Tekken 8 has a new feature called Super Ghost Battles. While previous games let you fight against “ghosts”, CPU players created by the development team, Tekken 8 goes one step further by being able to generate a ghost of your own. This means that the game can generate an AI that plays like you. This ghost can then be downloaded by other players (so anyone can spar with the AI renditions of anyone), or fight against yourself.
This specific implementation of Ghosts in fighting games was seen before in Killer Instinct (2013). The underrated fighting game lets you fight against an AI that over time learns how to play the game like you have. AI In Games, the YouTube channel run by gaming AI scholar Tommy Thompson, has a good rundown on how it works in KI:
And as someone who struggles to find a good sparring partner who plays at a (scrub) level as I am, going online only to find killers that can punish you with ultra-long combos is never fun. And being able to fight against someone at my own skill level- an AI that plays like literally me- was some of the most fun I have had yet no other fighting game on my radar really made an attempt to create ghosts like these (there are games that implemented this feature to various degrees of success). Until Tekken 8.
Tekken 8’s implementation is interesting. Once you unlocked Super Ghost Battles, you will be walked through on how to get a ghost of yourself running. The ghost AI learns in real-time, so in the first match, they will likely do nothing, waiting for your input.
The first few bouts will be you mowing down what’s effectively a punching bag, as gathers enough data to try and imitate your playstyle. Unlike KI’s Shadow AI, Tekken 8’s ghost AI learns in real-time, at least it presents itself so with the “Learning” logo on the UI appearing. But it does feel like so.
And it works. Being nowhere good at Tekken (or fighting games in general), I start to see a lot of myself in the ghost, especially the blunders. After seeing two Asukas backdash into a throw reversal- both moving in tandem of each other- that got me to start varying up my moves on the start of each round. I have nailed down a good bread-and-butter that I can get away with but after being on the side of the punches I figured out ways to counter my own good moves, and now I stop doing that move because I realised it wasn’t as good as I thought it would be (my game plan relies too much on the opponent to ukemi/wake-up from one specific direction).
The ghosts are character-specific, so if you play another character, you’ll have to start the process from scratch. Interestingly, the ghosts aren’t stored on the servers forever. It will only last for 30 days, but it resets every time you update the ghost (by fighting them).
You can download other ghosts, but it’s a bit complicated. You’ll have to find the opponent’s profile and download the ghost from there. You can’t download them from the Super Ghost Battles menu, which I would have thought to be the best way of doing it. Finding a friend’s ghost is like that too.
It’s good to see that AI ghosts that impersonate a player is still a thing in video games. Previously, the Forza Motorsport games used to use this tech- the Drivatars- where AI drivers will behave based on a real player based on their driving habits. But since that game has a problem with people driving too aggressively, the latest Forza Motorsport ditched that system and use a more straightforward AI opponents instead, which is a shame but also understandable.
At least fighting games shouldn’t have an issue with players behaving unintendedly. The only interaction you should be doing is punching and kicking your opponent, which is all fair. So it’s good to see a new fighting game like Tekken 8 has created this feature.
This is the sort of AI features that should be celebrated in games- AI that can substitute real players should a person wish to play a single-player game but with a multiplayer feel. And not those generative AI tools that attempts to remove the creative process a real human could only do for an imitation of art.
Tekken 8 is out now on PS5, PC (Steam) and Xbox Series X|S.