Heihachi was revealed to be the next character in Tekken 8 back in EVO 2024. With the fan-favorite making a return in Version 1.08, Bandai Namco gave us a chance to try Heihachi ahead of his launch later this year.
Aside from trying out Heihachi along with the new story content though, we also got to have a chat with Tekken 8 producer Michael Murray via a roundtable interview alongside other SEA games media. There, Murray shared a lot of intriguing tidbits about Heihachi coming back to life.
One of the things we asked was why Heihachi came back in the first place. After all, Tekken 7 showed Heihachi’s death.
It turns out that while the Tekken team truly did intend Heihachi’s death in Tekken 7 to be definitive, the game’s 30th anniversary had them rethink their plans for the Mishima family. Along with the franchise’s major milestone, Katsuhiro Harada’s history and fondness for Heihachi are also key factors in bringing him back.
Here is Murray’s complete explanation of the decision behind why they are adding Heihachi to the Tekken 8 roster:
“Harada is a big fan of Heihachi. When he used to organize tournaments back when he was a young guy and was in the arcades, they actually called him the Heihachi of Shinjuku, because all the Japanese players have, like, a location and then character name, right? So, he’s always had this special fondness for the character.
That said, in Tekken 7, when we were doing the story mode for that game, we really had to portray that story arc, and the Mishimas had been trying to kill each other for so long, we really had to have some kind of final conclusion. So, Harada told the director, Nakatsu and myself, okay, I know it’s not going to be fun, but you have to kill Heihachi. It has to be done. And so Nakatsu (aka director Kohei Ikeda) and I worked really hard to make it look convincing.
Then we were talking about Tekken 8. He’s not on the base roster. Obviously, the focus was more on this mysterious character, Reina. But then with the 30th anniversary coming up, we were like, how can we celebrate this without Heihachi, one of the most iconic characters in the franchise, and Harada was like, Well, you know, I didn’t really mean kill him. He was like, you and Nakatsu were a bit too convincing.”
The 30th anniversary and Harada’s love for Heihachi explain the why, but what about the how? What exactly was the process like in coming up with the explanation of Heihachi’s return?
That was another question that we hoped Murray would answer. After all, it seemed that Heihachi was well and truly dead given what was shown in 7’s ending. Thankfully, Muray had another interesting story about how they brought back Heihachi story-wise:
“In the past, we’ve always kind of done it quite vaguely when a character appears to disappear, like Jun after being attacked by Ogre, for example, or Heihachi in some of the other times when he’s died. You never really see the final conclusion. But this time, we actually showed it in quite detail for the camera angles, etc. So, there was a lot of discussion.
Because it’s the Tekken team, and because it’s Harada, you know, we always just goof off. And I was like, okay, maybe he was on the floor of the volcano, but we use this drone show where it just looked like he was dead, but it was an illusion, and he was really alive. And so [we thought of] crazy ideas while having fun at the same time. Gradually, we toned it down and we tried to go towards a more believable method. It was quite a lot of fun to try to find a way out of that portrayal that we showed in Teken 7, without that feeling of being kind of rushed or half-assed.”
Having a drone show be the explanation for Heihachi not being dead is hilarious, though it makes sense that the team went with the more “realistic” option of the Tekken Monks being the ones who rescued Heihachi. Sure, some fans may still not be convinced by this reason, but that’s what the new story content aims to explain. Hopefully, it features a satisfying explanation and conclusion as we weren’t able to finish all the chapters in the new story.
Tekken 8 Version 1.08 will be released in Fall 2024 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.