Wolf Hawkfield revealed for New Virtua Fighter Project, and a new focus on storytelling

With New Virtua Fighter Project still deep in development, the team at Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio shared a new glimpse of what they’ve been working on, and revealed a returning character.

Wolf Hawkfield is back, and he’s sporting a whole new look, which Art Director Ryo Shibasaki digs into.

There’s not much more news about the next Virtua Fighter, but Producer Riichiro Yamad talked more about how this game will delve much deeper into the characters and their backstories, including returning legends from previous entries. It won’t be origin stories, necessarily, but will reveal some of the motivations that they have for fighting, what happened to them between games, and tie in with the character designs in general. This is all something that Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio wanted to bring into the series,

Art Director Ryo Shibasaki also spoke about how Hawk’s design is that of a wrestler who still performs, evolving his look to be cool and with a “heel” atmosphere to him. He definitely looks the part, with the ammo belt belt, the heavy tattooing, and the older looking face and skin that really gives that ageing wrestling star vibe.

Prior to this, the last we saw of the game was Akira and Sarah Bryant going fighting, and with a pre-production video in January, a pair of Akira battling.

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has become a lynchpin studio for Sega over the last few years. You’ll know them best as the studio behind the hugely popular Yakuza/Like A Dragon series, but as broad as that series has become, they’ve also handled recent Super Monkey Ball games as well. Given that Yakuza’s own combat was a hand-me-down from Shenmue, which was in turn fed a branch off from Virtua Fighter, this makes them the perfect team to take the series’ reins.

Elsewhere, the team confirmed that, after a well-received revamp of the last game for PC, Virtua Fighter 5 REVO is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2.