Daizou Nonaka returns to discuss Power Struggle
Hi again everyone, Capcom producer Daizou Nonaka with you once again.
The G1 was incredible! But we’re already onto the next thing, that being Power Struggle on November 7. That’s what I want to talk about today, but first, indulge me with some G1 thoughts.
As you know already, Kota Ibushi is the G1 winner. 35 minutes and 12 seconds, and two Kamigoyes! He talked all along about ‘becoming God’, and ‘not quitting, not backing down, not betraying’, and he lived up to his mantra. I really have no issues with the way he did it at all.
To go into the G1 a little more, I think that A Block this year was all about quality, and B Block was about emotion.
A Block was all about styles making the fights. Okada was using the Money Clip instead of the Rainmaker. Ibushi was in the shape of his life. Jay White was a masterclass of shady tactics. Then you had the suplexes of Jeff Cobb, the strikes of Taichi. It was very ring focused.
B Block tugged on your heart strings more. You had Toru Yano with his early streak and then his run of losses. The questions of Tanahashi’s condition eing answered in fine form, and him getting emotional on the microphone after his main event. There was EVIL as the perfect evil antagonist, YOSHI-HASHI’s string of great performances, and of course, SANADA pulling it back from the brink. Winning every match knowing one more loss would put him out, that was great to see.
And now we have Power Struggle, which is the perfect card to come off G1 and head into. Six singles matches, five of them with clear stakes, one a grudge match. It’s all playing off the results we saw in the G1, and the two events flow perfectly into one another.
The post G1 expansion pack
Furthering an already great experience. These days as service centric videogames have taken hold, the power of downloadable content, DLC, is greater than ever. The player has finished a great game and received a satisfying conclusion, but DLC gives them a chance to sample what lies beyond the end credits.
We in the game creation business create DLC with the aim of satisfying fans who are sad to see their favourite title end, and want to keep enjoying the worlds and characters we’ve created. Some games have DLC still released for them well over a year past their original on sale date; it’s all dependent on how much the fans want, and it’s all about the creators listening to the audience. That’s exactly what NJPW have done with Power Struggle in my opnion.
Every match is an exciting expansion to G1 action, but there is one revenge match that stands out among the others.
Great-O-Khan is the one wrestler on the Power Struggle card who wasn’t in the G1, but he made his presence known on the last night of group action and on the finals night in a tag match. He laid out Okada both nights with the Eliminator iron claw slam, and now here we are with this singles matchup. It’s the perfect balance for a good piece of DLC; expanded content for five matches as we see the next chapters in those stories, and one all new character to change the dynamics of everything.
My expectations for O-Khan are very high indeed, as they are for all of Power Struggle. It’s not just a great standalone card, it’s also even better when you consider it as expansion content for the G1 campaign.
Plus, for one man in particular, it bridges a gap between the g1 and the Tokyo Dome. Kota Ibushi won his back to back G1s, but that isn’t his overruling goal. He said it himself; ‘to really become God’. What does Osaka represent along that journey? After ‘Be the One’ the next step has to be ‘Be the God!’ Don’t take your eyes off Ibushi!
Daizou Nonaka is a veteran videogame producer at Capcom as well as a wrestling fan of 36 years. His favourite match of the G1 was Hiroshi Tanahashi vs SANADA from Yokohama.
