"Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3" Official Discussion Thread

[IntangibleFancy]

I'm sure the game won't entirely take place in West City, but I really hope they offer more places to explore. The world of the Kais, Yardrat, Sadala, if they're still doing time travel even planet vegeta would be cool.

[The Dark Knight]

Considering how different this looks from the previous two games, do you think all the characters from XV2 will make the jump or will they start over from scratch ?

[WittyUsername]

Considering how different this looks from the previous two games, do you think all the characters from XV2 will make the jump or will they start over from scratch ?

Ideally, they’ll include all the characters (including DLC) from the previous game at the start, but I don’t know if they’ll do that, given that they apparently redid everything from scratch in this game, as opposed to reusing the assets from the previous one like XV2 did.

[mecha3000]

Thank God this game has finally been announced. As someone who grew up on the PS2 and PS3 era of Dragon Ball games, I never really got behind Xenoverse. As a kid, I DREAMED for a game where you could make your own DBZ character and was excited for Ultimate Tenkaichi for that reason. And that game was really disappointing with that concept and ROCK PAPER SCISSORS!!! So, I never played Xenoverse 1, but did get Xenoverse 2 back when it first released in late 2016. And I played it for maybe two hours before getting bored and selling it. It just wasn't my thing.

There's been times where I wanted to get back into it and even bought the PS5 copy, but again, returned it because it wasn't that interesting to me. And the fact that I had pretty much 10 years almost of catching up to do in terms of the plot and DLC definitely didn't help things. So, Xenoverse 3 represents a fresh start for me and newer fans who can be a part of the hype from the start and be on the same page as everyone else. Can't wait to play it, especially while Super is airing next year too.

[The Dark Knight]

I'm really interesting in seeing how the story will play out, as Xenoverse 2 only took stories up to Resurrection F into its account when it was in-development; things have changed SO MUCH since then.

Champa
Zamasu
TOP
Broly
Superhero
Daima

These are all stories that will be taken into account this time around, with Moro and Granola being kept in-mind as well. They may (hopefully) also include OG DB as well, so all together, that's 5 series and over 20 movies to write a story around. If done right, this will be the most robust story we've ever gotten out of Dragon Ball period, not just in the games, but the franchise as a whole.

[Noah]

It might be too early, but here's what I think at this moment:

Yes, the game takes place in AGE 1000, but there's little to no relation to Dragon Ball Online, in virtually all senses. They asked Toriyama to come up with his own version of the world set two hundred and sixteen years in the future but without the Time Patrol stuff. Notice how Majins and Namekuseijins don't appear at all, it seems to be just Earthlings. And that one in an alley with a Saiyan tail, if I were to guess, that's a synthetic tail, he's not really a Saiyan (also that hair... Not really an usual Saiyan hair, right?). I don't know what to make of the "Demon Realm pop singer", though.

That kinda sucks IMO. Why they would ask a new version of AGE 1000 to the man if we had one that was perfectly fine?

I hope it's a descendant with the same name or our Bulma but she's just been transported into the future and has been trying to get back. If this is the same Bulma who has abused Shenlong wishes to stay young, then that just epitomizes the way the Dragon Ball corpse is artificially kept alive without letting go of the past.

People might think I’m overreacting here, but I honestly hope it turns out to be something like this

or that

Someone said (I don't know where they got this) that it's our Bulma who now jumps between the current and future timelines; she's not stuck. As for why she's doing this, that's yet to be revealed. I read a theory that states all the timelines could be fusing together into one timeline in the Age 1000, where every character from every era will be present there. You could have Cell arc Gohan, Future Gohan, and current Gohan all hanging out together for example.

...because otherwise it would seriously ruin my experience with the game. I might not even feel like playing it at all. To me, it’s already ridiculous that they reverted Bulma’s appearance back to the face she had at 16 in DBS, only for us to then assume that by EoZ she already looked like an old lady (according to Goku), even though in SH she still looked pretty young. Honestly, the worst part is that this idea might have actually come from the man himself.

[MCDaveG]

Hard pass, it reminds me of Super Dragon Ball Heroes Galaxy Mission, but with XV spin on it. Unless they will blow my mind, I expect it to be game in open world city hub with incidents being some extra dimensional leaks like Buu wreaking havoc in some part and you'll go battle it, with some kind of mastermind behind it. Unless going scroll/dimensional time machine and do the same XV did so far.

It's more of a combination of not being a Xenoverse fan - shit battle gameplay, story being basically the glorified DB best off with same characters in different contexts and taking 3 characters from DBO and CAC. If there weren't other DB Games that I enjoyed way more personally, I'd go for it.

BUT I do like the Great Saiyaman designs and some of the characters, happy to be out of Conton City, it kinda feels fresh.
Looking forward to get to know the story parts at least and what's it all about. Props for the art direction going back to anime look and tossing that 3D shiny plastic look.
If they basically did their own spin on Online, it being just world in AGE 1000 and not just the city, you could explore locales from the show with easter eggs and see ruins, or other progress that went since the OG story ended pretty much what Online did, but without the weird gameplay dictated lore like Buu, Piccolo and Human regions. Also with brand new villains and basically playing Dragon Ball spin-off with callbacks (actually not that different to what Star Wars Sequels did), damn, that would be so cool.

Let's see, it still just a teaser. But don't wanna end up in the same Xenoverse trap anymore.
Also, wonder if Toriyama did more things than just designing the lead characters and would be awesome to see some designs sheets later on the road.

Also wonder, if it has a connection to the previous entries or if it is hard reboot with XV brand stamp on it for recognition and taking just the series staples like CAC and customizations.

[IntangibleFancy]

What do you guys think about the graphics/visuals?

Like with every anime game, I’m kind of sad that it’s so rare to find one with a map/world that’s cel-shaded and “anime-like”. I feel like most anime games, especially dragon ball’s, have such beautiful scenery, and making them all look like unreal tech demos is a disservice.

As far as the models go, It’s an improvement. I like how expressive they are in the in-engine cutscenes. It’s like a mix of Xenoverse and Kakarot to me. I think I’d have to see more characters to make a real opinion on it though. But Brett looks great

[Grimlock]

That kinda sucks IMO. Why they would ask a new version of AGE 1000 to the man if we had one that was perfectly fine?

Maybe Toriyama just didn't want to do the same thing again, who knows. But it's just what I think, it's not confirmed or anything. Like I said, I do hope more stuff from Dragon Ball Online is present and that it greatly influences this game, there's still much more to explore and to bring over from it that past Xenoverse installments and even Dragon Ball Heroes didn't do it.

[The Dark Knight]

When do you expect the next big reveal for the game to be ? I think Summer Game Fest is a safe bet, as its opening show will be on June 5th; I also expect the remaining content for Sparking Zero's DLC to be revealed there.

[Yuji]

The number of times Toriyama/big Dragon Ball(tm) has written over something else is so large that it shouldn't be surprising if this version of AGE 1000 conflicts with DBO or XV2.

We have how many versions of Super? How many post Boo continuations that conflict in some fashion (GT, Super, Neko Majin, DBO, XV, Heroes, Daima)?


The original manga is sacred, and the anchor which every other story will gravitate around. Some stories may have continuity with each other, however they won't ALL have continuity amongst each other, but they certainly all will have continuity with the original manga.

[The Dark Knight]

The number of times Toriyama/big Dragon Ball(tm) has written over something else is so large that it shouldn't be surprising if this version of AGE 1000 conflicts with DBO or XV2.

We have how many versions of Super? How many post Boo continuations that conflict in some fashion (GT, Super, Neko Majin, DBO, XV, Heroes, Daima)?


The original manga is sacred, and the anchor which every other story will gravitate around. Some stories may have continuity with each other, however they won't ALL have continuity amongst each other, but they certainly all will have continuity with the original manga.

As someone who likes the original DB & Z, as well as GT, Super, Daima, and the old movies, I hope this game is able to somehow tie them all together, as it's in a unique position to do so through time travel, alternate universes, etc... We got a glimpse of that in XV2, but I hope they go all the way this time around.

[Bardock God of Time]

It'd be cool if we got an Adult Goku Jr

[Zelvin]

There seems to be a lot of speculation on what the game will have, but as I hinted in the XV2 thread (I didn't see this discussion thread right away), I'm just not looking forward to it. I don't like the sheer deviation from the OG Age 1000 world in DBO. I certainly don't care to start the story as a Great Saiyaman knockoff, that was basically just Goten and Trunks' thing in the Super manga. That's especially true given the MC's friend looks identical to the android Dr. Hedo put in their school. It's so blatantly a 1:1 copy that they Shueisha should just sue themselves for copyright infringement.

I honestly, desperately hoped we'd get something better. I wanted to see conflict with the Time Patrol. Wanted to see that one choice between letting Trunks keep the future where he saves Gohan from the Androids or returning it to how it's supposed to be, be a point of conflict and division. To create disparate factional disputes between those who want to correct History by stopping all evils, those under Chronoa's leadership to maintain the correct history of the universe, an the Time Breakers who seek to distort it for their own ends. That would've created a far more varied dynamic and could've resulted in players choosing factions and having even transformation options tied to specific factions. Which would mean actually creating multiple characters to unlock them all would be worth it to replay the story in a different way for a different faction.

Instead...we're getting this blandness. I'll say the graphics look nice, but we haven't even seen actual gameplay yet. And I'm going to stick to my original idea. I'm not gonna pick this up at launch. I'll probably wait a year before even considering it.

[kemuri07]

I think at this point if you’re expecting that level of storytelling from a Dragonball video game….kinda doing it to yourself at this point.

Blandness is the name of the game.

[Bardock God of Time]

I think this game has more potential than any other Dragon Ball game (maybe besides the OG Dragon Ball Online)

The Infinite History DLC and Future Saga shows what Xenoverse can be. It doesn't just have to be something like 'What if x Villain was powered up a little bit more' or 'What if a movie villain showed up to help the canon villain'

Have the distortions break history to the point that a new timeline is created, explore that timeline and try to make it a better place even if it won't ever be similar to canon.

Remember when we'd see villains win in Xenoverse before showing up and correcting the history. Have the villains actually win.

Like Raditz kills Kid Gohan, the created Character is unable to show up on time. How would that effect things?

Or Ginyu actually got Vegeta's body like in that preview.

Some of the storylines in the Parallel Quests could be interesting in the storymode. One example is a timeline where Ginyu (in Goku's body) goes SSJ in West City. An idea is that it's never discovered that Ginyu swapped bodies with Goku (perhaps the villains are using demonic magic to temporarily replace Ginyu's personality/memories/actions with Goku's) and eventually he reawakens as Ginyu to attack the Z Fighters.

There's more complex things they could do like Goten being born in the Future Timeline, you know...Raditz and/or Nappa Surviving...

Yamcha being influenced by demon energy to not cheat and be a good boyfriend to Bulma which prevents Trunks' birth

[kemuri07]

I’m not disagreeing with you. I'm just resigned to the notion of when it comes to Dragonball stories, whether in the anime or game, “it is what it is” they won’t ever go beyond fanservice.

[The Dark Knight]

I have to agree with kemuri07 on this. I believe we will get some interesting concepts, as we always do, but they never fully commit to them in favor of keeping things safe and familiar. What I would like to see is an entire game built around what ifs, one that explores all the possibilities of how things could be different if certain characters switched sides, certain characters weren't brought back to life, certain villains appeared before others, etc... The closest we got to a fully fledged what if story was Gohan's Sparking Zero story mode where in the Super timeline he never stopped training, which resulted in a Gohan Black. Give us an entire game of that.

[Yuli Ban]

Man, I have Xenoverse 3 wishlists posted on this forum from nearly a decade ago. It's surreal to see the game finally be announced.
I suppose it's not like Tenkaichi 4/Sparking Zero the same way the Super continuation wasn't the first announcement of Super.
We already KNEW a Xenoverse 3 was inevitable; we were just stunned it took this long, which tells us the whole Nü Dragon Ball era was, from the start, a rushed unplanned clusterfuck. I'd not be surprised if the Toei and Shueisha heads wish they could go back and redo everything from 2015 onwards with far more time and poise.

But, whatever, it's coming. I will always maintain that it should have been coming 7 years ago. Even saying that sounds obscene.
Xenoverse 2 is a glorified 7th gen game. I'm not exaggerating a terrible amount. Xenoverse 2 was a mild, barebones update to Xenoverse 1, and Xenoverse 1 was a game made for the PS3. I don't doubt that you probably could have put XV2 on the PS3 as well if you wanted to.
The only reason they even decided to support it is because Super was airing and they probably realized "it makes way more sense to release new characters, stages, and scenarios as DLC than creating a new game that is outdated instantly if the show keeps going." Which, sure, that makes sense. Which is exactly why, when I first came around haranguing about how it's time for Xenoverse 3 way back in 2018 and 2019, I thought it was the perfect time and they were setting everything up for that. Super was on hiatus, they'd done that whole batch of material, Super: Broly had come and gone, and I had the idea that the reason why Kakarot went with more open-ended hubs for fighting was as a testing ground for something to come in Xenoverse 3 as some more uniform open world system. That was crazy and unresearched and obviously wrong, but it was a fun theory to have. All left to do was wait. Maybe it'd be a PS5 launch game!

Then nothing for years and years, and I thought by 2022 that it'd been more than 5 years since XV2 without even the slightest hint of a sequel was asinine. Here we are 4 years later, and it's only just been announced!

At last, a fully current gen Xenoverse. They have no excuses for the lackluster showings they had last decade!

(And I fully expect they will not go the full nine yards).


SO, WITH ALL THAT RAMBLING BABBLE OUT OF THE WAY...

I've been disappointed by making this dichotomy before now, so I don't even know if I should bother.
But there's a "high end" and a "low end" they could shoot for (which, knowing my luck, they will barely even make it to the low end, but who knows, maybe they go above and beyond this time around).

The high end possibility of Xenoverse 3: all the stars align, they reach deep inside themselves and choose to go further beyond. It's got a fully overhauled character customization engine, a Toriyama-fied version of Black Desert Online or Saints Row, with an inane number of physical character customization options. Far more better realized than XV2 at least. They take a page out of Ultimate Tenkaichi's playbook (which is insane to say as well) and actually allow you to customize your basic combos and attacks as well (which is something which STILL blows my mind that UT had that XV didn't). Training under a mentor allows you to learn their basic movement set, equipping a certain character or school's movements provides buffs and possibly nerfs to super, ultimate, defense, special, etc moves beyond just the basic stats (e.g. Goku as a mentor, or Turtle School as a character school, gives you Goku's basic punch-heavy-ki-defense combos or the Turtle School's moves in general; say, mentoring with the Ginyu Force might give you one of each member's moves, such as getting Burter's ultra-high speed punches and ki blasts, or Guldo's psychic moves— again, this is not some pipe dream of master-level programming, this is something ULTIMATE TENKAICHI had, a game which did not have a functional fighting system to even utilize it). Auras aren't quite as important to me as they were when I was younger, but at least make those customizable too.

The absolute highest end of gameworld design would be a fully rendered Dragon Earth, at least scaled to what would make sense, with other realms as smaller hubworlds ala Kakarot, or Destroy All Humans, or whatnot. No loading screens on Dragon Earth itself. A more reasonable high-end would be DBZ Kakarot again, especially since they already have the assets.

Combat would basically be Sparking Zero 2, or at least 1.5, before a proper sequel to that game. Take what didn't work with Sparking Zero, fix that, and put it into Xenoverse 3. If it's even half as good as Tenkaichi 3's fighting system, that alone will keep people WANTING to come back.

Story would be Dragon Ball Online gone crazy with all sorts of lunatic ideas added on, and that's essentially where I was really going here: this could very well be the "Dragon Ball Online" they intended to make back in 2009, fully realized, if they want it to be. So things like Gohan's ki study book, older Piccolo, Goten and Trunks' martial arts school, and so on are all depicted.

Also, keep the modding tools available, because no amount of corpo work is ever going to match fan passion.



The low end/more likely outcome:

Character customization is XV2 but expanded a bit. Didn't take up the few things UT did right either, so no custom combos or schools or auras. Only special and ultimate attacks are customizable.
Gameworld is just West City and surrounding areas as a giant hub, and all the stages are just their XV stages. Maybe some of them are large stages, though, so it doesn't feel like a complete missed opportunity, or they at least boosted destructible environments to compensate.
Story is more like Xenoverse's story again. "What if past character, but goffik and stronger?" over and over again.
Fighting system is closer to Kakarot than anything.


Starting to ramble WAY too long here, but that gets the gist of it, right? High hopes, middling expectations for this

[Grimlock]

Please stop asking/wanting Xenoverse (or any game, for that matter) to have battle mechanics from another line of games. It's stupid and it's unrealistic. Battle mechanics is one of the main factors that separate a game from another, it's one of the things that help a game to have its own identity. You can't in all seriousness want Xenoverse to have Budokai Tenkaichi combat. This will never happen, this should never happen. If you want to play a game with Budokai Tenkaichi battle mechanics, play a Budokai Tenkaichi game.

Expecting this to happen is just setting yourself for disappointment. And it will definitely not be the game's fault (or one of its cons) when they don't give you what you unrealistically want.