acrobatic moves incedible kicks and that puny sword at least stacked against those vanders and bow stabs my friends whipped out yunsung is such a cool character for plent plenty of reasons but at a glance he's just a guy with a sword and feet clear clearly focused on honing his body and skill going by these jaw-dropping kicking animations and creative techniques he's bold he's unique and he's kind of dirty too like he's got an obnoxious little back step stab to stuff rushing opponents incredible casual Killer by the way and even waves his sword between his legs for surprise attacks that kind of thing he's unorthodox while presenting pretty plainly Rock Charisma now some Soulcalibur fans are typing what about assassin Raphael and shanga great question assassin is effectively hang from the Dreamcast soulcaliber game like his mve set transposed into a nameless husk but I didn't know that then I like to play him okay but he wasn't a fully realized lore character even if he was Swag Like true swag so I never formed that same bond shunga is an obvious comparison but she was a girl and it took me good number of years to start picking women characters if identity was as important to me at age seven with Squirtle as it was when I started picking fighting game Mains I think it's safe to say I was more interested with representing myself or an ideal self the way younger D and D players sometimes role characters that are effectively them but better and I only ever thought of myself as a guy Raphael is actually the character I'd play today if I were taking the game seriously yunsung is pretty weak in some pretty Annoying Ways at least if you've played for a long time at a middling skill level and Raphael only needs a handful of moves to work and I liked him a lot back then too he was sve and stylish and easy to understand just let you push hit boxes into your enemy but packed seriously cool moves if you went digging but I never connected with Raphael as a character the way I did with yunsung so yunsung it was and let's talk about character it's always going to take more than visuals to keep you fixated for decades I really resonated with yunsung for really stupid reasons at first it was his sword according to the second games yunsung bio his teacher's daughter playable character s Mina handed him white Thunder a sword that apparently conferred the power of reflection to whom ever looked at the blad's reflection yunsung looked into the blade and discovered what he really wanted and set out on a quest to find it so that's just like a really stupid story when you think about it for half a sec hour of reflection really isn't that just innate to being alive never mind 10 out of 10 superpower everyone could use it that little lore bite was interesting to me it became fun to reflect on things that happened in my life like oh damn I don't need a sword to have the power of reflection I can just reflect for free but real real Yung unlike all the other dreary and serious and self-righteous cast members haven't you had enough you are too weak for that aren't you you conceited wretched human silence I can change my own destiny screwed around acted like an upstart he didn't have all the answers or even incredibly strong convictions he was relatable you ever meet the kids who took Elementary School super seriously you ever meet the kids who got told to shut the [ __ ] up by their parents enough or told they weren't funny by their friends enough they stopped trying to have a pulse and just masked their cringe 24/7 I loved Yung partly because he rejected that he was a doof but he was an honest doof you can trust a doof in soulcaliber 2 he completes his quest for soul Edge realizes his own power and chooses to fight with his own ability for the sake of his country rather than relying on a demonic soulc consuming blade basically self-actualization going out and finding yourself facing a clear opportunity for external power but choosing internal strength the hard way but the right way damn I could do all that [ __ ] the whole time should have checked the move list Korea is safe I clung to the character because I happened to connect in a couple of personal ways visually narratively he was a window into the series The buyin and I loved the game ever since I talk a lot about not really caring about lore especially in Fighters but maybe it's more accurate to say I've already done the lore thing found my joy and don't need a lot more of it I'm getting old man give me a break with the factoids Yung also critically did not change over the years some characters advanced in some interesting ways but the boy was always the boy he never stopped resonating in Soulcalibur 4 he's warned about the sword he's chasing because his ending in two isn't Canon obviously characters like this don't get stage of History status and his response a simple phrase that's always stuck with me was I want to find out for myself give this man a truth it's a basic human experience but yeah I don't want to be fed everything when I can help looking into things myself and I don't care if I make mistakes along the way if I do it my way if I find out for myself that means the journey was genuine worthwhile love that message so basic so simple so beautiful it's even built into his move set his free flowing stylistic attacks that differ from the traditional teaching of his school going off of hang's move set from Soulcalibur 1 he's a diligent student and clearly dedicated but willing to put his own spin on things and that's everything that's the take it genuinely does not compute that somebody out there wouldn't feel that but I found out pretty quick all the way back in the soulcaliber 2 days that people pick characters select avatars for very different reasons I've watched some friends pick characters just because they like them no other rationale given nightmare because he's cool and yeah can't argue there Keck because he had a cool weapon maybe looked kind of vaguely similar to the person playing him not too different for my own reasons I just got a little obsessive some friends picked women characters because quote they were cute or as a friend's older brother put it he picked Ivy because she had huge titties I mean he isn't factually wrong I never even considered picking a character for sex appeal like is that a meaningful reason to select a character do I get to judge that was that guy was that guy breaking up mid game other friends never picked main characters they hopped around or even picked random absolving them of the need to perform plausible deniability established well I picked random I don't know this character fun game though sometimes Avatar selection has nothing to do with the art or the visuals or what sometimes it's just the vibe the level with which we get invested in fictional characters varies from person to person you'll find the less online a person is the less likely it is that they'll deeply connect with a video game character or obsess about them enough to read the lore I don't want to jerk myself off like I'm the number one youngsung lier no just I car and not everyone has to and as I got older and more interested in fighting games proper I discovered a different kind of Avatar selection because the context surrounding it changed with my intentions [Music] oh Vega around the time of Marvel versus Capcom 3's release I started getting into fighting games or more specifically I was hyped to play a fighting game featuring one of my favorite cool dude characters Albert Wesker pairing him up with zero and Dante oh yeah baby I followed the press cycle bought in learned combos did the whole thing and kind of got bored until umvc 3 I wasn't very good and clearly didn't understand 2D fighting games so that's I got into Super Street Fighter 4 you know to learn that era of the fgc was so legendary excellent Adventures before gex went insane online fighting game turny footage uploaded to YouTube a thousand guides and tutorials I wanted into that culture I was a smalltown Canadian kid no shot I was getting anywhere competitively so I sat on the sidelines suddenly very invested in fighting games it makes sense in retrospect I didn't know what I was going to do with my life and fighting games were always fun I loved soulcaliber even if the broader fgc thought it was Tekken for babies problem was Street Fighter was really hard i' learned the basic inputs earlier more or less learned to Dragon punch properly around mvc3 but I could barely play it hurt my hands and I froze up in online matches just wasn't all that fun that's learning for you I picked Adon my first ever Street Fighter character because he was weird and flashy and not completely unlike yunsung cocky attitude weirdo techniques that varied from the more established Muay Thai user sagot smoes but Adon did not function how I wanted I couldn't consistently land the focus attack Dash cancellor fadc into Ultra or almost at all actually so I struggled to take games off players Adon was fairly simple but he wasn't great to learn with desperate to win I picked up my man Tomas Hawk because I watched a certain YouTuber spam jump in circle grab and actually managed to turn things around it was low rank Street Fighter on Wi-Fi I had a Grappler and you better believe I could buffer a circle input while empty jumping to sneak wins in on more defensive low rank players I was insane I didn't know what I was doing but I did have a very large gun and that got me what I wanted Capcom points or rather it did for a while the technique was inconsistent and really really being honest with myself I wasn't actually playing to improve I just wanted the game to Pat my head and say good job bud and so I lost interest in teaw he was just my rebound after Adon and if I was going to keep playing I needed someone I cared about enough to invest in I poured over tier lists and watched gameplay I ran through trial mode to test various characters and eventually I landed on Vega and never went back that probably seems a little weird especially if you know Street Fighter 4 Vega Vega sucked like a lot he was a charge character someone made to hold back or down for an amount of time to Greenlight his special moves beginners tend to struggle with charge characters charge characters tend to be more defensive and don't reward the type of aggression that makes middling players sweat because they're usually too busy playing passive but Vega was worse than that he consistently placed near the bottom of tier lists he had Unique Mechanics a claw and a mask that could be knocked off during combat forcing scrambles at horrible times basically punishing the player for losing AO without his claw can't deal chip damage with certain moves and loses some power AO without his mask takes more damage then does 10% more but who cares you're getting pommel Vega had weaknesses that other characters didn't he had questionable moves that interacted weirdly with the typical play experience he had pretty bad hitboxes on his Ultra moves making it hard to actually land combos the inputs for said Ultras are things I've never had to access again in any other game not unlike high school math he had no proper reversal and therefore no consistent truly effective means of stuffing jumpins aside from a terar grab so dive kick characters stomped all over him and they were everywhere online Vega was decidedly not the move and yet Vega was weird he shrieked bizar and sliced up opponents with a weapon in what was supposed to be tournament fighting Vega was a Nar narcissist who licked the blood off his claws and was disgusted by just about everybody he saw vea was a freak real sicko [ __ ] you feel he was a quirky personality but that Quirk extended to play Vega has a style of gameplay that's kind of game warping in a sense he leaps to the wall of your choosing and has free reign to retreat approach attack with his claws risk getting close for an isuna drop Vega was weird not complicated just weird when you fight Vega you're not playing Street fighter you're playing Vega Fighter the whole dynamic changes and not many players that I fought knew the matchup or could react to it consistently online I found my way in a psychotic quirer with a unique style of play Vega made sense to me for all of his weaknesses I pushed further with Vega than I ever did in any fighting game second only to Soulcalibur 4 I could win and it didn't come easy I got annihilated on the rag but I believed strongly enough in the character and the fun of his move set to keep getting better looking up guides learning combos finally doing what I was supposed to and none of that had anything to do with his lore Vega sucks Vega isn't interesting or cool to me he's just a bad dude I had a gameplay relationship with the character and because I could actually get a winoff from time to time even against real people Vega became part of my identity in retrospect Vega shares some similarities with my original character Adon both shriek both fly across the screen neither of them are wearing a shirt both of them are murderous or violent individuals with poor dispositions I wonder if that had anything to do with it Avatar selection is sometimes a process you need to work through to understand like coming to terms with yourself Avatar selection isn't always love at first sight and to have the passion to improve often isn't about Tears like what works what's best because passion is organic it's felt not orchestrated after putting so much time into Street Fighter 4 you'd think I would have hopped on five and I did for a Brisk 20 hours or so before yeting myself out at MOX speed for no real reason except for all the reasons I bought in early and we know how rough that game was on launch you might not remember but it was an incredible Capstone to capcom's run of Shame before their modern Redemption art anyway I picked Vega and surpris they changed a lot about him and why not Vega was missing tools in four he was a meme for a good chunk of the games lifespan people wanted changes but when I picked him I felt suddenly that it wasn't the Vega I knew that's juvenile to an extent I'm past that kind of thing now almost but at the time I was really invested in what I learned in four hoping it' carry over and it didn't not really the game worked just enough the character had a straight up sh youin imput it's like the devs were trying to drag me out of the muck but I was too far gone too smeagle esque you feel I didn't know that guy and it happened again in Soulcalibur six yunsung got the axe again big surprise but the game had DLC and I knew in my heart that he'd make it or hang any Korean dude really and they did they put hang back in one of the coolest characters from the dreamcastle caliber with a lot of what I liked about yunsung baked into his move set even if he was missing a few of the quirkier moves so you gave the guy magic sword swings and kicks just weren't enough right had it go all in on the aesthetic floor ises yeah and I know some old fans were cheering anyway you mother couldn't enjoy a Rolling Green Hill and a light Breeze if your lives depended on it what was that thing I said at the start everywhere I turned growing up something I loved was deemed irrelevant or not worth preserving yeah that and you move on it's no big deal you pick another character if you want to play but something is still dead ego maybe who cares about a main I can pick anyone it don't matter none of this matters and that's been my problem ever since I remember Dao mentioning during a stream that he played every character to learn games so that's what I did Smash ultimate came out and I bounced through the whole roster online playing anyone and everything and learning so much that I can pick random against my casual little IRL friend group and have an advantage I don't have a strong sense of identity or emotional investment in any of the characters though I love the game I adore the systems but the characters are now tools at some point I think I dropped that simple joy I'm not even sure why I play fighting games really part of me thought when I was a lot younger that maybe maybe I would just be good and love it and have an identity in that something to hang my metaphorical hat on right but I've got YouTube now and I cook okay I'm into lots of little Hobbies I don't have enough time for so fighting games are just another kind of game maybe it's not some spiritual loss at all just getting older taking stock moving on that said I think it's still a small kind of ego death Street figh 6 was wild I haven't been as excited for a game in years finally it'll be like 2012 again I'll hop online and take names this is going to be sick well I got a month of play anyway but it's not cuz the game is bad the street fighter 6 was awesome flashy bold it retained core characters and packed charismatic newcast members that feel like they've always been part of the game I'm seriously impressed by the title from top to bottom but I had an interesting run with the thing at first I was going to man couldn't pick a main at first glance but o sh check that Swan kick that's cool look at that damage bro oh sh so I ran Mano up to Silver before facing some stiff resistance and having a crisis you know as one does I picked up Blanca because he was doing pretty well and people seemed annoyed by the guy and got Platinum okay sweet but he's boring for me and frankly I was doing the same thing I did in four it looking for easy wins with something people couldn't handle so I land on Kimberly right makes sense she's got got the style the six moves to make dudes Rage Quit after a couple Mix-Ups she's cool but she doesn't do a lot of damage and I can't seem to diversify my game plan no matter how much I keep going so even at plat people are still out maneuvering me after the initial storm last I went Rasheed because he was DLC so I was sure he'd be borked and he seemed cool just like Kim but I eventually had to get back to work for the show and I was tapped stopped playing regularly by the end of that first month and never really went back what I didn't expect in all of this was Ryu for my whole life Ryu was cren I know I know listen I'm a hipster I'm two up my own ass I have to play something that stands out at least somewhat and Ryu was built for everyone inoffensive dude in ghee design the core moves that give Street Fighter its core identity an enormous player base he's common and still all through these various attempts at maning different characters I kept coming back to Ryu in casual games to take stock I wanted to check where I was at if I actually understood the mechanics so I ran a pile of games with the guy even if I was mostly bad Ryu did have something interesting though he's about the same as the older games with a few new tricks Having learned to master himself more thoroughly over the years what really got me though were his wind screens his little lines even his basic lore for the first time in actual years I got invested I felt something for a fighting game character for his character because Ryu finally made sense Ryu is a hardworking disciplined learner always moving forward always ready to face another opponent always owning his skills regardless of upsets and letdowns Ryu just does Ryu I've been through all kinds of real fun stuff these past years on YouTube I've watched my professional career outside of YouTube explode in real time I've been to the absolute depths of personal failure and self-loathing and only managed to pull myself out of it by taking those steps to keep moving trying grinding through it all I like staying active and prioritizing self- Improvement yeah all that drapery was boring when I was a kid because it wasn't exciting or aesthetically pleasing it was the hard ass fact so here's me playing Street Fighter 6 unable to land on a true main to really get improving at the game for real finding room in my once hyperfocused world of vain Avatar selection picking Ryu and finding something like camaraderie in the character sometimes your own reasons for Avatar selection move on you can contain multitudes and eventually once your life snaps into focus it might not be about the drapery but the journey this discussion extends way past fighting games your favorite Dark Souls build weapon a preferred unit in a tactics game even something as innocuous and general as play style are fun to reflect on with regards to personhood and illustrate a unique beauty of the med medium that players are allowed into some games on their own terms in every player choice is a reflection of identity whether it's what is or what could be our identities are compromises between what we believe about ourselves and what others believe about us we can only control how we present and have no true power over how that presentation is perceived I have no idea what your main character says about you that's a question for the player hey it's K bash huge Thanks goes out to my $4 patrons check them out beautiful and double special Thanks goes to my extra generous patrons who are Adam wel mopon all the singularities alpha 42 Andrew reded ar ar waser Aur A8 be skeleton BW Ben M the big papa spr bing bing Doo oo Boingo T against the machine harle Blossom Dante 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Channel: KBash

Views: 53,371

Keywords: kbash, k bash, soulcalibur 2, street fighter 4, street fighter 5, street fighter v, street fighter 6, avatar selection, video essay, ssbm, yun-seong, yunsung, street fighter vega, street fighter claw, street fighter ryu, how to pick a main, how to choose a main, fgc, tier list, street fighter review, street fighter essay, street fighter retrospective, soulcalibur review, soulcalibur essay, soulcalibur retrospective, storytime, soulcalibur ii

Id: 0_p5kOcHDvs

Length: 31min 55sec (1915 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2024