Things were certainly looking bleak for Heihachi Mishima who, at the end of Tekken 7, was beaten unconscious and plunged into a volcanic lava lake, which should have meant that he was burnt to a crisp in a matter of seconds.
Yet, in Tekken 8 he reappeared like a Jack in the box six months after the launch, more evil than ever before. So, how did this happen, why didn’t he die? In Heihachi’s mini-campaign, we get a rather unlikely explanation of how it happened, and when we recently had the chance to meet Tekken series boss Katsuhiro Harada, he told us that there was a reason why it came to this.
Heihachi was never supposed to die, but director Kohei “Nakatsu” Ikeda and the CG team did a little too good a job of convincing us that the old legend had met his end. More specifically, Harada said:
“Well, you know, originally the idea was to have Heihachi not die per se. But during the development of Tekken 8, I told the director, Kohei “Nakatsu” Ikeda, but also the staff in charge of making the CG movies, et cetera, to make it look convincing, like the actual conclusion to the battle between Kazuya and Heihachi happened. As such, the team, the way they portrayed it, was more convincing than I had originally envisioned. So, it was more… it was always in the plan, to think of a way to convincingly bring him back.”
Tekken 8 is out now for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X. If you want Heihachi, you need to buy him separately for £6.49/€7.99 or invest in one of the game’s more expensive versions; Deluxe Edition or Ultimate Edition.
If you want to read the full interview with Harada you can find it here, and our review of Tekken 8 can be read at this link.