Apparently Leroy Smith is not a reference to The Last Dragon after all

Tekken 7 will go down as one of the most successful fighting games of this generation — and perhaps all time — in terms of sales and fan reception garnering continuing support for the title long after Bandai Namco had initially planned.

Shacknews recently had the opportunity to interview Tekken's producer, Michael Murray, following the launch of Zafina and the Season 3 update to discuss how the tournament scene and eSports helped the game grow when others have dropped off, what went in to making Leroy Smith, how their team only had plans to do one season of DLC and what to expect of the future of the series.

Due to the switch to Unreal Engine 4, Murray reveals that the team had to essentially remake everything from scratch including Zafina, so everything required extra focus to make sure all of the animations and frames were accurate and balanced for Tekken 7 specifically. They also had to find a way to make the returning fighters just as exciting to fans as Leroy and the previous guests.

"One thing we're always struggling with is we have these really cool guest characters that people love," said Murray via Shacknews "To bring a returning character to try to create that same hype is quite difficult for us. So we did add a new twist. This time she has a special move, as you can see [she has] some Rage Arts and some other animations where she has that Azazel hand, the boss that you fight in Tekken 6."

"One thing we're always struggling with is we have these really cool guest characters that people love. To bring a returning character to try to create that same hype is quite difficult for us" - Michael Murray

We've only seen one trailer so far showing off what Leroy Smith is supposed to look like in game without showing actual gameplay, so Murray was asked about the character's origins and how he'll play.

"The start for [Leroy] was I've been on the Tekken series for quite a long time and there was a lot of longtime fans mentioning how they miss 'real martial arts' being implemented in Tekken," said Murray. " Wing Chun was one that often came up, but we didn't really have a clear vision on how to properly implement that into the game. Until more recently, where the game designers sat down and said 'okay I think we've got a few ideas on how to make this cool.'"

Murray mentions some things you expect from Wing Chun will show up in his move set like the one-inch punch shown in the trailer. When asked about whether Leroy would have parries and counters to go with the teachings of Wing Chun, the producer said that'd be there in some fashion to flow between attacking and parrying at the same time.

The interviewer asked Murray about the similarities of Leroy to the movie The Last Dragon which featured a character named Bruce Leroy and if it was an homage or reference as some had suspected, but the producer claims that to not be the case at all.



A still from the 1985 film The Last Dragon featuring the character Bruce Leroy, Sony Pictures

"The character design was more like another Asian guy doing Kung fu is not something very original," replied Murray. "At the same time we wanted to make a character that our core audience would really love. We wanted to go with a design that looked unique and didn't expect."

Murray reveals that while many fighting game circuits drop off in attendance after the first year, the Tekken World Tour is continuing to grow in popularity even in its third year in attendance and viewership.

"We only had one season of DLC planned when we launched the game. It did well and then people are expecting a season two to support it, so we were in a rush to get all the paperwork in to the company and get everyone on board... It's not planned out as far as it should have been if we had that support from the start"

"We only had one season of DLC planned when we launched the game," said Murray. "It did well and then people are expecting a season two to support it, so we were in a rush to get all the paperwork in to the company and get everyone on board... It's not planned out as far as it should have been if we had that support from the start."

Murray says that even he's not sure if there will be a Season 4 or not, but he feels that the tournament scene definitely expanded the life span of Tekken 7 much farther than they had initially expected.

After Leroy's release this Winter, we still have one more unannounced character coming to the title's Season Pass 3 though the producer confirmed that this time around it will not be a guest character like Geese, Noctis or Negan. They will release sometime in early 2020 according to Murray, however.

You can check out Michael Murray's full interview with Shacknews in the video below. They also bring up T-Pain's awesome Leroy Smith cosplay which the producer was pleasantly surprised by.

Sent in by Ramusu20.