We are barreling along toward Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero’s October release and new information about the upcoming video game is flowing on many fronts. Recently The Gamer was able to score an exclusive interview with Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero producer Jun Furutani, who let us all in a few more juicy details.
During the course of said interview, Furutani was asked about the game’s expansive roster, and whether or not players will have access to all characters from the start, or if we’ll see the now commonplace approach that requires users to unlock the majority of characters (and other goodies) by completing facets of the game.
“If you keep playing the Episode and Bonus Battle [modes] you are able to unlock characters,” replies Furutani when asked about the character unlock process. “But there will be players who don’t want to play these modes, they want to play other modes, so we don’t want to force them to play Episode Battle.”
“There will be in-game money, like Zeni, which you can gather by playing the game and you can then go to the shop and unlock [characters],” he finishes.
Like so many other games in modern times, it seems those willing to fork over extra cash will be able to expedite the unlock process. This practice of asking players to spend either time or money to progress has become fully expected in recent years.
We learned back when various editions of the game were revealed that those who pre-order the Season Pass will get access to summon the wish-granting Shenron, and though we don’t have much information as to the particulars of how Shenron will function in Sparking Zero, Furutani does confirm in the interview that players will be able to use Shenron to unlock new characters as well.
The bit about unlocking characters begins around 3:03 in the video below, but you’ll want to watch the full interview if you’ve got the time as there’s a lot of enticing info to gather.
We also learned from the same interview how developers are approaching character balance according to canonical ability, so be sure to check that out if you haven’t seen it yet.
Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is slated to release on October 11th for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.