New Tekken project teased at tournament finals

After an exciting Grand Finals of Tekken 7, a brief two-second clip played, featuring a new digital render of one of the fighters: Kazuya.

The Tekken 7 Grand Finals were held at Evo 2022, the world’s largest fighting game tournament, this past weekend. The end of the tournament was punctuated with a short teaser featuring a high-resolution render of Kazuya, one of the fighters.

With an exciting Grand Finals between DRX Knee and FATE KHAN, representing the countries of South Korea and Pakistan, the tournament was a welcome capstone for the popular fighting game. After Knee took the title with a wonderful display of defence and sidestepping, a brief announcement video began to play.

Tekken 7 was one of the most popular games played this year at Evo. Picture: Getty Images

The video showed the iconic scene from Tekken 1, where Kazuya carries his father, Heihachi, and tosses him off of a cliff before panning and showing Kazuya smiling. The original PlayStation 1 graphics were cut suddenly towards a brand new, high-resolution Kazuya that hasn’t been in any previous Tekken works. Alongside the new render was the text “Get Ready.”

While it is unconfirmed whether this is Tekken 8 or another Tekken game entirely, the short two-second render was enough to send the crowd into a frenzy. Interestingly, not only did the official Tekken account retweet the cryptic announcement but so did the official Game Awards account.

GET READY. @TEKKENpic.twitter.com/6tmtqANkBi

— The Game Awards (@thegameawards) August 8, 2022

Tekken 7 hasn’t seen any major updates in over a year but recently confirmed that a free battle update would be coming soon, bringing with it balance adjustments for the cast of fighters. The global finals of the Tekken World Tournament will take place in Amsterdam on February 4th, 2023. It is likely we will see more information about future Tekken titles at the Game Awards, which will be held on December 9th.

Evo, short for Evolution Championship Series, is the pinnacle of tournaments for fighting video games. Players from all over the world fly in to compete on the grand stage, and this year’s tournament marked a return to in-person events, drawing a massive crowd. Alongside the fantastic matches, several announcements were made, ranging from improved network connections being added to older titles, to new characters announced for upcoming games.

Written by Junior Miyai on behalf of GLHF.