How Heihachi lives on in Tekken 8, even after death

When Heihachi Mishima was revealed to be Tekken 8’s next DLC character, I was both surprised and not surprised. The series antagonist was killed off in the previous entry, Tekken 7, by being thrown into a volcano, but miraculously survived somehow. The only thing stronger than death is DLC, I suppose.

Heihachi’s return comes with a new story mode called Unforgotten Echoes, which details what the other DLC characters — Eddy Gordo and Lidia Sobieska — have been up to during the events of Tekken 8. Thankfully, Unforgotten Echoes is a free update, so players can try out the DLC characters without having to pay for them.

Digital Trends played the first five chapters of Unforgotten Echoes and sat down with producer Michael Murray to discuss why Heihachi was brought back, how he differs in Tekken 8 compared to his previous iterations, and how characters are balanced compared to the rest of the roster.

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Bringing back bad

It seems like Bandai Namco couldn’t let go of Heihachi. Both fans and the developers missed him, so it only made sense for him to come back. At first, director Katsuhiro Harada told the team to make Heihachi “look very dead,” and they actually went into the process with the intention of killing him off.

“But then Harada was like, ‘What? I didn’t say kill him!’” Murray tells Digital Trends. “I guess he meant just to make it look realistic without actually killing him. So a lot of the fun of Tekken 8 was trying to devise a way to bring him back from the dead. So we really did intend it at first.”

Heihachi comes with a new gameplay mechanic called Warrior’s Instinct, which changes the properties of some of his attacks and adds a sinister reddish aura around him. In this powered up state, he can deal more recoverable health damage and has access to more