I don’t know a thing about Tekken, and I’ve never cared to learn. I didn’t play any fighting games when I was a kid, I’ve never had the patience to sit down and ‘git gud’🎀 at a game (something fighting games often require if you don’t want to get destroyed), and the majority of Japanese franchises passed me by because I didn’t have any friends or family who played games to point me in that direction. Online jokes around Bandai Namco’s apparent obliviousness to announce some CBT to get you in the mood for Tekken 8 was the extent of my knowledge. O🐲r, at least, it was up until last night, when I saw that Bandai Namco had, for some reason, gotten Brian Cox to feature in a five-minute explainer of Tekken’s complicated lore.
In the video, aptly titled ‘TEKKEN 8 – “Story So Far” with Brian Cox’, Cox explains that the series revolves around three men in the Mishima family: Heihachi Mishima, his son Kazuya, and Kazuya’s son Jin. Each of these men have a D𒀰evil Gene, which lets them turn into winged devils. Over the years, they fight a lot and throw each other off of cliffs. It’s a long, drawn-out, confusing story about men struggling for power. And, of course, Brian Cox is a wonderful candidate to tell it.
If you’re anything like me, you recognise Brian Cox from his role as the patriarch of the Roy family in the award-winning, cri♎tically-lauded, extremely good HBO drama series Succession. His character, Logan Roy, is a narcissistic, power-hoarding old man who manipulates, lies to, and sabotages everyඣbody around him for his benefit, including his children, who are devastatingly emotionally damaged in their own unique ways because of the way he treats them - Tekken fans tell me this basically makes him Heihachi. Logan Roy is an iconic, timely portrayal of what it means to be so stuck in the power struggle that you see your own children as a threat. It makes some sense for Brian Cox to be telling this 🍒story, assuming you know all that background.
I lo𝄹ve Succession. I am a Succession evangelist. One of my favourite meme Instagram profiles is .
It’s also great timing for the release of this video considering it’s currently awards season. Cox has just won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Logan Roy, and has received his third Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for the role. He’s had a long and illustrious career as a screen and stage actor, but his turn on Succession has made him ꦓa household name.
But this does also seem to be part of a growing trend of actors and celebrities getting involved in gaming events and marketing when they have little connection to the industry. You only really need to look at The Game Awards to see that – developers were given less time to accept their awards than celebrity presenters were to awkwardly banter with the audience before annouᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚncing the winners. Contemporary cinema darling T🌠imothee Chalamet handed out the Game of the Year award, for God’s sake, and his only real gaming cred is that he used to mod Xbox controllers. Having celebrity actors give out awards at TGA because they dabble in gaming-related hobbies is like having Phil Spencer hand out an Oscar because he acts in l♉ocal theatre.
Nonetheless, it’s funny and charming to see Brian Cox explain video game lore to me, and it’s effective marketing – it worked on me, after all. Of all the possible options, including streamers, developers, and actors attached to the game, Cox has the most cultural cache and is thematically fitting, when push comes to shove. But it worries me a little that developers are turning to other industries to find that gravitas and shock factor because we don’t seem to have the equivalent in gaming. The industry just isn’t taken seriously enough, so we turn to Hollywood for our surprise narrators. Brian Cox, I love you, but I wish we had better options, if just for the𝔍🎃 sake of the gaming industry.
Congratulations To Barbie For Winning The Most P✤ointles𝔍s Golden Globe Award
We’re just handing out participation trophies📖 now, huh?
