Jumping back in the conversation for a moment, let me put some words in my own mouth -
We knew Eyedol would come back in S3 before we started S3. It wasn’t iffy or unconfirmed- our plan was to have the entire KI 1/2 arcade roster back by S3.
From Ken: Eyedol in KI arcade was built in 3 days, so there was not a lot of deep thought put into his design. Ken thinks it was cheap boss and while that was fun for the time, he doesn’t consider Eyedol anywhere close to a quality character in terms of fighting game characters. “Not our best work” is an appropriate way to say it.
From me: I was totally honest in finding original Eyedol to be “goofy”. While I’m a huge fan of Ray Harryhausen and his work, Eyedol seemed to be drawn from the later Simbad films wherein all the creatures got goofy, not like Spinal, who was closer to early Harryhausen work and awesome in focus.
Most of the team at DH and IG also found Eyedol’s original form pretty silly.
We saved Eyedol for last because, as I’ve said, we needed time to figure out how to “un-goofy” him from his original form. The split head concept was what I believed would satisfy the bi-cyclops aspect of the original while also adding a ton to his backstory and keeping him out of the typical tropes that two-headed creatures fall into.
Nostalgia is a great thing, but we can’t lean too heavily on it, especially for a series that was dormant for 20 years. Keeping Eyedol looking the same for the new version wasn’t an option for us (that’s why we do retro costumes) because times have changed since KI first released, and the old Eyedol wasn’t going to fit in the world we’re building with KI’s lore.
As for why Cinder doesn’t have an ultimate yet while Kilgore does, it’s because Cinder’s needs to be really special as we already have two “toasting” ultimates, and didn’t want to rush to a “he burns the opponent up” one. As the guy who wrote Cinder’s trailer and established his new persona and attitude (remember when Cinder took over the KI Twitter? Guess who that was), he means a lot to me, and that means I wanted time to make sure he got a really unique one when his turn comes around.
So if you’re looking for someone to blame for that, I’m right here. Come at me, bro.