It’s been a weird time for Bandai Namco’s Tekken 8, after having their initial launch roster leaked earlier in the year it seems that their entire first season of DLC characters have also slipped through the cracks. According to the r/gamingleaksandrumors subreddit, the German PSN Store brought up the characters on accident. According to the leak, the first season pass for Tekken 8 will consist of Roger the Kangaroo, Eddy Gordo, Armor King, and a newcomer named Xiao Meng. While there is a chance that this leak might be fake it’s worth noting that this isn’t even the first time Tekken 8 has had a leak this year so another one isn’t entirely out of the question.
Again, this is a rumor and could be false, but it is noteworthy that The Game Awards are tomorrow and that Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada is flying to the Awards, likely with a new Tekken 8 trailer along with him revealing the first season of DLC before it goes live on PSN for pre-order, so the timing isn’t too suspicious.
The characters themselves are relatively safe picks one would expect: Eddy Gordo is a massive fan favorite to the roster, and a character many wanted for the base roster. It’s a bit predatory for such a long time staple to be locked behind DLC but that’s the nature of the beast. Similarly, Armor King is a fan favorite though he has a history of being DLC as he was in Tekken 7. A newcomer is expected in any fighting game DLC pack, so while there’s nothing to be expected of a “Xiao Meng” there’s a chance he might be a repackaged legacy character, perhaps of longtime series staple Lei Wulong, similar to Reina’s relationship to Heihachi. Roger the Kangaroo is where the leak becomes a little suspicious; people love Roger though he’s always been a joke character, and not one with a particularly loud fanbase so it’s questionable he’d be brought back.
Take all this with a grain of salt. Though again, this isn’t the first time Tekken 8 has had a leak; Tekken 8’s roster was leaked months ago and people thought it was fake as well. It should be noted that this leak lines up with another alleged leak from over a week ago, which also features Fahkumram, Alex the Raptor, and Julia Chang, so anything’s possible. Come The Game Awards tomorrow, we’ll likely have a definitive answer as to whether or not this is all real.