Every good fighting game needs strong rivals to push the protagonists to be stronger, but this case is a bit different.
during his great Tokyo Game Show PresentationCapcom showed off the first few minutes of Street Fighter 6’s World Tour mode, which introduced a new character to the series in Bosch.
After going through the character creator and doing some basic fighting with Luke, this flashy fighter jumps in to challenge the player.
The included cutscenes make it pretty clear that Bosch is destined to serve as the brash rival on the World Tour, which of course raised the question of whether or not he’ll actually be playable.
At least we know it apparently won’t be at launch because Capcom has already shared the 18 characters on the roster at the presentation too, and Bosch wasn’t on that list.
お は ござい ます。 も よろしく お願いいたし ます くん 事 ボシュ くん も よろしく 。。 。。#スト6 #SF6 #カプコンTGS pic.twitter.com/QTQZ9709En
— takayuki-nakayama (@takanakayama) September 16, 2022
However, it’s quite unusual to introduce a new character, especially a rival, in a fighting game and not let you play as them.
Street Fighter 6 appears to be a very different beast compared to the rest of the series with the inclusion of World Tour serving as a single player story mode.
Capcom has dozens of characters they can populate the streets with, but including such a large world to walk around in means a lot of them won’t be the main stars.
Previous trailers have already surfaced to show off notable characters in World Tour who are NPCs like Thrasher from Final Fight and the girl with Chun-Li who is probably Li-Fen.
So now it looks like Bosch will probably end up playing a similar role in SF6, and that’s backed up by him using Luke’s moveset in the footage with nothing really unique.
We suspect that means Bosch will travel and learn from different teachers, like the player’s custom fighter, and get stronger as the story progresses.
That doesn’t mean the new kid will never join the big leagues, though, as SF6 is sure to receive a mountain of DLC for years to come.
If Bosch becomes quite popular with players as well, that will also increase his chances of making the roster.
It’s going to be very interesting to see how many characters Street Fighter 6 will include in World Tour now.
