Tekken 7 Dev Diary Focuses on Tekken’s New Original Characters Leroy Smith and Fahkumram

Tekken 7 director Kouhei Ikeda and producer Michael Murray talked about the new original characters, Leroy Smith and Fahkumram.

In the video, director Ikeda talks about how they focused on building the new characters around their martial arts. Producer Murray explains how fans overseas wanted to see more of the actual martial arts part of things. The developers wanted to use powerful, stylish, and well-known martial arts this time out.

Next, they talk about the character design process of Leroy Smith in Tekken 7. Young artists from the Malaysia studio impressed with their work, but the design they ended up using for Leroy stood out from the start.

We also get to see some of the motion-capture work behind his moves. This time they got help from Ip Man’s nephew to make it even more authentic. The motion we saw from Leroy’s reveal trailer at EVO 2019 was actually done with a real wooden dummy they brought to the studio. Furthermore, they also recorded the sound from the master striking the dummy.

Starting at around the 7:30 mark of the video they talk about the next new character Fahkumram. The developers just had one guiding principle for designing the Muay Thai champ: “Make him so intimidating that one look makes you want to turn tail and run.”

Tekken 7 is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The new “My Replay & Tips” feature that helps players through match replays arrives on January 28, 2020.