Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Tenkaichi interview at Comic Con

The global brand manager for Namco Bandai, Brandon Zien, was interviewed by Gamespot at the San Diego Comic Con following an ambush. He discussed the Impact Break, Spirit Gauge, Boss Battles, and touched on the Character Creation aspects of Ultimate Tenkaichi. Video follows as well as my own summary and thoughts.

Brandon said that Tenkaichi will be out on the 25th of October, and will be the game that spans the entire Dragonball, Z, and GT series for all the fans. He talked about the new Impact Break mode which is all about full environmental destruction.

A brief battle is shown between the two long-standing rivals, Goku and Vegeta, showing the UI and spirit gauge. One difference is that HP is now shown as a numerical value instead of a bar, which frees up quite a lot of the screen. The interface is rather alien to newcomers to the series or those who are used to the more traditional look, but simple and compact once it’s understood.

The battles are far, far more cinematic. There were very few in the previous Tenkaichi games, reserved for ultimate attacks normally. Vegeta can be seen staring at the incoming Kamehameha from Goku while wounded, unable to avoid the attack. There are also numerous means to avoid the supermoves outside of just moving a few feet to the left, which was incredibly annoying in the earlier games where the AI was damn near impossible to hit.

In addition to battles being more cinematic, the environment is much more dynamic and breakable. Previous instances of the game only had certain breakable objects, such as Namekian dwellings and small mountains. Goku’s Kamehameha can be seen leaving a sizable scar on the battlefield, which is a very large stepup from earlier games even though a lot of it remains scripted.

Later in the video, they show a battle of Goku up against the demon Janemba from the movies in his original oversized form. The boss battles in Ultimate Tenkaichi are completely different and like normal battles, more cinematic. Janemba can be seen using two attacks in his first phase, but once Goku beats him down enough, he goes through a wide series of quick-time-events not unlike God of War.

Not much was said about the character creation aspect sadly, just the usual you would expect from character creation in a fighting game, being able to fine tune a style and your appearance to what you want it to be.I feel that the battles are far more scripted, but at the same time, balances out the skills between players and AI far more, and overall improves the quality of the gameplay, breaking apart the repetitiveness of the previous titles.