Dragon Ball Xenoverse Hopes to be the Perfect Game for Fans - Preview

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The most recently announced Dragon Ball title is supposed to be the ultimate Dragon Ball video game, and based on what I saw at Bandai Namco this E3 it might just live up to those lofty expectations.

The first thing of note is that the official title is Dragon Ball Xenoverse. The trailer showed off quite a few iconic battles with characters like Frieza, Cell, and Vegeta (when he was still chaotic evil, instead of chaotic neutral and then eventually chaotic good). It's certainly a promising trailer, but what the representatives from Bandai Namco said to expect of the game was even more-so.

Those beautiful graphics seen in the trailer are run by the lighting particle effects system Yebis 2, and Dragon Ball Xenoverse will also be using the Havok engine to put as many destructible environments into battles as possible. We were shown a fight between Goku and Cell in which stone pillars and an arena made of stone tiles could be destroyed by poorly aimed energy blasts. Hopefully the full game will have even more of these destructible effects, after all the actual characters can easily destroy mountains if they feel like it, so nothing should really be safe. One smaller presentational improvement includes real-time reactions by the characters when punching or being hit themselves, so that characters actually look like they're fighting.

The developers Dimps have wielded their influence on some of the best Dragon Ball games of all time, so it's no question that the gameplay is in good hands; they promise that the final game will be easy to learn but tough to master. Transformations during actual battles are also planned to give a bit more “realism” to the series. They are hoping to add this for all applicable characters, including enemies like Frieza, with the obvious base power bonuses that should come with changing forms, but this hasn't been nailed down yet.

Lastly, I was shown a glimpse of a mysterious new fighter with red spiky hair, a long scarf, and a capsule corp emblem on his jacket, along with a futuristic cityscape. What exactly these images entail is anyone's guess, but I'm glad to see that Dragon Ball Xenoverse isn't going to keep itself to the story of the anime to the point that it is simply retreading old territory. All of these things are subject to change - the demo we were shown is extremely early days - but Dragon Ball Xenoverse is shaping up to be a title that any fan of the series will want to keep an eye on.

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