For months, possibly years if you count the fevered speculation on every Dragon Ball forum that has ever existed, fans have been side-eyeing the mysterious Project Age 1000 announcement from Bandai Namco with the collective energy of someone who already peeked at their Christmas presents. And now, Bandai Namco has officially pulled back the curtain and confirmed that Project Age 1000 was, in fact, Dragon Ball XenoVerse 3 all along.
While exciting, this should surprise absolutely no one. Anyway, here’s the trailer:
As you can see, the trailer features an animated teaser packed with familiar faces, and crucially, some genuinely bopping music that has no right being as good as it is for what is essentially a hype reel. This is Dragon Ball we’re talking about, so naturally the faces in question are ones you’ve seen a thousand times across every game, anime, manga, card game, and fever dream you’ve had since the early 2000s.
Nestled among the returning roster is a brand new character by the name of Brett (spelling?), who appears to be rocking a Capsule Corp outfit that carries a sleek, modernized aesthetic while seemingly paying homage to Gohan’s iconic Great Saiyaman look. It’s cleaner, it’s sharper, and it suggests that whoever Brett is, he has both excellent taste in corporate sponsorship and a deeply nostalgic fashion sense. We respect it.
Now, here’s where we have to have an honest conversation as a community, because we’ve been here before. XenoVerse 3 has enormous potential, and the Time Patrol premise has always been the perfect narrative excuse to go genuinely wild with the Dragon Ball universe. So we are begging, on our knees, hands clasped, powering up to levels that should be impossible, do not make us replay the Saiyan Saga again for the umpteenth time.
We have been through it. We have done the Saiyan Saga, crawled through Namek, watched Frieza transform for what feels like a cumulative six hours across every game ever made, punched our way through the Androids, survived Cell’s obsession with being perfect, and sat through Majin Buu’s whole thing more times than any reasonable person should have to. At this point, Vegeta’s pride and Goku’s insatiable need to let the villain power up are less dramatic plot points and more old acquaintances we’re exhausted by.
XenoVerse’s whole deal is that it messes with the timeline. Use that. Go somewhere new. Give us something the anime hasn’t already walked us through in painstaking detail across three decades of content. Just don’t rehash the same overused story arcs for three games straight (four, if you count Kakarot).
Dragon Ball XenoVerse 3 is confirmed, it is real, Brett is out here looking fresh in his Capsule Corp drip, and the game is currently set to launch in 2027 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam. The hype is warranted. The cautious optimism is also warranted. And if this game opens with Raditz landing on Earth, so help us, we will write another article about it.
