Bandai Namco and the team behind Tekken 7 revealed their plans for the fighting game's second season of content, with the most surprising addition being the inclusion of The Walking Dead's Negan as a character. The announcement, along with an accompanying trailer, came after the grand finals for Tekken 7 concluded at major fighting game tournament Evo 2018.
Tekken series director Katsuhiro Harada was in attendance at Evo, which is usually held in Las Vegas annually. Harada teased several returning veterans from the series for season 2, before revealing the unconventional new challenger. Expect to see Anna Williams and Lei Wulong make their grand return, the first two of a promised six new characters for the new season.
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Negan, as played by the scenery-chewing Jeffrey Dean Morgan, might currently be locked up in AMC's The Walking Dead, but the sadistic leader of the Saviors will roam free to fight as he likes in Tekken 7. Negan's dialogue during Bandai Namco's Tekken trailer tease echoes his first TV appearance, displaying his unique blend of intimidation and gleefulness. The trailer fails to show a full character model of Negan in-game, but does tease viewers with a silhouette of what clearly looks and sounds like Morgan. Players will soon find out whether or not the competitors of the King of the Iron Fist Tournament are ready to contend with Negan's barbed wire-covered baseball bat, Lucille.
While Negan is a left-field choice for the Tekken series, Tekken 7 is already known for having a couple of oddball guest characters. Fighting game characters Akuma and Geese Howard from Street Fighter and Fatal Fury, respectively, are guest fighters in the game. But a more unconventional guest character came in the form of Noctis from the Japanese role-playing game Final Fantasy XV. Of course, the fighting game genre has proven to be prone to gimmicky guest characters: Injustice 2 was graced with the presence of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Mortal Kombat series has hosted horror movie icons like Freddy Kruger and Jason Voorhees, and the appearance by Yoda and Darth Vader in Soul Calibur IV remains a piece of head-scratching history.
What does make the addition of Negan extra strange, however, is the character's history of brutal violence. Using the aforementioned weapon known as Lucille, Negan has violently murdered Walking Dead staples like Glenn and Abraham, and the results were graphic. Negan is also known for his foul language, more so in the comics than in the basic cable television show. Negan would have to be significantly toned down to fit in with the somewhat cheesy Tekken series, especially when compared to the Mortal Kombat franchise, where characters like the Predator are free to wreak all the bloody havoc they desire. Players will have to find out for themselves how Negan turned out when season 2 of Tekken 7 becomes available for download at some point in the future.
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Source: Bandai Namco
