So V is supposed to bridge the gap between IV and III, but what does that even mean? I played through most of characters' stories in IV, but most of them aren't related and contradict other stories. Is there a list of characters I should play through IV with to get the general idea of the story? Is one story considered canon?

I haven't really played much III, but I do have it. Could you recommend a list of characters that I should see the endings for to know what's going on.

Is there anything I could watch could get an idea of the stories from these games? I have fond memories of the JCVD movie, but I think they took a liberty or two with the story. I think the more recent stuff is more of a different story or am I wrong?

Just search in youtube, you'll find videos all cut together that include the anime movies and the ultra stuff.

Most of the story is done through comics and anime stuff external to the games.

It's all pretty dumb stuff but if you care enough you could look for that or just hit up the wiki.

Ryu in a forest.

You should probably just read a wiki.

Apparently Sagat is a good guy. It's kinda awesome.

I was thinking last night about how there was like 50 different releases of SFIV and how cool it would be if there was a separate release for SFV that had MK like story mode. It will never happen though.

I kind of started going through the process of figuring it all out. It's not worth it. Juri seems kind of neat though.

@xanadu: Well you're in luck, SFV is in fact getting a story mode like that, in June via a free update.

@belegorm: Oh wow I had no idea about that.

Ponder my... fist?

Y'see, Ken escaped The Patriot's protection after he was told about having recessive genes ...

@shindig said:

And snuck off to Africa to lead a band of child soldiers before being captured by M. Bison and his PMC.

You guys joke, but have you seen Rolento's backstory? Dude is pretty much Big Boss. Madness.

Oh boy. I just watched a whole bunch of the dumpster fire that was the SFIV story so my expectations were pretty low, but holy moley is SFV's story mode hilariously bad. It's so bad I can't tell if it's intentionally bad or that they just decided two weeks ago that they should probably put something in.

Ken's entire story arc is Ken heads to party, Ken talks about rivalry with Ryu, flashback Ryu fight, Bouncer Birdie thinks Ken is crashing the party, Ken and Bouncer Birdie fight, Karin apologizes for Bouncer Birdie and makes things better by having a fight.

Not to mention everything is 1 round, braindead difficulty, and you start will full meter. They also couldn't even bother giving everyone three fights.

Yeah, pretty much everything to this game except the actual fighting is garbage.

6 out of the 9 stories I played in about 35 minutes were practically Identical
I want to be master of X.

You should probably wait for the full-on story mode to drop. The character ones have always been fairly "canon-agnostic," and most of these, in fact, seem to take place during, or even prior to, Alpha via flashbacks.

One of my favorite story revelations from a wiki was that Evil Ryu was actually an alternate-universe version where Ryu killed Sagat at the end of SFI with the Dragon Punch.

Yeah, it seems the best parts about the story modes are the art, which reminds me of old-school Capcom more than anything, and the character teases, which I will now spoil. Apart from the already-announced dudes and dudettes (Including a tease of Juri's new getup), there's a very strong hint towards Oro, and Sakura straight up makes a cameo. I'm betting Rashid's butler Azam is playable at some point, too. Dude looks cool enough.

@starvinggamer: Yes! Thank you! I had just realized that it looked a lot like MVC2, but I didn't know who did the art for that until you told me. Holy shit, this dude is prolific!

@theindomitablesnowman: Art is by Bengus, the Capcom artist responsible for all the amazing MvC2 illustrations if you remember those.

I find this amusing as someone who loves the SF series like a religion.

Yeah the stories are not that great.But they serve more like a setup to what happens in the actual story in a few month's.Hopefully.I'm going to play through all of them just to get a sense of how everyone plays.