It was quite welcome to see Oro’s story advancing the plot of Street Fighter V. While Oro himself wasn’t privy to any major conflicts, only engaging with some friendly sparring with Rose and Dhalsim, his story did something no other character’s story has done so far – it made Street Fighter look intellectual. Oro, being one of the strongest characters in the lore, was able to show off his deep wisdom in a way that Street Fighter III, with all of its limitations, just couldn’t let him do, and demonstrates to the player why so many characters respect him despite his somewhat selfish nature. In other words, there’s a reason why Dhalsim allows Oro to mooch food off of him.
In fact, it could be said that Oro’s story mode might just be the deepest segment in Street Fighter history, if only for its philosophical ruminations. Needless to say, the story does point out the obvious. Without saying his name, Oro mentions Ryu as the appointed savior of the planet and as someone who will avert the apocalypse.
It’s pretty clear that Oro knows Ryu’s destiny. In fact, it’s safe to say EVERYONE knows Ryu’s destiny except for Ryu, and even then, Ryu talks about destiny in his pre-fight intro:
So, it’s clear that Ryu will be called upon yet again to beat a significant threat. It’s kind of his thing being the main protagonist of Street Fighter. What we don’t know is what this threat will be, and Oro’s story seems to veer off in several directions regarding the impending apocalypse.
As we analyze the dialogue in his story, we see that, as Dhalsim has correctly guessed, Oro is talking about Bison. However, Oro has come up with a conclusion that not even Dhalsim had expected.
As Oro explains, since Bison’s will has “already been exerted upon this world”, it can’t be easily erased.
Dhalsim realizes that Bison’s death matters little, as since his ambition remains, he can still influence others even in death.
Oro seems to be intentionally vague as to what this actually means. There are a few conclusions that we can draw from this, however, based on how the story of V has gone. The first, and most obvious, is that Bison’s will can physically take over bodies. This is seen in both Ed’s and Falke’s respective story modes, and as Oro points out, Psycho Power has the ability to take a person over completely.
If we take what Oro says at its most literal, then Psycho Power itself is sentient to an extent and can manipulate others without the need of a tangible form. While it still requires a physical vessel to actually enact its plans, it can continue to exploit and deceive people until the time comes that a body is required. In other words, it can bide its time.
What Oro may or may not take into account, however, is that people can fight off the effects of Psycho Power to varying success. He sort of alludes to this when he says the following:
Ed and Falke being in the “right state of mind” to avoid being taken over by Psycho Power could be adapted to the situation of the impending apocalypse, and they could use their experience in fighting Bison to try to battle any new threat that comes along. However, while Ed and Falke are looking like they’ll play some sort of role in Street Fighter 6, since neither one are named Ryu, they’re probably not going to be the messianic figures that will be required to stop the earth from being destroyed. They can certainly help out and avoid being mind controlled, but they’re likely going to be assistants and nothing more.
This leads us to the second idea Oro could be alluding to: Bison’s dark ambition, rather than being a sentient entity, is influential in making copycat dictators. Basically, a person who sees what Bison has done, rather than being influenced by some unseen force, makes the decision of their own accord to imitate what Bison did, amassing their own resources to become a powerful threat. This is all too often the case in real life, as dictators indeed beget other dictators who look up to their predecessors as symbols of strength.
All in all, this is the most realistic of scenarios. Someone could see Bison as a force to admire rather than a force to rebuke and, without turning to anything except what they see in front of them, creates their own armada that follows the same guidelines as Shadaloo did, becoming a symbol for the world to fear. This would be the culmination of Bison’s will, and while Bison himself would have little hand in the events that would transpire, his existence being the reason that it happened at all serves his goal of forcing his ambition on the world. Quite simply, it would be done in his name.
While it’s the most realistic of scenarios, this probably isn’t going to happen in Street Fighter 6. Every country’s government hated Bison and Shadaloo, and the other organizations that wanted to take over the world, including S.I.N. and the Illuminati, were explicitly trying to destroy Bison and his operations so they could take over. The only person who is actively trying to revive Shadaloo is F.A.N.G, and he doesn’t seem to have any plans of making himself the leader. Also, considering that Psycho Power appears to have a mind of its own, this scenario is unlikely.
This leads us to the third, and perhaps the most improbable scenario: that Bison’s will has already corrupted someone powerful enough to do his bidding. It’s not that farfetched to say that Bison may have chosen someone to carry out his will. In fact, that was one of the reasons he implemented the Doll Project – he was trying to create a body that could withstand his Psycho Power and carry out his plans. However, outside of the Dolls and Ryu, Bison never really had a contingency plan in place for a successor. He apparently tried with Rose, who is both the good part of his soul and, for what it’s worth, his former apprentice, but she turned against him. Moreso, only F.A.N.G has ever been shown to actually want to carry out his orders, but F.A.N.G doesn’t use Psycho Power, relying on his poisons instead.
So, Bison doesn’t seem to have anyone we know of he could coerce to be his successor, as everyone we’ve seen on-screen escaped his will in some way. However, considering Bison spends a lot of time off-screen doing his own thing, it stands to reason that he could have corrupted someone away from the eyes of the player. At this point in time, there’s only one person it could possibly be, considering we know absolutely nothing about him with any certainty:
It is the most unlikely scenario of all, completely flies in the face of everything I’ve theorized so far, and one I personally hope doesn’t happen because Street Fighter needs to move away from Bison for a while. In addition, it’s outright stated by both Rose and Oro that G’s power and Bison’s power are distinct; they likely would have still felt Bison’s presence within G, but neither of them have the faintest idea who he is. Lastly, no one in Shadaloo seems to recognize him, and Bison simply calls him a “pathetic fool” in his win quote to G.
Despite all of the evidence pointing against it, the possibility nonetheless remains: Bison’s entire plan could have been to corrupt G and bend him to his will. Considering G is speculated to be the spirit of Earth itself, his ambiguous nature could point to the idea that G was originally a benevolent entity who became twisted not by Psycho Power, but by Bison’s dark ambition, his force of will.
There is no in-game proof that this is the case. There is no evidence I can point to that says this is what Capcom has in mind. Yet, Oro, acting as a stand-in for the teasing developers, seems to hint at the possibility, even if canonically he doesn’t know anything about G, Q, and the circumstances surrounding them.
So, what are we to make of Oro’s words? What exactly is he hinting at for the future of Street Fighter? Well, it’s his last words to Dhalsim that tell us everything we need to know:
“Perhaps, you young people should figure it out.”
Street Fighter Game Lore Theories 