Heidern’s placement in the KOF15 roster was pivotal. Everyone and their cat believed Heidern would lead a team, arguably a 2nd Ikari squad with Whip and a returning or new character such as Adelheid. It made no other sense. Heidern was on the KOFXV poster, and fans considered the possibility of teaming up with Isla and Delores (her name arguably leaked by a foreign language interview on the site) but this was quickly disregarded as it meant very little sense. The discussions continued, and frankly this was the biggest discussion point on social media, the second being Ash’s team and whether Maxima would remain with K’. Then the announcement dropped. Heidern was not only with Isla and Delores to make Team Rivals, but was also not team leader. This caused a load of theories to rupture and explode and SNK should be congratulated on the order of reveals so far because now nobody has any real idea on who the last team is and this discourse will not stop for a good while yet.
I did say I would like to hear Heidern’s explanation for this because the idea simply stank. Heidern the Ikari war veteran, who went toe-to-toe with Rugal, and then worked with his son to launch a fleet to investigate a time-space anomaly (which never happened, good luck explaining those expenses to your superiors), etc etc, was now following some punk ass kid and a mystical and hot booba lady. So when the plot dropped, I dove in. Boy was I disappointed. And yet, I had to resign myself to the fact that it made sense. Spoilers ahead so make sure you read the plot before continuing.
By the way, the SNK website takes way too long to load, heavy with graphic elements, but it certainly looks snazzy.
So, Heidern agreed to let Isla lead, it was the only condition on which she would enter the KOF tournament. Right. Nothing said about Delores, like, what, who is this lady? She’s up to speed with everything, even though it seems right now that she in fact was already dead and certainly knows Kukri. It’s likely that the story had to be trimmed at this point as players probably don’t have that much of an attention span, who has time to even read more than one paragraph these days? Either way it’s intriguing at least, annoying at worst, creating more buzz at best. I still don’t like it but I can grudgingly accept it, much like Heidern did himself.
So now Heidern’s placement is done, we’re at the point where we still have one more team to reveal plus the questions over whether Ash will have a recycled team or something new. Oda stated that there are two more surprises on the way and this devilish comment throws everything up into the air.
The fan questions:
Is Kim out?
Is Maxima or Angel in?
Is Kukri a team leader?
The real question is how much is SNK going to recycle. What about Geese? Geese is always interested in new power; in the manga he even managed to take Verse’s power for his own. Perhaps he’s done with it. Now if there are two more surprises then we can imagine Elizabeth will return to accompany Ash, and alongside Kukri, as she paid him to help locate Ash, from KOF14’s ending. The second surprise is really anyone’s guess and will probably come last!
How to shatter all expectations?
If they reveal Angel next, Maxima fans wills start crying.
If they reveal Kula, speculation still continues.
If they reveal Mature or Vice, Rugal fans will go crazy but if they don’t reveal Rugal, there will be a huuuuge disappointment.
If they reveal Oswald or Gang Il or any of team South American, fans will be happy but it will not create a buzz imo.
If they reveal Hein it will start speculation as to whether he betrayed Geese but if Billy comes next then the last reveal is obvious.
If they reveal Kim next, it still creates a buzz because it could be a billion characters that team up with him such as Chang, Choi, Gang Il or any of the Fatal Fury roster (including Garou) or even some nutty mix up team. Frankly I just cannot see a KOF without Kim, if only as a Korean fanbase representative so I’ll bet on that. And as I’ve said before, it’s still shaky, because a lot of these characters can go up as DLC, especially the pre-order DLC, which seems to be a set of three, which means either a team or a mix of characters that didn’t make the roster such as Daimon; the most sellable packs would be one new character, one less popular and one popular character, eg Daimon, Alice and new character.
I don’t know why they don’t want to call these season passes, it seems to me that DLC packs just feel like random addons while Season Passes give a sense of future plans and development.
Ok here are my new bets:
Kim + new character + Gang Il
K’ Maxima Kula
Ash + Kukri + Elizabeth
Reveal order: Kula, Kim, Liz, Gang Il, Maxima, new character.
To really shatter expectations:
GEESE RUGAL KRAUSER
What do you think?
btw if SNK didn’t listen to polls, big oops coming