Tifa? I barely knew her! Final Fantasy 16’s Clive will be the first guest character to land in Tekken 8, whether you like it or not

There’s a long legacy of guest characters in fighting games. And the variation in quality between guests is as huge as the list is long – the tradition deals the rough with the smooth, to be honest. In Tekken alone, we’ve had Gon from Masashi Tanaka’s manga (a farting dinosaur), Negan from The Walking Dead (a boring fart), and Akuma from Street Fighter (a tough old fart).

But Tekken 8 launched without any of that. Though there was a pretty decent amount of content on-disc when the game actually launched, producer Katsuhiro Harada and his team of developers didn’t package in any licensed characters. And that’s because, it turns out, they were saving it all for later.

At The Game Awards 2024, Geoff Keighley hosted a big announcement that is liable to make some fans happy… and others pretty darn angry. So, what’s the news? Clive Rosfiled from Final Fantasy 16 is coming to Tekken 8 as the final Season One DLC character. And why are people angry? Well, because they weren’t expecting someone quite so… new.

For the past year or so, people have been clamouring for Final Fantasy 7’s Tifa so much that even Harada himself had to weigh in and talk about it. “We all know she is attractive and I understand that,” he tweeted some 10 months ago. “But as yet we have not decided anything about guest characters etc.”

Fast-forward to late 2024 and it seems that Harada and Bandai Namco did indeed liase with Square Enix about all things Final Fantasy… but the chips didn’t exactly land where many fans would have wanted. And the noise hasn’t exaclty died down yet, either – simply search the words Tifa and Tekken together on either Twitter or BlueSky and you’ll see what I’m on about.

But, oh well, right? She’s not coming. We’ll have to deal with Clive instead – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it? Noctis was a pretty good addition to Tekken 7, even if a lot of people did question why he was allowed to bring a sword (or, swords) to a fist-fight. That criticism is moot, here, though, because Tekken 8 introduced Victor – and he’s got a freakin’ gun, for Christ’s sake.

If you want to see what Clive’s about for yourself, and perhaps mentally weigh up whether Tifa would have been a better choice after all, check out the trailer below.

This isn’t the first time Bandai Namco has caused controversy with its Tekken 8 DLC plans. Back in October, with the release of Heihachi, the developer had to renege on its plans to sell the veteran fighter’s stage outside of the season pass after fans began boycotting the game and sinking its Steam review score.

Clive will be available in Tekken 8 xxx.