A little over two weeks after its release, a dataminer claims they’ve found the next list of unannounced DLC characters for Tekken 8.
Going by the name of Shootmans online, the dataminer used Cheat Engine during Tekken 8’s Closed Network Test to search for certain text strings within the game’s memory. On his Twitter/X thread, Shootmans detailed his process for searching, showing the difference between promising results and false positives. He also sought to debunk the previous Tekken 8 leak by another dataminer, who used the same method in Cheat Engine.
Aside from Eddy Gordo, who’s already a confirmed DLC character for the game, Shootmans found evidence of at least three more characters to be added later. He compared the string search results with characters playable from the Closed Network Test to prove that these characters are potentially incoming.
Stop reading here now if you don’t want any spoilers about Tekken 8’s DLC or Tekken in general. Otherwise, you may proceed.
[SPOILERS] Which Tekken characters are coming back to 8?
If you’re a keen Tekken player, you may have noticed the absence of a few key characters from previous games. Depending on who your favorites are (fighting-style or story-wise), Shootmans’ list may either surprise or disappoint you.
As Shootmans showed on this thread, several entries are pointing to the addition of Fahkunram, Lidia, and Marduk. Through several screenshots, he showed references to “CHARACTER_FIGHTSTYLE_017 Vale Tudo,” “CHARACTER_ORIGIN_008 Thailand,” and “CHARACTER_ORIGIN_017 Poland.” If you’re up-to-date with your Tekken lore, you’ll know that Marduk uses the Vale Tudo fighting style, Fahkunram is a Muay Thai fighter from Thailand, and Lidia Sobieska is Poland’s Prime Minister.
Of course, we can’t stress enough that this information must be taken with a grain of salt, and that nothing is confirmed until Bandai Namco makes an official announcement. Nevertheless, the existence of these pointers within the game’s code makes for an intriguing discovery. These characters are also absent from Tekken 8’s most recent Closed Network Test, so there’s still a chance that the trio’s development could get canceled or delayed.
How was this information found?
Shootmans found his information through Cheat Engine, which he ran alongside the game itself. Cheat Engine cannot search within the game’s code if it’s not running, so he likely did this while the Tekken 8’s CNT client was running.
From there, he performed a series of string searches, using names of previous Tekken characters that aren’t in 8. He started with playable CNT fighters to show how references to the characters appear on the search results. Shootmans also detailed how he determines whether a result is a false positive or not, especially for shorter or more common words such as “Bob” or “Anna.” He mentioned that changing the cases of each string search affects the results.
Shootmans also debunked a previous Cheat Engine leak by proving that the results from that leak were unchecked. He showed search results of each name on the list, with some of them returning false positives and a majority of them returning no results at all.
If you’re interested in seeing the exact details of Shootmans’ search, you can read through his thread below.
DLC S1 Spoiler thread for #TEKKEN8
For those unfamiliar, I confirmed and debunked several leaks during the CNT (see quote tweet). I will be using the same methods for this.
If you share this, PLEASE be courteous of others and only RT this first post.https://t.co/V5y5Dg8DnU
— :thinking: (@shootmans) January 27, 2024
