2XKO is back at Evo once again for 2025, and thankfully, we were able to talk to the game’s director, Shaun Rivera, on all topics big and small, including one of the game’s biggest questions—Yordle characters.
Yordles have been a sticking point for me in this game, as I even asked Shaun about it last year at Evo 2024. Back then, their height was still a difficulty, and he talked about how it would be frustrating losing to a character due to something the players were not doing at all, such as having to get over a height difference.
So, talking with him again, I needed to see if his mind has changed since last year regarding the future inclusion of Yordles in-game, and how the team could look at doing it. And it seems like he had a change of heart regarding the small creatures since our initial discussion.
“I’ll say that one of the things we’re not as excited about is when you’re fighting against a character just because of their size, like, oh, man, they’re so small that my combos drop, and I have to learn a whole new set of combos just for this one character, right?” Rivera told Destructoid. “And so I think there are tons of ways that we can make a small character work in our game, and we see this in all other kinds of fighting games as well (such as Granblue Fantasy Versus). There are all kinds of ways you can make them work in less frustrating ways.”
When I pushed for more information, I touched on a lot of fascinating topics I had seen from my previous interview a year ago on how the team could get around Yordles. One of those was the idea of using Lulu’s ultimate to make Yordles bigger, but we both agreed that having larger-than-life Yordles for the sake of including them in-game wouldn’t exactly look great visually. I also bought up the two Yordles in a trench coat, which Rivera could only laugh about.
“I think the topic of Yordles comes up a lot because they’re really unique to the IP. You know, you love them or you hate them. They’re very polarizing, too. And I think there’s a real ask for this kind of weird character that people want to play.” Rivera continued. “And again, like I mentioned before about the roster, we really want to deliver.”
Once again, I had to press Rivera about adding Yordles into the game because of how much of a request there was, including simple ideas like Rumble in his mech. Rivera was coy in his answers, but he left me with a bit of hope.
“If people are like—we really want this type of gameplay or this character—we’re gonna find a way.”
So maybe there are hopes for Yordles after all, in all shapes and sizes.
Fingers crossed, my fellow Bandle City enjoyers.
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