Recently, GameRant had the opportunity to talk with RedabCho, creative director, lead game designer, and producer of Dragon Ball Demon Breaker. In the interview, RedabCho opens up about the design and development process of the project, some things he and his team would like to add in the future, and provides some unique insight on Dragon Ball games as a whole from a game designer's perspective.
For those that haven't been keeping up with the development of Dragon Ball Demon Breaker, this is a fan project made by RedabCho and his small team of talented developers (which is not for profit, does not accept donations, and is not associated with any of the IP owners whatsoever). This time around, the game focuses on Future Trunks as the primary protagonist and cites Devil May Cry as its biggest inspiration. The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: For those that may not be familiar, could you give a brief summary of what the Demon Breaker project is?
R: Dragon Ball Demon Breaker is the very first Devil May Cry-inspired Dragon Ball fan project. It's actually the very first hack-and-slash Dragon Ball game made at this point. I don't know if there were any other Dragon Ball hack-and-slash games that were made previously. Our objective is to open the doors to explore Dragon Ball in a different fashion and in different genres to emphasize that the Dragon Ball property, Dragon Ball itself, works well with different genres. We're beginning to see that in a way, we're seeing it in action RPGs like Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot.
We're seeing RPG elements added within Dragon Ball Xenoverse. You get to see a lot of card games as well; you know Heroes made its way to the west which is something that was quite amazing. You know we're beginning to see how Dragon Ball is something that can work in so many ways in video games and different genres. This is what we want to do, we want to test the waters and see if this is that something people want, and maybe at some point if Bandai Namco sees this and picks up this idea, it would be an absolute honor to pick this up and develop a Dragon Ball hack-and-slash game.
Q: Dragon Ball covers a lot of genres but there are so many it's missing still. Demon Breaker is your take on a hack-and-slash, but what other genres would you like to see the franchise cover?
R: Oh! Number one would be a 3D platformer. It's something that I was hoping they would take on, specifically when it comes to Dragon Ball in particular, the classic Dragon Ball when Goku was a young boy. You know the Power Pole is a very great design opportunity for developers to use. Maybe at some point if it comes to a Mario Odyssey kind of style where Goku would use his power pole to create triple jumps, jump from platform to platform, swing with his tail, and do a couple of really cool things. That does exist in Dragon Ball Revenge of King Piccolo but that is considered more of a platformer beat 'em up. But maybe exploring different conventions, particularly when it comes to 3D platforming would be really great to see.
Q: Following the development of Dragon Ball Demon Breaker has been a very cool experience, but it's made me wonder something. How many people in total are on your team working on this project?
R: We're about 10 to 11 people and we outsourced to Atlas Studios Columbia for the level design and 3D environment art production pipeline for Dragon Ball Demon Breaker. The environment that Atlas Studios had worked on is kept on hold for now, we're gonna be working on that maybe sometime in the future. For now, we just pretty much want to do some small things, narrow down the scope a little bit, and make sure that we're focusing more on the gameplay a little bit rather than the story and the huge gigantic environment. We're gonna keep that for later and hopefully we can do something about it.
Q: What would you say are the biggest challenges of working with a team of that size?
R: Particularly, when it comes to direction and being a lead game designer is kind of understanding how these different departments work. When it comes to 3D art, you've got to have a good understanding of how the 3D artist works. 3D art terminology is very important. Understanding ways to minimize the production of the game. Production in the sense that it's not intensive on the 3D artist, figuring out hacks and tricks and ways to lessen the workload on members because we just want to avoid extreme stress for the members, so that's pretty much the biggest challenge is figuring out ways to lessen significant workloads on the members by figuring out ways to... for example, when it comes to 3D art, we don't want to create a really huge amount of models. We don't want to create a Super Saiyan Trunks model entirely from scratch and a base Trunks model from scratch and a Super Saiyan God Trunks model from scratch, so we basically have a bald Trunks model and we have wigs that we put on Trunks and we activate the wigs depending on which Super Saiyan state he's in rather than creating different models for the body.
Q: Does that bald Trunks model look absolutely amazing?
R: *Laughs* You could say so, you could say so. I like to call it Super Saiyan Zero.
Q: You recently decided to cut the story mode in order to focus on providing a more polished gameplay experience. This must have been a difficult decision to make, but how has it impacted development and what areas have you been able to make more strides in?
R: Story mode was pretty heavy on us. I felt like when it came to story mode, there was a lot to be done. Because when it comes to story mode, you need to figure out scenario planning, you need to figure out how to create dialogue that's interesting enough for the players to be like 'Huh, I'm loving this right now.' 20 minutes of it just doesn't seem like enough, right? I feel like expanding on it would have been better, but if we were to expand on it, then we wouldn't have that much time to focus on the gameplay. What we ended up doing was we removed story mode for the sake of expanding on the gameplay and focusing on those aspects in particular.
To make sure that the game is enjoyable enough and that there is replay value dependent on the combat system that I've designed and the combat system that our lead programmer, Ryan, is currently implementing. It feels like after we removed the story mode, a huge load has been lifted off our backs, and we're now more capable of adding more enemies to the game rather than making it seem like a one ended game with the same enemy type. The next enemy type is going to be announced really soon, and it's one of my favorites. I took a lot of notes from Ninja Gaiden, you know the reboots: Ninja Gaiden Black, 2, and 3. I think it's going to be a really, really interesting enemy. It's a really good callback, it's a nostalgic enemy.
Q: From my understanding, you'd like to come back to it at some point but there's no plans for that as of yet.
R: Yeah, I'm thinking of heading back into story mode. I'm not 100% certain because what I want to do right now is, after the release of Dragon Ball Demon Breaker, a big break is what we all need because this has been an absolutely amazing journey. It's been a tiring one indeed. I feel like a lot of people generally, even if it's a fan game, we take this fan game very seriously. Very, very seriously. Because we kind of want to prove ourselves and we want to prove to Bandai Namco the publisher that 'Hey, there are these people out here, us, we also want to take part in Dragon Ball.' Because it's such a beautiful franchise and we can express our love for it in different ways and showcase how valuable the property is when it comes to video game genres in particular. You can express Dragon Ball through Manga, Dojin, illustrations, writing, animation, YouTube videos creating what if scenarios, but you rarely ever see that in video games. We kind of want to create this renaissance for Dragon Ball games.
Q: Did you consider any other characters to be the lead for this game, or was Future Trunks the obvious option thanks to his choice of weapon?
R: That's actually a good question. Initially, what I really wanted to do was I had the intention of making Gohan one of the leads because he has the Z Sword. Yeah, unfortunately I just immediately said no, Trunks is the right character for this. You know, Gohan doesn't use the Z Sword anymore because it's been obliterated all thanks to Supreme Kai and Goku's idiocy, it's just, when you look at Trunks, he's very, very skilled with that sword. The way he finesses, the way he just chops down every single one of Frieza's army and just slices Frieza in half. It's pretty much just a really great design opportunity. Looking at Trunks' sword is the only way I could think about it.
Initially, Gohan was supposed to be one of the leads, he was supposed to aid Trunks. And one of the design decisions that I decided to remove, Dabura was supposed to be the villain of the game. We had Dabura removed because it's not really interesting when it comes to Dabura fighting Trunks because we've seen this in Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2. When you play the DLC, Dabura comes back and we get to see his plan for revenge because of Towa's death and that's not really an interesting way to put it because it's already been done before. So why don't we use another opportunity which is Trunks fighting his grandfather, the Dark Masked King, who also plays a very huge role in the Dragon Ball Xenoverse timeline. So yeah, that's why we chose Trunks.
Q: Flashy combat is important to the Devil May Cry franchise, but bosses are also a big part of that. So far, we haven't seen any boss battles shown, but will these be part of the Saiyan Palace mode? If so, are you able to talk about who they might be?
R: Well, I mean, right now we only have one boss. We don't want to really expand beyond that, in the future maybe we could do something about this. That's not to say that this is going to be the only boss, but on release that will be the only boss for now. But you know, if there's fan demand and a lot of people want more bosses or if they want to explore more characters or they want to see more combat or something that expands on the gameplay, we could think about it and come up with something hopefully. That's entirely dependent on whether or not we have the energy, because right now we're just really working our butts off. It's been an absolute challenge, but hopefully if we ever have the chance, we'd be more than happy to bring out additional bosses. For now, it'll be one boss and that's gonna be the Dark Masked King.
I understand a lot of people are really anticipating the boss battle, 'Oh, what's the boss battle gonna be like?' But what I like to do is, I'm not thinking of, I haven't necessarily started the design aspect of it right now. What I like to do is work on the gameplay system, designing the gameplay system, the combat for Trunks, and then the enemies. Afterwards I like to study the enemies and use those patterns and make sure that the boss is something that combines all those things together. What makes a really good boss is a test of skill, and you don't want to get into a boss battle and after all the skills that you've learned, none of the challenges are connected to the skills that you've learned and it's not really satisfying. I'm working my way up towards it, once I start designing it, I really hope I make something really great and I hope I don't disappoint any of the fans and I make something as intense as Devil May Cry.
Q: You've recently introduced the Super Saiyan God form for Trunks. Will this work the same way as his standard Super Saiyan form or is it more difficult to activate?
R: So Super Saiyan God pretty much acts as the Devil Trigger in Devil May Cry. When it comes to Super Saiyan transformations, it's like style switching. You're switching between Super Saiyan and Base mode any time because in relation to the anime, Trunks is able to turn into Super Saiyan in a complete swoop. He doesn't even have to yell beyond control, he just activates it immediately. But when it comes to Super Saiyan God, it's limited, it's powerful, we're currently working on area of effect attacks, so it's going to be a pretty intense transformation. When you swing the sword, a collection of enemies around you will get attacked, and it will be for a limited time frame. What you have to do is kill 10 enemies. After you kill 10 enemies, your god meter will reach maximum. Once you do that, you activate Super Saiyan God and you have the Key Sword. That's the only sword you're going to be using when you're in Super Saiyan God. It's a limited amount of time, but it's pretty much the Devil Trigger in Demon Breaker.
Q: When using assists, Goku and Vegeta power up to match Trunks' form. Will this feature work for Super Saiyan God Trunks as well?
R: Here's the interesting part. When it came to designing Dragon Ball Demon Breaker, I wanted to go for a route where Goku and Vegeta are depending on Trunks because Trunks is the only person out of them all who uses Super Saiyan God. A lot of people automatically assume that these iterations of Goku and Vegeta are the same iterations of the Xeno timeline. They are the Xeno Goku and Vegeta, but this is our own take on them. They can only go Super Saiyan, they can't go beyond Super Saiyan. But Trunks can go beyond Super Saiyan, and when they see that, Trunks is pretty much the guy that touches them by the chest and pushes them away like 'I got this.' Right? He's that kind of guy, he's like that powerful, macho dude. When Goku and Vegeta want to interfere, he says 'nah, get out of here. You guys are only supporting me, this is me.' So that's pretty much who he is.
Q: That's really interesting. What inspired you to make Trunks more powerful than both Goku and Vegeta by giving only him access to the Super Saiyan God form?
R: You know when you look at Trunks, he's such an important character within the Dragon Ball universe. Without Trunks, you wouldn't be having the Buu saga, you wouldn't be having Goku living right now, and it's because of him that Goku's still living, so that's pretty insane. He's such an important character, and it's like he had the spotlight at the start of the Android saga, but he slowly drifted away as Gohan started to train with Goku in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber and things started to change towards this suspense about whether or not Cell would get his perfect form. It happens, and all the eggs are in one basket.
Everyone wants to depend on Gohan as he turns Super Saiyan 2 and Trunks is pretty much just out of the picture. And Trunks gets killed by the end of the battle by Super Perfect Cell, and you see that again within Dragon Ball Super. In the beginning, Trunks is an important character, but then things kind of get taken away from him and Goku and Vegeta become more important. That's not to say that Trunks was not important, he was playing a major role all the time, but you start to see that the fighting was more of an emphasis on Goku and Vegeta rather than Trunks.
This is for me to say that this won't be akin to the Goku and Vegeta show, it's moreso this is Trunks. This is not Goku and Vegeta. This is a Dragon Ball game, but guess what? This is a very different Dragon Ball game. And in fact, imagine if you had a Dragon Ball game where Goku and Vegeta were not the focus. If you emphasized on Broly's backstory as a kid, from a third person narrative perspective, exploring his relationship with Paragus, it would be a completely different experience. A lot of players would be like 'woah, this is deep.' So, this is what we want to do, we want to explore these amazing characters that got the limelight but not to the utmost extent. Even though Trunks did get it a lot, he was the one who got it the most, he still didn't get as much limelight as Goku and Vegeta even if he is a main character.
Q: In previous Q&As you've made it very clear that a polished and clean gameplay experience is your number one priority at the moment, but if you had the time and resources to add anything to the game, what would it be?
R: Wow, there's a lot of stuff that I wanted to add. For starters, it would be a playable Goku and Vegeta, definitely a playable Goku and Vegeta. I would add an additional Super Saiyan transformation, and that wouldn't be 2. It would be Super Saiyan 3 Trunks. So it would be base mode, Super Saiyan 1, and Super Saiyan 3. You can switch between three different styles and then you can go into the Devil Trigger phase which is Super Saiyan God. Additionally, I think there would be a higher emphasis on the physics and environmental destruction of Dragon Ball Demon Breaker because we're currently restricted towards one physics system for Unreal Engine. We're not using the Chaos Destruction physics which is the more realistic and performance intensive physics system.
I think more design choices would be made. I think Ryan would probably get irritated with me if I ever mentioned design additions because Ryan is our lead programmer so every time I make a design addition I'm like 'this doesn't feel right, I think this design seems flawed, I wanna add something different here to make sure the enemies seem-' and he's just like 'no, no man. We're doing too much right now' And I'm like 'Okay fine!' So yeah, those things in particular: playable Goku and Vegeta, Super Saiyan 3 Trunks, emphasis on environment destruction, and more design decisions.
Q: What's your favorite Dragon Ball game?
R: Wow, you're putting me on the spot. Hmm, I haven't played a Dragon Ball game in quite a bit, I played Kakarot recently just for the sake of the Trunks scene, yeah that scene was great. I know a lot of people can be very confused when I say this, and I feel like it's kind of important for me to emphasize on something that's really important. For me, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z was an important game. Battle of Z opened the doors to so many great games that came out right now. A lot of people that look into Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z, sure, the graphics might not have been the best, you know the servers might not have been great, but a lot of people really sleep on the design decisions that these developers made. You get different player types, a ki blast type, an offensive type, a health type. We never really got that where its team coordination. You might have gotten it in Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi, but that was particularly player skill based. If you were experienced with Tenkaichi, the outcome would be very certain, right?
But in Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z, you have the introduction of mains. When somebody says I main this character, that's when it meant something. You main this character for a reason. It's kind of like when you play Overwatch and you main a particular character that heals other characters, the same applies for Battle of Z. If you play Android 18, you think I'm really good at Android 18. If you ask why, because I know how to heal at a rapid moment; I know how to approach enemies; I know how to approach players at a certain area; I know how to charge teammates' energy; I can make distance.
So, a lot of people sleep on Battle of Z, but it's one of my favorites. I like that it explored that it explored team coordination in Dragon Ball. It also really opened doors for Dragon Ball Xenoverse. You know without Battle of Z; you would never have Dragon Ball Xenoverse. And it really just is an important game and I feel like a lot of people should, when they play it, even if there are difficulty creeps and inconsistencies, looking deeper into the design of it is what will really click with you. You'll just be like 'the gameplay is actually pretty fun.' I don't give a sh*t about the cutscenes and all that stuff. I really care about how this game plays, right? So that's why I find it as one of my favorites.
Q: Many fans are worried about unexpected delays. Are you still on track for the demo launch this March?
R: We are on track for a launch this March. We don't have a specific planned date, which is wise. The demo is releasing 100% in March, but the actual full game release is sometime this Summer. We have not put up a concrete release just yet until we feel comfortable enough with that. The purpose for this upcoming demo that's releasing in March is we're pretty much just putting up this game as it's in development. We're just going to remove a couple of significant mechanics from mini demo that's releasing. And the thing that we want the most is just what do you feel is good about this game? What do you feel needs to be fixed? What feels right? What doesn't feel right? But, what a lot of people also should understand is not to demand things that are out of the ordinary.
When it comes to Super Attacks, we've gotten very popular demand, a lot of people ask is the Burning Attack gonna be included? I think a lot of people don't understand how difficult it is to actually animate the Burning Attack. With every single hand twist and everything, that would cost $1000 USD or above, it's actually ridiculous it could cost that much. The members are getting paid here and we want to aim for a budgetary limit and that's why we're cutting out a lot of things that are significant for Trunks. We want to make sure that the sword and the feel of Dragon Ball, not necessarily the exploding the world and shooting everything all across and all that stuff. The objective of the demo is pretty much how does this feel to you? What do you think is right? How does the design function? Does the combat feel good? Does it make sense to fight this way or that way? how do the enemies feel? How does the environment feel is it too cramped? The music. What do you think about the music? So it's just feedback, really good feedback.
Q: Do you have anything new you'd like to share with our readers?
R: Oh, so for me in particular, I guess I have something to discuss. I didn't plan on announcing it just yet. I just wanted to say that I'm working on something and it's not Dragon Ball. It's definitely going to be something connected to it, there is a sense of connection to that, but I'm working on something and when the time comes, I'll announce it.
Q: So this is a new personal project?
R: It's a new personal project. But we're in the middle of conceptualization, I have nothing to discuss as of yet. But hopefully once the time comes and once things feel settled... Maybe by the end of this year or the beginning of next year there will be an announcement.
Q: And of course, it wouldn't be a Demon Breaker interview if I didn't ask this question. Will there be a parry mechanic in the game?
R: Well, the parry mechanic is the coolest mechanic in the game. And it's actually exclusive to base Trunks, so yes there will be a parry mechanic.
[End.]
Dragon Ball Demon Breaker is scheduled for release in the Summer of 2021.