KI4 Getting Announced at E3 2019, Release in 2020 before EVO?

That would be interesting to see Sabrewulf walking up right wearing a lab coat and talking to TJ Combo and examining a dead stalker to examine how it died.

Of course they’d have to keep riptor from finding out otherwise she’d kill everyone.

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I’d be surprised if they didn’t reuse a lot of animation assets from the game. That’s a lot of work that really wouldn’t benefit anyone to see redone. So while they might improve some of the wonkier animations and add new ones, there’s very little reason to develop new animations for things like Jago’s low kicks, or even autodoubles (assuming the combo system stays intact). Maybe I’m wrong but reusing animations is pretty universal at this point.

I would expect new art, models and outfits for characters. That is IF there is any work being done at all - for which I don’t see any evidence.

As far as the developer, there are any number of available developers with as good (or far better) pedigrees than Double Helix when they started work on Season 1. So it will depend on who is available and willing to do it and success will depend on how invested they are in the property and how well they work with the MS team.

As far as Iron Galaxy, I would be thrilled to see them work on a new KI. But there’s certainly no indication that they are. And I think people wonder about whether MS would choose them, but they would also have to want to work with MS again. Noticeably, IG continues to churn out product in collaboration with other publishers and developers, but nothing with MS. Maybe that is meaningless. But I haven’t heard any strong statements from them about what a pleasure it was to work with the MS team etc. that would make me think they would necessarily jump at the chance.

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Well you never no. I’d be surprised if they were successful and reusing some animations for models completely made from the ground up personally.

One thing that does seem to make me think that maybe something could possibly in the pipeline is that we’ve heard absolutely no news at all. I mean typically if a developer isn’t working on a project, they’ll just come out and say it isn’t happening, especially if they have a vocal fanbase that could cause a PR nightmare if they didn’t shoot them down…not always, but typically. But to the best of my knowledge nothing has been said one way or the other about a KI sequel. Even with the #BringbackKI campaign blowing up Twitter, all we got from MS was silence.
I dunno, maybe I’m reading too much wishful thinking into the nothing we’re getting, but it just seems to me like the quiet is a little too quiet, you know? Like it’s NDA quiet.

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Anything is possible, but MS rarely says they are definitively not working on something. And despite having a history of announcements way too far in advance of games that are then seriously delayed or cancelled they continue to announce things way in advance. Look at Battletoads. The “moment” for a new battletoads came and went and right at the tail end of it, MS announced the new game. And now it’s been two years and there’s not even a release date.

I WANT to be optimistic about a new KI, and I would be thrilled to be wrong. But I’m afraid if people are expecting a new KI to launch concurrently with Scarlett they are going to be really disappointed.

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I mean, the darn thing needs SOMETHING to launch with besides Halo. They need to cover a few different markets. Phill Spencer is smarter then that.

This is a far cry from saying they will launch with a new KI though. And I don’t see much real evidence that a console needs a fighting game - especially an exclusive fighting game, to be successful. Maybe stockholders like to see that, but it doesn’t seem to have much impact on sales.

Here is my prediction - not what I’m hoping for but what I predict. The Scarlett will launch with a couple of spectacular new games and a launch lineup of 90% Xbox One games that are given graphical improvements on the more powerful hardware. On the subject of Phil Spencer he has already tweeted that he has a Scarlett dev kit at home as his primary console. We know it’s backward compatible and I highly doubt he’s playing unfinished games on it. He’s using it to play Xbox One games. I suspect we will all be doing the same if we choose to make the upgrade. Even last gen the best selling launch game was CoD - which was simultaneously available on 360.

As far as Phil, I have no doubt that he’s smart. I also know he SAYS all the right things. But when I look at MS and their first party games I don’t see much evidence that anything has changed. Xbox Live gold and gamepass are the best things MS has going for them. Frankly, I don’t think the next gen systems are going to launch with a big splash for either MS or Sony. Does anyone think a graphically improved Last of Us 2 isnt going to be the big launch game for PS5?

I digress. But again, I would just tell you that you can’t just think a new KI is going to launch with the new system because of your logic based arguments. It’s really just wishful thinking. And how many “I think they will announce the next KI at (insert gaming event)!” threads have come and gone on this forum?

You have a tendency to treat argument as some sort of advocacy so I just want to be clear - I would love to see a launch KI for Scarlett. Quite frankly it’s about the only reason I could see myself buying one. But there is less than zero evidence that MS is working on a new KI game, let alone one ready for launch. Does that mean it’s impossible? Of course not. But don’t talk yourself into thinking it’s going to happen just because it makes sense to you. You’re likely to be disappointed.

The launch lineup for the scarlet can not be like the games revealed at E3 this year. My heart can’t Handle that much disappointment again.

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My rule is hope for the best, expect the worst :man_shrugging:t5:

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Well it might be a possibility, if the new KI will run on Unreal Engine, Unreal is a property of Epic games, so yeah, It MIGHT BE a possibility if it goes EpiCENT (Epic/Tencent) exclusive. Well if I were the head leader of the dev team, I would change my mind into using Unity Engine.

And I’m sorry for the necro.

Microsoft owns the Killer Instinct IP. Regardless of what software engine they use, it isn’t going to release as an Epic store exclusive. He was making a joke. And that’s not how software engine licensing agreements work.

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Wonder if a new KI will be shown at E3 this year (assuming E3’s not cancelled, which feels about 50/50 at this point).

This year feels so strange for games. On one hand, Sony seems to be holding everything back, at least until Last of Us 2 comes out (or so speculation from industry folks seems to be indicating), while MS clearly HAS to blow people away on software in order to regain at least a portion of the players they lost to Sony in the current generation, but with events likely to be getting cancelled left and right and the fact that MS has an oddly packed spring and summer in terms of exclusives…

Like I said, this year feels a bit odd. For all we know, Series X and PS might even get delayed due to the corona virus. Everything just feels very up in the air right now, though I’m sure it’ll all sort itself out in short order.

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It’s been a few years since active development ceased on the game right? Feels like about the right time to bring out at least a teaser stating it’s return, even if it eventually releases in late 2021. Miss being hype over this game.

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It’s certainly possible, but I’m not holding my breath. I agree with you that MS needs to show something. Right now I feel like their ads for the new system are like the original Infiniti commercials from the 90s - with crashing waves that don’t even mention it’s a car advertisement. Senua 2 was a weird choice and isn’t a good flagship game for the system launch in my opinion. The graphics are good but it’s a pretty limited appeal.

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Somewhat related, I had an interesting dream two nights ago where I was designing the first Season of Killer Instinct 4.

No idea where that came from, but basically the game was going to follow a seasonal structure mirroring the previous game.

Story-wise, the game was going to pick up where the comic series left off, with the Coven being the primary antagonist faction, secretly supported by Ultratech. It was going to be all cloak and dagger stuff, not a full scale war, and the Season’s characters were going to be key characters from the comic series.

So it had Jago, Kim Wu, and Tusk fighting against the Coven, Mira, the Czar (the Season’s new character) obviously for the Coven, and Fulgore representing Ultratech’s presence as the launch characters. Kan-Ra and Aganos were the two post-launch releases.

The Story Mode would have been an arcade ladder style, with Fulgore being the sub-boss and the Czar being the final boss. End result was he gets defeated and either dies/goes into hiding and Mira takes over the Coven by Season’s end, but she wasn’t going to cooperate with Ultratech and wanted to be more openly aggressive than the Czar, exposing Ultratech’s involvement and setting up Season 2 to have a more anti-Ultratech focus.

Interesting because I don’t usually dream about things like this.

No idea on what the gameplay design was like though.

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Might be an interesting story.

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