Gamescom brought with it an abundance of exciting news for the upcoming Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero as we saw some gorgeously animated super sequences and got a peek at its intensely large character select screen, but now The Gamer has released an interview with Producer Jun Furutani.
Many interesting questions and answers are exchanged, but one in particular perked our ears up as it addresses a question that’s naturally popped up since Dragon Ball games first started coming out decades ago: will character power levels reflect those found in the source material? Furutani is faced with this same question for Sparking Zero, and his answer has us intrigued.
The Dragon Ball roster is immense here in 2024, and contains waves of characters who have continually one-upped one another as the most powerful threats and/or defenders of the universe.
That means in a game like Sparking Zero (and the many similar titles that have come before it) you’re going to have match ups where characters like Krillin (who was relevantly powerful back in the days of the original Dragon Ball) go up against the likes of Jiren, a modern baddie that outclasses even the god of destruction.
You want to have the freedom to access relatively weaker characters, especially as many play crucial roles in earlier story lines that the game that players can play through and even manipulate the outcomes for, but would seeing Yajirobe single-handedly defeat someone like Goku Black run the risk of jarring us out of the magic?
The fights in Sparking Zero will be of the team-based nature, and it’s through this setting that developers have found an answer that will hopefully allow for the best of both worlds when it comes to the extreme incongruence between power levels of many of the game’s characters.
“The focus of this game is mainly to give an immersive experience for players… to experience fights as the characters,” he starts. “So characters that are very, very strong in the original series like Gogeta, for example, they will be very, very strong in the game.”
“Then you’ve got characters like Yamcha or Krillin who are not that strong but still can fight, and then you have Mr. Satan who’s struggling a lot in the original series, so you’re gonna have a hard time playing him in the battle… there’s quite a gap in the characters’ stats.”
“To balance it out there’s a cost system per character,” he reveals. “You’ve got team fights up to five characters, and of course you can’t just put five very strong characters on your team because it would eat up the cost because they’re more expensive. Characters like Mr. Satan will be quite low cost, so by capping this overall cost you can spend on a team we’re balancing out the fights on that level,” finishes Furutani.
This particular question and answer begin around the 8:30 mark in the video. You’ll want to watch the full interview when you have time, however, as Furutani offers a good deal more information on the upcoming title throughout.
Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is slated to release on October 11th for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.