Dragon Ball FighterZ is / was arguably the fighting game with the largest impact and crossover appeal of the past console generation, but even as the title approaches its sixth birthday, it’s not done yet.
Bandai Namco released an extended interview with DBFZ Producer Tomoko Hiroki and Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 Masayuki Hirano as part of the celebration of each selling 10 million copies to discuss the development of the games and what’s coming next.
Most DBFZ players are still wondering what’s going on with the rollback netcode update / upgrade to which they did have something to say on that.
“We are continuing to work on the introduction of rollback netcode in FighterZ,” said Hiroki. “I apologize it has taken this long, but we’ve been hard at work creating a rollback system that meets the quality that everyone has come to expect. As such, I’d really appreciate it if fans would be patient for just a little while longer and continue to give us your support.”
Unfortunately, there was nothing more to share on that front, so it’s looking more likely that concrete information won’t be coming until the Dragon Ball Games Battle Hour 2024 early next year.
Bamco first revealed rollback would be coming to FighterZ at Evo 2022 after years of requests, though they’ve been fairly quiet since.
The game was supposed to get a rollback beta on PC this past Spring, but that was seemingly indefinitely delayed.
A similar message was provided ahead of Evo 2023 as well.
Alongside that, the Producer also revealed her favorite character included in DBFZ.
“For FighterZ, it’s definitely Android 21 because she’s an original character and one of only a handful of women in the Dragon Ball franchise, said Hiroki. “There aren’t really any female characters besides Android 18 who can fight at the same level as the other powerful warriors, so I was a little bit concerned about what players would think, but I’m happy to say that it seems like they’ve accepted her as a Dragon Ball character just fine. Also, I was really happy that there is a scene in Dragon Ball Super: SUPER HERO that will make fans who know Android 21 stop and go, ‘Wait, did I just see what I think I did?'”
They were also asked about the fighter they had the most trouble deciding on.
“I actually debated about adding Videl a lot, since I wasn’t sure if it was right to have her fight on the same level as other more canonically powerful characters,” answered Hiroki. “The Videl fans on our marketing team and over on the Arc System Works development team ended up changing my mind, though. In the end, I decided that she wouldn’t be out of place if we included Great Saiyaman to support her and help her fight. That led to the debut of a new 2-in-1 fighter on the fighting game scene, and I’m happy with the result.
On top of that, you can also change Videl’s hairstyle by performing a secret input. Having the chance to add in some retro flair like that was also great fun.”
And then there were the challenges the teams faced designing the 3v3 fighting game.
“Looking back, I think we faced two big challenges when developing FighterZ.The first was achieving a balance between the competitive fighting game portions and Dragon Ball-themed portions of the game. Fighting games have a long, rich history, so we needed a proper framework to ensure that the game would be competitive. On the other hand, we also needed to work hard to properly express concepts from Dragon Ball, like aerial combat and planet-wide destruction, so we ended up hashing out various game concepts with the developers.
For example, we opted to use Dragon Rushes in place of short-range grab moves, which are of course a mainstay in fighting games. Grabs are a popular option because they can circumvent blocking, but since fights in Dragon Ball tend to focus more on high-speed rushes of attacks, we ended up changing things to stay true to that Dragon Ball spirit. The end result was a fighting game that’s a bit different from the rest because of that unique Dragon Ball feel we managed to preserve.”
You can check out both parts of their interview in full on the Dragon Ball website for more of their discussion where they also seem to tease more reveals for the new Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi coming at the Battle Hour too.
Image via Bandai Namco / Dragon Ball.