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The upcoming entry into the Guilty Gear franchise, Guilty Gear Strive, promises to offer a more interesting and engaging single player experience than most fighting games.
Fighting games often struggle to create satisfying solo experiences, with most single player game modes being little more than sequential fights against frustratingly programmed AI opponents. New information about Guilty Gear Strive shows how they plan to make the solo game mode into an interesting and engaging experience.
The single player fighting game problem
Fighting games are almost never built with single player in mind. In many ways, fighting games are the logical followup to the first real arcade game, Pong - something that could only be played with exactly two players. Although somewhat more complex than the 1972 classic, fighting games retained that emphasis on the multiplayer experience.
Even as computers got more complex, and other traditionally multiplayer genres have started to improve upon the single player experience, fighting games have lagged behind. There are a number of techniques fighting games can use to offer a better single player experience, most of which have only recently come to the genre.
To date, the best single player experiences are those which have found ways to eschew the traditional arcade feel. Recent Mortal Kombat entries have tried to craft a character-hopping narrative, while games like Granblue Fantasy Versus have made an entirely separate single player experience.
Arguably, the less a fighting game tries to make single player feel like multiplayer, the better it will stand on its own. AI have historically made poor replacements for human opponents, so there’s no reason in even trying.
How will Guilty Gear Strive account for the single player experience
Guilty Gear Strive seems to be aiming for somewhere in the middle. In Guilty Gear Strive, players will reportedly follow their chosen character’s narrative, and be able to make choices that change the story and fights themselves. For example, one touted feature in Guilty Gear Strive has an AI partner show up to help out during a tough fight.
It seems that Guilty Gear Strive will try to wrap players up in its narrative to keep them invested. For players who want to learn the game more directly, Guilty Gear Strive will also feature a mission mode tutorial which teaches players the controls, mechanics, and some basic strategies.
The previous entry in the series, Guilty Gear Xrd, released with one of the best made tutorials for any fighting game, so it’s likely that this one will also be detailed and useful for even the newest of players.
