tons of Japanese Tekken 8 press out today (mostly slightly different transcripts of the one interview, it seems) but this interview with Harada and director Ikeda caught my eye... specifically, a comment from Harada about how surprised he is by the unilaterally positive reaction to Victor—he thought overseas players and Tekken diehards in particular might think the sci-fi/gadget stuff was too ludicrous or straying too far from the realm of martial arts, so he was expecting more backlash, but the core players are even more positive than the casuals, it seems.
Similarly, he was worried that Reina was too plain—he comes from the classic school of fighting game character design, where distinctive silhouettes and strong features were key (informed in part by a need to be judicious about polygon use), and letting her go out in the world was a bit of a compromise on his part, so the massively positive response reinforced that modern audiences are attuned to more subtle details and don't necessarily need big, broad characters.
(He also makes some comments about how she might contrast with all the older, harder-edged women in the series... um, nah)