Fighting Games Fri… Sunday: That’s Gold Baby

It was easy to speculate about the characters that remained for the third season of Dragon Ball FighterZ’s downloadable content, thanks to several faces that weren’t already featured as playable characters. The key question was how big a risk the development and publishing teams were willing to take at this point, nearly three years after the base game’s release. It was always possible that Bandai Namco and Arc System Works would go for more rudimentary choices like even more Gokus and Vegetas, but it was possible they wanted to avoid stuffing the season with more of them due to previous choices, particularly the Base variants and Kid Goku (GT) — being divisive.

The first two characters of the season, Kefla (the fusion of Kale and Caulifla) and Ultra Instinct Goku, were expected. The latter is the sixth Goku, sure, but plenty of Dragon Ball fans wanted to play the superpowered Goku from the final fight of the Dragon Ball Super anime series. The third choice, Master Roshi, was out of left field, the kind of welcome character who doesn’t play like anyone on the roster. The last two, sadly, won’t be quite as unique; one should have been more predictable than they were, while the other was very predictable.

Super Baby 2 from Dragon Ball GT, the version formed through Baby’s takeover of Vegeta, will be the fourth character in this season. This doesn’t quite count as yet another Vegeta thanks to Baby also having a number of his own moves, but he does combine them with some Vegeta techniques like a diagonal Final Flash. He also has the negative Spirit Bomb he used in the show, and will transform into the golden Great Ape for the super technique.

The fifth and final character coming is Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta, somehow the third Goku and Vegeta fusion that will be represented in this game. He’ll follow Super Saiyan Vegito Blue and Super Saiyan Gogeta Blue (no, I am not typing the whole names), who will all let players form a whole team of Goku and Vegeta fusions. Just in case anyone thought having two possible all-Goku teams and one possible all-Vegeta team wasn’t enough.

I’ll be honest here: This is only upsetting cynics like me who would rather have another original character. In no way are jaded old folks like me the main audience for another Gogeta. I can’t count the number of comments I’ve seen from fans loving this announcement on my two hands, knowing that the fused character from a fan-favorite moment in the overall-divisive (to put it lightly) DBGT series will be in this game. The FighterZ production team knows what characters fans want to see, even if they’re just more Goku or Vegeta variants.

There’s a big question regarding which techniques he’ll inherit. It would be a surprise if he didn’t have normal attacks similar to the other fused variants already in FighterZ, including Gogeta Blue. The minor issue is how Gogeta Blue can use moves from SSJ4 Gogeta from GT, since the developers clearly didn’t plan for the latter eventually being added. Gogeta Blue, for instance, can perform the Big Bang Kamehameha in FighterZ, complete with the same pose SSJ4 Gogeta took when he used it on Omega Shenron. (Gogeta Blue can also use it in Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2.) SSJ4 Gogeta could always shoot it in a different direction, or they’ll just reuse several animations and techniques to keep the costs low for a new character released this late in the game’s life.

Super Baby 2 will arrive on January 15th, while SSJ4 Gogeta will come later in 2021. Look forward to more gameplay videos of Super Baby 2 in action just before he releases. There’s no way to tell whether the game will get a fourth season of downloadable content, but that could depend on how well these characters sell. If it does get one, immediately prepare yourself for more Gokus and Vegetas, just to be safe.

There’s now a rough estimate for when the last two characters for the second season of Jump Force will arrive. Yoruichi from Bleach, who recently received the teaser trailer seen above, will arrive sometime early next year. Giorno Giovanna from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind won’t come until spring 2021, which explains why the leaked version of the character was clearly unfinished. Like FighterZ above, there’s currently no way to tell whether this will be the final season for the game, or if they’ll move on to a sequel. Given how this game sold, the question of whether there will be a successor is “when” and not “if.”

I planned to end this post by saying there’s unlikely to be a Fighting Games Friday post next week (late or otherwise) due to other plans, unless something big is announced. That was until I saw this. But the Dungeon Fighter Duel trailer appears to have leaked early, so I might have something to post next week after all. If not, there will be one the week after. SNK will provide the first real trailer for The King of Fighters XV and show the first character for Samurai Shodown’s third season on January 6th at 9PM ET. Hand it to the company for knowing how to start a year off with a bang, even though they’re under deserved scrutiny at the moment.