Dragon Ball is a series with a long list of video game titles stretching back all the way to 1986. They’ve had their ups and downs but the most recent ones have been truly transformative in my eyes. DB XenoVerse 2, my favourite, is excellent while DB FighterZ is a revolution and visually stunning. I’ll admit, I haven’t played much of FighterZ as 2D Fighting games aren’t really my thing but the community is going strong and the support keeps coming from the developer which shows just how well it continues to do. We have 1 more game on the way to round off this generation in DBZ: Kakarot. It’ll be an action RPG so it is offering something different again. I’m looking forward to it. In this article however I want to look beyond it and into what the future might hold once the next console cycle gets going. We’ve had some details now on what the new consoles will be like; we know enough, I feel, for me to wildly speculate on the future. Specifically I want to speculate on what Dragon Ball XenoVerse 3 might be like.
It starts with an egg, the Toki Toki Egg, that spawns a fresh timeline. A whole new Universe, a complete blank slate, Universe 13. The hero’s of the previous two games team up and are sent by the Supreme Kai of Time to oversee the beginnings of this new Universe. The player starts off as a fresh recruit to the Time Patrol, as per, playing through some select moments from the Dragon Ball Z/Super timelines to introduce the world, the mechanics, characters and some important story elements such as the Supreme Kais, Gods of Destruction and the Multiverse. As the player levels up and develops their playstyle with the addition of new skills as they unlock them through mission completion and training, it becomes clear that something isn’t right.
The two heroes haven’t returned from Universe 13.
The Supreme Kai of Time calls on the player and a few other veteran Time Patroller NPC’s, including Trunks, and sends them to Universe 13 to find out what is going on. When they arrive they discover that the two heroes are fighting, the team try to intervene but are out matched by the overwhelming power held by the two of them. All seems lost, when 4 masters come through to lend a hand. The players master plus 3 other fan favourite characters such as Piccolo, Gohan, Goku, Vegeta, Krillin etc. At that point they rally and force the previous heroes to back off.
So, what happened to them? It would be revealed that the two have become the Supreme Kai & God of Destruction of Universe 13 and are being compelled by some unknown force to fight uncontrollably. It’s up to the Time Patrol to figure it out and put things right or the entirety of Universe 13 could be destroyed. That’s the outline of the story I have in my mind. I also have some ideas for improvements to the gameplay and the environments. Namely that the battle arenas are too small. I regularly find myself rubbing up against the edges of them either at the walls or the ceiling and I really hope that the new generation of consoles will allow for them to be much bigger. Perhaps they could add persistent destruction to them as well, I’d love to see the craters from big ki blasts or bodily impacts stick around during a fight.
Adding a whole new Universe also allows for the introduction of all sorts of new things. The environments can all be different and unusual, while fitting the style laid out by Akira Toriyama throughout Dragon Ball. As well as introducing some new races, abilities and so on. I think Saiyans are well enough served with transformations but the other races could do with a few new ones. I’d like to see some sort of progression system for the transformations, like a mastery system through use. So, when you first get them going Super Saiyan or using Kaioken drains Ki or Stamina respectively but as you gain mastery over them through use, the drain decreases until it reaches zero and then unlocks the next tier of the transformation, Super Saiyan 2 or Kaioken x3 and so on.
There’s loads of little tweaks and changes that could be made along those lines that would keep the game feeling fresh without altering the fundamentals a great deal. Which is perfect for me because I really like how it plays. I like how the attacks flow, the shifts in momentum during a fight and everything else feels a lot like it does in the show. Here’s hoping for more quite soon.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments, on Twitter @adamthomas1994 or on the OOLs Discord!
