Here’s Your First Look at Dragon Ball Project Z

Just ahead of the losers bracket finals during the Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour finals tournament, voice actors Sean Schemmel and Chris Sabat took to the stage to officially introduce Bandai Namco Entertainment’s next Dragon Ball video game. Tentatively titled Project Z, this action RPG will be a dramatic retelling the events of Dragon Ball Z from Goku’s perspective, and it appears to have open world elements as well. The trailer also reveals that CyberConnect2 is involved in development.

The trailer, which is paired with a sweeping new arrangement of the classic “Cha-La Head Cha-La” theme song, lets us know exactly what Project Z will be about. It appears to be skipping the first half of Dragon Ball, but covers (at the very least) through the dramatic climax of the Frieza saga. The trailer goes through a montage of the game’s cutscenes, which are animated to a degree we haven’t seen in a fully-3D Dragon Ball game yet. The goal here seems to be replicating the drama of the source material, appropriate to the scale of a large scale action RPG.

At the end off the trailer we get our first look at the game in action, sort of. It’s more of a display of the in-game engine, as we really only see Goku walking around in a few different environments. He casually strolls past the Kame House and Capsule Corporation HQ, before a big, sweeping shot of the Dragon Ball outside world (complete with a dragon, dinosaur, or something flying across the horizon). This could be implying some open world gameplay as part of the experience, but it’s too early to tell for sure.

We don’t have a title or full release date yet, but the trailer does state that Project Z is aiming for a 2019 launch.