Following the success of WWE 2K24, which many (myself included) considered the best entry in the series in years, developer Visual Concepts is looking to keep the momentum going. Fronted by cover star Roman Reigns, WWE 2K25 serves up a Bloodline-focused 2K Showcase, The Island hub, intergender wrestling, and more (you can check out my full hands-on impressions here).
As in the past, I was able to sit down with WWE 2K25 producer Lynell Jinks to discuss the team’s vision for this year’s game, with longtime 2K Showcase mastermind Dino Zucconi also popping in to answer some of my queries about that mode. We covered a wide array of topics, including The Island hub and why it won’t be on PC, how intergender wrestling is being implemented, changes to Showcase mode, whether WWE 2K could come to Nintendo Switch 2, and more.
With the introduction of The Island hub and things you don’t necessarily see on WWE TV like intergender wrestling, it seems like WWE 2K25 is moving in the direction of letting fans live out their pro-wrestling fantasies rather than being more of a straightforward sim. What’s the thinking behind this change of direction for the series?
Lynell Jinks: We always try to listen to our users and we've noticed what people are doing online after our game comes out -- kind of breaking the game in unexpected ways. By doing things like allowing intergender matches. We can see it's something that people want, right? We also know it adds a totally different element to the game as far as matchups and replayability. And also, like you talked about, The Island, that allows us to kind of scratch that itch with the fantasy. We've already got the grounded simulation and representation of what you see on programming. I was surprised because we've asked [WWE] a couple times [about fantasy elements] and the answer was no, because they wanted us to be a true simulation. But I think that comes with the trust that we've built with WWE, allowing us to take some chances that work out in our favor. We had to prove it though first, and I think it shows our relationship with WWE and how it’s progressed.
Intergender wrestling can be a loaded topic. Personally, I’m all for letting folks play how they want in a game like WWE 2K25. No harm, no foul. But can players sidestep intergender matches if they want?
LJ: Yes, you can turn [intergender wrestling] off. Like, you say you're doing a Rumble and you just want either all men or all women, you go into the options and just turn that flag on. We look at it like, yeah, we are a reflection of what you see in a WWE broadcast, but at the same time, as you said, we're also a video game and video games from as far as we can remember, like Street Fighter, allowed men and women to fight against each other. And at the end of the day, our game is a fighting game, you know? It's wrestling, but they're fighting against each other and that's kind of the approach that we're taking with it. But for people who want to stick to what you see on WWE programming, there's also that option for them.
You have indicated that intergender matches will be a part of story modes like MyRise. Is there a way to opt out of it there?
LJ: Not necessarily for MyRise.
Other side of the coin, are there any modes where intergender matches aren’t supported?
LJ: It is not supported in MyGM or MyFaction.
Are there any other restrictions?
LJ: In terms of modes, no. There are restrictions as far as like, blood will not be triggered in [intergender] matches, or bruising.
The visuals and superstar likenesses have received a nice touch-up in WWE 2K25. The lighting looks better and you got the hair to settle down a bit. Is there always a push to keep raising the graphics bar?
LJ: Oh yeah. It's one of those things were I'm shocked at our art director pushing the look of the game and then our graphics team and our character team just pushing the limits on what we can do with this hardware. On YouTube, there's these comparisons of screenshots that we released or footage that we released in previous years compared to now. You're, like, damn.
One of my favorite new additions on the gameplay side, is the new Giant archetype/fighting style. Can you explain how Giants work now?
LJ: Yeah, [Giants] get an extra boost of armor for their vitality. And once you wear that armor down, then they're treated as a normal character, as far as their vitality bar. But they do get this extra little shield -- bringing it back full circle to the whole Bloodline thing. Once that goes away, they perform as normal, but to balance it out, they can't do all the moves that someone that is of a different archetype might have access to.
I liked some of the unique animations you see in matches with Giants now. Your opponent’s eyes bugging out when he throws a punch and it has no effect, etc. Are there any thoughts about updating existing fighting styles to feel more unique?
LJ: Absolutely. It's something that we look at every year. They help differentiate each Superstar in each class and we're trying to represent these characters as true as we can to their real life counterparts. But then, also making sure gameplay feels balanced and tuned so that there's no one fighting style that can game the system.
For most of its existence, 2K Showcase has been about dutifully recreating classic matches and moments, but this year, with The Bloodline’s Dynasty Showcase, you’ve moved away from that somewhat, adding matches that let you change history and “dream” showdowns that never actually happened. Why did you decide to move away from the traditional Showcase approach?
Dino Zucconi: I think it worked well. Once we knew we were going to do this Bloodline showcase, I wanted to grab as many people as I could from that family. So, it's going to be hard to recreate those matches. We might not be able to get some of the opponents we need. So, I said we're going to do some dream matches. And then once we had that going, people have kind of been asking about “What if” scenarios. I felt like this was the easiest way to kind of reintroduce that idea to the game – give players some matches in the traditional [Showcase] style, and then we do these two new match types for this year and just kind of ease it all in and see how it works. I just wanted to open the mode up and give the user something more to do than just do objectives and watch cutscenes. Let the player change history and tackle dream showdowns that never happened in the real world.
One of my favorite Bloodline Showcase matches I got to play during the preview sessions was the battle between the Wild Samoans and the Dudley Boyz because it had very simple objectives: “beat up your opponent and win the match.” Have you considered adding just straight-ahead matches to future Showcases?
DZ: Like, no objectives?
Yeah.
DZ: I feel like that's called playing Exhibition. So, to me, I think the least we would ever do is still give you a “win this match” objective. To me, I always want to have objectives there. As you said, dream matches are kind of simplified. It is more just beat them up, get that win. But yeah, to me, Showcase is about the objectives.
I also noticed a number of timed objectives in this year’s Showcase. That’s new, right?
DZ: Yeah, we have new timed objectives this year. We actually have two new objective types this year -- we have some specifically asking for blood, we want you to bust your opponent open, and we also have timed objectives. Just wanted to up the realism and get the fight to the intensity it’s supposed to be. It's not just this dance where you're recreating the things [the game is] telling you to do, it’s “let's go beat them up.” And so that was the point of the blood [objectives]. We want to really get this fight going. With the timed objectives, some people kind of sit there and they're stuck for a minute and we wanted to keep the match going, increase the replayability. If you fail, you can come back.
Admittedly, I may have failed a timed objective or two, but the match always continued. Are the timed objectives strictly optional?
DZ: Yeah. In Showcase, when you win the match and don't complete all the objectives, we basically still unlock the next match for you. And you'll probably get an unlockable arena, maybe a championship belt. So, you're still winning when you don't complete all the objectives. But if you want everything in the mode, you're going to have to do everything in the mode.
Why did you decide to remove the Slingshot technology from this year’s Showcase? I always thought it was kind of cool…
DZ: Okay. Nice, okay!
LJ: You’re the one!
I always assumed everyone thought it was fine because it never bothered me. It seems like I’m in the minority on that one, though!
DZ: Yeah, that's kind of the answer. It seemed to just kind of be declining in popularity. We wanted to open up the cutscenes, and it also helps for things like the “What if?” matches. We can't really change history if we're using the video, so flipping back to the normal [in-engine] cutscenes just opened everything up for us. It makes it so you're playing the game more instead of just watching these things. I know that I liked watching the videos, because it's cool to see those clips, but I think that, overall, when you're sitting down to play a game, you want to play and not be interrupted quite as much.
LJ: But I also think the level of detail that we're putting into our characters, in the look of our game, just upping the ante every single year, so let's show these things off as much as we can.
You don’t really need the video anymore.
LJ: Right. And this is kind of leading towards why we added support for the third person camera and allowing users to really zoom in on entrances and kind of play with things. We want to show off all the effort that we're putting into our game and our models.
You’ve said that WWE 2K25's The Island hub will have a storyline, but the MyRise story mode is also returning. If you’re booting up WWE 2K25 for the first time, why choose one story over the other?
LJ: Like we’ve talked about, it’s the difference between WWE programming versus fantasy, where MyRise is based in the WWE world, what’s happening right now. […] The Island allows us to kind of just lean into more fantasy.
I know you may not be able to get too deep into The Island right now, but broadly speaking, what kind of activities can fans expect to engage in there?
LJ: Just traditional quests that you would expect in a mode like that.
The NBA 2K games have been doing these kinds of hubs, like The City, for a while now, and there have been complaints about how heavily they’re monetized. How much grind is built into them. What’s your approach to monetizing The Island?
LJ: We're obviously looking at other games in this space and how they handle it and trying to learn some of those lessons. So, I think we’ve hit a good sweet spot similar to like what we did with MyFaction and Persona Cards where it's like, yeah, you can pay money to do these things, but also you can kind of grind and do things in a way that sometimes might be harder, but probably will be fun too.
Why can’t you play on The Island on PC?
LJ: It's one of those things where we look at, can we ensure quality on all the different SKUs and different PCs? Because this game is basically maxed to the limits. Also, could the hackers basically destroy the economy or break the game in ways to where it ruins the balancing, it ruins the progression, and now you have a really unbalanced experience given how that mode is set up.
Chain wrestling has returned in WWE 2K25 after a few years away. Following WWE 2K20, it seemed like the goal was to move away from a reliance on minigames, but they’ve started to return. What do you think the right balance is when it comes to minigames?
LJ: Good question. We're still trying to find out what that [balance] is and the only way to do it is to keep adding things back that the users are asking for. Dino adding cutscenes back to Showcase, Derek [Donahue] and the combat team adding chain wrestling back. And yeah, you could have done it without a minigame, but we really like what we did in previous years before we took it out in 2K22. It just needed some work, and we needed more depth and more animation support. We really like the mechanic, because it allows you to branch into different things and just have a little bit more depth when you're playing the game. But it was just lacking a few things to really make it sing. And I feel like we kind of hit that sweet spot this year, so we're just waiting to hear what you guys think about it, and hopefully, we stuck the landing. But only time will tell.
I got the chain wrestling minigame in a match and I enjoyed it. But then, I always thought it was a solid mechanic.
LJ: And I think when you look at what we added last year with the Trading Blows minigame, we were curious to see what people's response would be to that. Because, as you said, we were kind of going away from minigames, and we added this thing back, and you're like, “Oh yeah, people seem to really like it when it triggers” because it doesn't happen all the time. It’s the same thing with chain wrestling. So I feel like as long as we kind of stick to that script and then also listen to the fan base, I think we'll be all right.
Will WWE 2K25 have any PS5 Pro enhancements?
LJ: No, we’re making sure that the game runs as smoothly as it can on all platforms. Might you see some minor improvements? Maybe, but our focus is making sure that PS5 and PS4, those base models that the majority of our users have, we’re making sure that those things sing and if there's some slight improvements in quality or clarity, that's a bonus for us. It's not something that we're truly focused on just because of the time [the game] was announced.
Is WWE 2K25 coming to Nintendo Switch 2? If not this year, then in the future?
LJ: TBD! I'd love to see that too. So, you know, we’ll see!
As always, thanks for your time!
WWE 2K25 launches on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, and PS5 on March 14, although those who purchase the Deadman or Bloodline special editions can play a week early on March 7. Expect some more information about WWE 2K25’s new Underground match type, with some additional quotes from the game’s producers, this weekend.
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