After a long wait, fans are as close to Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot DLC 3 as they have ever been before. With a release date of Summer 2021, it seems that Future Trunks' story will be here any minute. While this is very exciting, there are still those fans looking even further into the future. At the moment there's no indication whether or not Kakarot will have a second season pass, but the introduction of a new playable character for DLC 3 could have some major implications moving forward. This refers to Future Gohan, of course, who is confirmed to be a separate playable character than the Adult Gohan that players have access to now.

This third DLC was accurately predicted by a leak months ago, but at the same time it seemed to come out of left field. Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot DLC 1 and DLC 2 set up Goku and Vegeta as the protagonists, teaching them the power of Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan Blue in the process. When the leak claimed that DLC 3 would be about Future Trunks, many assumed that Goku and Vegeta would use this newfound power to defend his future from Zamasu and Goku Black. Instead, players are going back to the future to see Trunks' struggles growing up with Gohan as his only friend.

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Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot - Playable Future Gohan

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot adding new playable character

While it may seem gratuitous to make Future Gohan his own playable character, there are several reasons why this was a necessary choice. For starters, Future Gohan never attains many of the powers that Adult Gohan has available to him. The most obvious ones here are Super Saiyan 2 and the Ultimate Gohan form, but even some of his techniques would never have been available to Future Gohan. Making them separate characters removes the need for Gohan's character to be level locked during DLC stories and means players won't have to lose abilities as they play the new content.

What's more, even Future Gohan's fighting style is bound to be different from his counterpart. This Gohan never had the chance to train with Goku for years, so everything he knows is mostly self-taught. Towards the end of the story when he inevitably loses his arm, his fighting style is bound to change even more. This one-armed combat is iconic to Future Gohan and would require an entirely new moveset to be developed, so it makes sense that these two are different characters altogether.

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot - Future Trunks Nerf?

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot DLC 3 Preparations

Another obvious reason to make Future Gohan a different character than Adult Gohan is that many players likely already have this character at maximum level. If players can simply defeat the Androids with ease in gameplay only to lose to them in the cutscenes since Gohan is already level 300, that would be hugely disappointing. That begs the question then of what will happen to Future Trunks? There's no doubt that he is stronger when he returns from Goku's timeline since he learns new grades of Super Saiyan and grows even more powerful, so how will the DLC handle this?

More likely than not, Future Trunks will also have a new playable character version. This should cover Trunks in his kid and teen years, representing the Half-Saiyan before he learned the Super Saiyan transformation. For the most part, his moveset and fighting style may remain the same, but he won't have access to his sword early on. Once he grows up, though, it will be interesting to see whether he simply reverts back to his current character stats or if players will need to juggle two different versions of Adult Future Trunks.

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Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot Playable Characters - Fusion Characters

trunks goten fusion dance

At this point, if Bandai Namco is already adding at least one playable character and quite possibly two, why should it stop there? One thing that players have been requesting since the game launched back in January of 2020 is for fusion characters to be playable outside of story mode. Implementing these characters would be even easier than Future Gohan, as they have already been fully designed with a moveset and technique that players have used before. This mainly applies to Vegito and Gotenks, but could work for other fusion characters as well.

One way to do this would be to create a new fusion screen in the main menu. From here, players could choose two characters to fuse and the fuse method, creating the new character and rendering the other two unusable for the time limit. It's already known that Fusion Dance canonically lasts 30 minutes while the Potara Earrings canonically last an hour, so these time limits would work fine. For example, if players wanted to play as Gotenks, they could fuse together Goten and Trunks. For the next 30 minutes, the two Half-Saiyans wouldn't be available as support characters but Gotenks could be included in the party. For balance purposes, he could still take up two party slots.

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot Playable Characters - Support Characters

dbz kakarot opening intro

Another common request from fans is to allow Support Characters to become fully playable. This includes the B Team of the Z Warriors, meaning Krillin, Yamcha, Tien, Chiaotzu, Android 18, Kid Trunks, and Goten. Even if these characters aren't quite as powerful as the ones that are designated as playable, fans would love the chance to use them in combat and experience what kinds of unique moves they have available to them.

Another option would be to take certain NPC characters and make them playable. By adding a new playable character to the game, Bandai Namco paves the way for this to be possible. One of the most popular choices would of course be Master Roshi, who proves to be a powerful fighter in Dragon Ball Super. Other characters that would be amazing as playable options include Android 17, Beerus and Whis, the Female Researcher (Android 21), and others. This is all speculation and may never come to pass, but hopefully this new playable character clears the path forward for even more in the future.

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

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