It’s taken two years and playable appearances in two mainline games, butStreet Fighterfans have finally started warming up Luke, everyone’s favourite barrel-armed buffoon.
It might be hard to imagine now thatStreet Fighter 6has launched as one of the highest-rated games of the year (in a year withTears of the Kingdomno less), but there was a time when it wasn’t so beloved.When the first teaser was released and had a weird obsession with Ryu’s feet and bulge, as well as an awful logo, it was a bit of a laughing stock, something that wasn’t helped by the appearance of Luke, who wasn’t very liked at the time.
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He might be the poster boy of Street Fighter 6 now,but Luke was originally introduced as the final DLC character for Street Fighter 5, where he looked a lot different to how he does now. The cringe tattoos, weird haircut, and resemblance to Logan Paul made Luke a bit of a joke at first, which didn’t combine well with how overpowered he initially was, making him a pretty unpopular character at first.
This carried over all the way into Street Fighter 6’s announcement and even most of the marketing before its launch, with fans blasting Capcom for choosing to put Luke on the cover instead of a classic cover,let alone in the weird pose that they’d chosen for him. Despite all of this animosity towards Luke over the years, it seems that Street Fighter fans are ready to bury the hatchet, as many of them have started sharing their newfound love for the character.
Over on the Street Fighter subreddit, one of the top-rated posts of the last week comes from Redditor MRXGONNGIVEITOYA, who shared an image of Luke and asked, “Anyone else warmed up to this goofy and dorky badass?”. They followed up by admitting that they originally hated Luke thanks to his design, but that they eventually warmed up to him thanks to his “dorky but positive attitude”.
Being one of the top-rated posts on the subreddit over the past few days should already indicate how the tides have turned for Luke, but the comments also show the newfound love that fans have. A lot of them admit to hating Luke in Street Fighter 5 because Capcom tried too hard to make him cool, but he’s become a lot more popular now that he’s a “goofy himbo”.
One reason why Luke has gotten so popular that’s mentioned several times in the Reddit post is because of his voice actor, Aleks Le. Not only does Le give a great performance for Luke and make him seem a lot more friendly than he was in Street Fighter 5, but Le has also engaged with the community a ton over the past few months,including voicing memes,dressing up as his character, and just having a clear love for his character.
