People used to get so much crap for liking stories in fighting games. People always thought only the fighting mechanics were all that mattered and anyone who cared about anything else was too casual. But i'm totally in that boat. I loved the "story" and relationships with characters in Street Fighter, I loved the stories in Soul Blade, and what carried through into Soul Calibur, and they just kept expanding on that more and more, until the garbage fest that is Soul Calibur 4 came along. I never got into Tekken, and from my experience it was very silly and cheesy. But its nice to know at one point there was something worth while there. But I think the industry saw it as silly and cheesy and then Namco probably just felt obligated to make it more joke and less serious. Either way its always nice to see threads like this and show that there is a point to having a story in a fighting game, especially if it's well done. It can carry a game through the years. People remember them more fondly and go back to them more frequently. I've gone back to Soul Calibur 3 so many time after taking years and years of hiatuses, just because I love the stories and options available