If you walk in fighting game circles you probably already know the deal with Street Fighter 6’s latest DLC character, Street Fighter III: Third Strike protagonist Alex’s story: he was raised alongside his cousin, who he saw as a sister figure, and later married her. Meaning, Alex has a cousin-sister-wife. This is, obviously, weird. And because Street Fighter 6’s latest patch changed absolutely nothing balance-wise (besides buffing JP) the Street Fighter community has had nothing to talk about other than this very odd story decision, to the point that Street Fighter 6 director Takayuki Nakayama has since addressed it and even dropped the first ever “lore patch” to remove Alex’s incest subplot.
Of course, this change brings its own set of problems. Namely, Patricia (Alex’s cousin-sister-wife) was actually an important part of Alex’s background, and a romance between the two coming out of Street Fighter III: Third Strike isn’t unreasonable as they were merely childhood friends there. But Street Fighter 6, under Nakayama’s supervision, decided to make Alex and Patricia related when previously they weren’t and then married them anyway. Now, instead of simply removing the part where Alex and Patricia are related, a simple re-write that would just undo a retcon Street Fighter 6 introduced in the first place, Nakayama has seen fit to retcon Alex’s backstory and motivation altogether and now Third Strike Alex might as well be a completely different guy.
And there’s always the issue of developers kowtowing to social media pressure to change these things against their own artistic vision. Especially since this particular developer won’t kowtow to the endless demands for an actual balance patch, which is more important to the game. Put all these elements together and you’ve got a very volatile community situation where everyone is just irritated with everything.
Street Fighter 6 Alex is controversial, to say the least: he doesn’t play like Third Strike Alex, he doesn’t act like Third Strike Alex, his story does not continue Alex’s from Third Strike, and now with the latest retcon he doesn’t even have Alex’s background. Street Fighter 6 has been transgressive with many of its re-imaginings for classic characters, but this one might be a step too far, to the point where whoever Street Fighter 6’s “Alex” is, it might as well not be the one Street Fighter fans know and love.