Tekken 8 DLC will see an old favorite rise from the dead

If you missed the franchise’s legendary villain during your battle for Tekken 8 achievements, we have some great news: Bandai Namco has announced that Heihachi Mishima is coming to Tekken 8 later this year. The legendary character will join the roster as the next DLC character for the Xbox fighting game sometime in Fall 2024.

Heihachi Mishima is coming to Tekken 8 as DLC

Shortly before the Tekken 8 tournament concluded at EVO 2024 this past weekend, Bandai Namco treated fans to a special announcement, revealing that the “story is far from over” in its latest addition to the popular fighting franchise. Heihachi Mishima will return as a DLC character later this year as part of Tekken 8 Season 1, joining Eddie Gordo and Lidia Sobieska as post-launch fighters. Following his return, Bandai Namco will also release a new free story chapter featuring all three new fighters.

Canonically, Heihachi Mishima is believed to be dead after being attacked by his son Kazuya in Tekken 7, so it will be interesting to see how Bandai brings the fan-favorite back to life. In a recent interview with IGN, Tekken 8 executive producer Katsuhiro Harada said that Bandai Namco originally planned to kill off Heihachi in Tekken 7 because they “wanted to show that sort of final conclusion, and he seemed like he was going to die at that point.” However, since Tekken 8 came out, the team “kind of felt like the players missed him too. So we did, too, of course. So it was decided later on that we would do that.”

In the same interview, Tekken series director Kohei Ikeda gave a few details about Heihachi’s gameplay. “As you can imagine, it’s still too early to give a lot of details about his character, but to give some hints, he’s had a very powerful playstyle throughout the series, so we tried to emulate that in Tekken 8,” Ikeda hinted. “So the focus is on that. But if you also saw the story hints in the footage about the monks and what he has to do with them, maybe that will also determine some of his movesets.”

There was also bad news out of EVO 2024 for Xbox fans, as Capcom announced SNK Vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos for all platforms except Xbox.