Katsuhiro Harada, in his typical blunt manner, says “don’t ask me for sh_t”, but he can help!

On Reddit, a user named Melodic_Insect1356 shared a tragic story: “Sorry if this is a stupid question as I know that ghosts don’t get recorded after a period of online inactivity, but maybe I’m wrong about what exactly that means. My whole world is upside down right now, and it’s hard to think straight between everything that’s going on and the trauma that happened here in my home last night. My 26-year-old little brother (Justinianthe1st on PSN) died suddenly yesterday in his room, where I found him hours after he apparently died. It was not a pretty sight and it has left a huge scar on my psyche. We still don’t know what happened. It was sudden because it seemed like he was sending a message to someone that was never sent.

He was a huge Tekken fan and had spent so many hours grinding to get to the top. It was our hope that we would eventually be able to attend local tournaments here in Texas as brothers, but unfortunately we will never get that chance. Now, I know that AI ghosts are usually poor imitations of the players they belong to, but my question is: if I save my brother’s AI ghost, do I get to keep that ghost, or will all of my saved data be erased as well? I would still like to play against my “brother” from time to time. Even if it’s a bad imitation. Thanks to everyone who reads this, and thanks to Mr. Harada and the whole Tekken team for giving me and my brother one last great month together. The last thing I saw him doing the night before was playing this game. I’m glad he got to play it before he had to go,” he wrote.

So Tekken 8 has captured his brother’s play style (imitating his strengths and weaknesses) by creating a ghost, a kind of memory. The news eventually reached Harada, who responded on Twitter a few hours later after speaking with Kohei Ikeda, the director of Tekken 8. He gave a rather sympathetic response: “My deepest sympathies. If you download and save your brother’s spirit locally, you can still play against him at any time, even if the data is lost from the server. Please let me know if I can help in any way. I have personally sent message cards and other messages to many ceremonies. If it makes anyone feel better, please tell [Melodic_Insect] to contact me.

Melodic_Insect1356 has since sent a message to Harada and Ikeda thanking them for their help. So at least the player has a memory of his brother. And that is the most important thing of all…

Source: PCGamer, Reddit, Twitter