Dragon Ball XenoVerse 2 is going to tap into the History of Trunks

I enjoyed the first Dragon Ball XenoVerse game way too much. Easily the best looking Dragon Ball game ever made, it featured a control scheme that didn’t double as the Kama Sutra for thumbs, massive battles and at least one instance where I spent an afternoon hunting down Krillin as a ludicrously overpowered version of Broly. Good, good stuff.

And 2016 is looking to be my year. We’ve got a new generation of Pokémon debuting later, Donnie Yen in a Star Wars movie and now a sequel to XenoVerse. I’m on a Nimbus cloud nine right now. So of course I’m reading way too much into a single minute of debut footage. Of course I am. I’ve also locked the doors and stolen all your cyanide capsules. So you’re going nowhere while I poke deep into the new Dragon Ball lore.

Dragon Ball XenoVerse had players roaming around the homegrounds of time itself. The Supreme Kai of Time was in charge, fighters from all across the timestream had gathered and somebody had to punch evil back into oblivion. Fortunately, that somebody was you.

Which was really cool, because players got a chance to make their own custom warrior. You could be from the Majin tribe, Namekian, human or Saiyan. Rather neat. The default model was a Saiyan, that helped promote Dragon Ball XenoVerse before it was released. And it looks like your deeds haven’t been forgotten since the events of that first game when you took down Demigra.

And not too much has changed. SURPRISE. What does seem radically different this time however, is the location for the Time Patrol. And I sincerely hope that there’ll be some shortcuts in place to make navigating it less of a chore. But it looks like the same playable races will be present here again. Which means I get to make a 2.0 version of SUPER-KRILLIN!

Looks like we have a new default character as well. With hair that has spikiness that goes over 9000. BELIEVE IT.

Here’s where I’m a tad bit apprehensive. Dragon Ball XenoVerse featured remixes of popular storylines, all the way from the Saiyan saga through to the Majin Buu epic and beyond. And that was cool. It was neat, original stuff for a change. And I’m not keen to play through it a second time, which is a feeling I’m getting from these snippets of gameplay that feature a possessed Nappa and yet another take on the Frieza saga.

What I do want to explore however, are the original video animations that exist outside of the main anime series. Such as when Goku’s father Bardock found himself hurled backwards in time by Frieza’s genocidal death bomb, because uh, science. YEAH, SCIENCE!

Or even taking on Lord Slug! That was a fantastic OVA, as it featured a Namekian adversary who could also grow in size after he had vanquished the most powerful enemy of all time: Old age. More of that please.

Bethesda is going to sue somebody. Scrolls played a major part in XenoVerse, as they allowed players to access the timestream and put a stop the Time Breakers and their shenanigans. Also, kind of looks like the mother of all joints.

Remember when I mentioned Bardock being sent back in time when he was supposed to have died? Yes, it’s completely trippy. It gets even crazier in the OVA, when he lands on a prehistoric version of planet Vegeta that is populated by the biggest pacifists this side of a Ghandi exhibit. Man, I really hope this makes it into Dragon Ball XenoVerse 2.

Now here’s the saga that I’m looking forward to. The Trunks saga was one of the best events in Dragon Ball history. The future son of Vegeta, travelling back in time to help save the future from a pair of homicidal androids who had succeeded in murdering most of the life on Earth. But it’s the prequel story that deserves major love.

This was the one-off story where Trunks was taught by an older Gohan how to fight, and also home to some of the most brutal battles ever broadcast. It’s a storyline where Gohan meets his end, facing two unstoppable killers with only one arm. Touching stuff, that gave the Trunks Saga an emotional anchor that resonated deeper than any of the other big battles in the franchise. And it’s a story that hasn’t been done any justice in its sparse few appearances in interactive media.

Hopefully Dragon Ball XenoVerse 2 can rectify that.

Last Updated: May 18, 2016