Game Rant recently had the opportunity to pick the brain of Dragon Ball Demon Breaker's Creative Director, Lead Game Designer, and Producer, RedabCho. During the interview, RedabCho shared exciting news about what's in store for Demon Breaker, but also shared some unique insight about the game's story mode. Initially, players were going to have access to a fully voice acted story mode featuring Future Trunks as the star of the show, but this was recently cut. Though it's certainly unfortunate that Demon Breaker will release without this feature, the reasons RedabCho gave should make fans feel better about the decision.
Dragon Ball Demon Breaker is RedabCho's attempt to do something that no one has done before: bring the hack-and-slash genre to Dragon Ball. Inspired by the likes of Devil May Cry, Demon Breaker places fans in control of Future Trunks as he battles against hordes from the Demon Realm. The concepts used here draw heavily from Super Dragon Ball Heroes, but even fans unfamiliar with that will recognize the characters and their abilities.
RELATED: Dragon Ball Demon Breaker Dev Explains Why Goku and Vegeta Can't Go Super Saiyan God
Fans were no doubt excited about the story mode that RedabCho had in store, but it seems that ultimately is was just too much for the 11 man team to tackle at the time. Video game development is hard work, and doing it at the level that the SaiyaSlash team is with only 11 people is even more impressive. Redabcho had this to say about why story mode was ultimately cancelled.
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, you know? I feel like expanding on it would have been better, but if we would have expanded on it, we wouldn't have been able to focus on the gameplay.
Furthermore, RedabCho shared what he and his team have been able to accomplish now that the weight of story mode has been lifted off of their shoulders. Fans can expect much cleaner gameplay, but most importantly, there will be increased levels of replayability. Players will likely appreciate a more fine-tuned combat system, despite it coming at at the expense of Demon Breaker's planned story, and RedabCho has even said that he isn't opposed to revisiting the story mode sometime after release.
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... 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.
Fans won't have to just take RedabCho's word for it though, as a mini gameplay demo of Demon Breaker will be releasing sometime in March. This will be just a small portion of the full game, but should give players an idea of what to expect and a firsthand look at the progress the SaiyaSlash team was able to make after cutting the story mode. Keep an eye on the official Dragon Ball Demon Breaker Twitter account to learn more about the upcoming demo.
Dragon Ball Demon Breaker is in development and scheduled to release in Summer of 2021.
MORE: Fan-Made Dragon Ball Demon Breaker Project Reveals Goku and Vegeta