Dragon Ball Z: Kakarothas always featured story recaps during loading screens for the game, likely as a way to fill in some gaps of content that the video game adaptation skipped and to distract players while waiting.Loading screens will soon be a thing of the past, though, so what other purpose do these recaps serve? While previously they were mostly ignored, the time machine update is bringing them new purpose as players jump around various points in theDragon Ball Zstory. Could this use have always been in the back of developers' minds when designing the game?
Every loading screen inDragon Ball Z: Kakarotcomes with a story recap along with some art relating to the current conflict. These recaps not only help to remind players of what is currently happening in the story, but also occasionally fill in some of the missing details the game might have glossed over.Dragon Ball Z: Kakarothas recently added a time machine which allows players to travel back in time to various points of the story and replay completed story missions or intermissions, and these story recaps have been more helpful than ever before for players.
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DBZ: Kakarot Story Recaps
BeforeDragon Ball Z: Kakarotreduced load times, fans spent quite a lot of time staring at these story recaps. While the art is certainly cool, the text would often not change for large portions of the story, making them rather annoying to see over and over again. As it happens, though, the rather broad description of recent events is now working out inDragon Ball Z: Kakarot’sfavor, as time travelling players find them useful to get just a basic reminder of what’s going on.
MostDragon Ball Z: Kakarotplayers are extremely familiar with the seriesand its story already, so when playing through the game sequentially, these recaps were rarely needed and sometimes even patronizing. That said, even though all players using the time machine have beaten the game at least once, it can certainly be easy to get lost in the chain of events when hopping back and forth between different points in the story. Remembering who has achieved which power ups at certain points and exactly where a player is in a Saga can be difficult without the aid of these recaps.
This brings many to wonder if these recaps weren’t implemented in the first place with the time machine mechanics in mind. It wasn’t long afterDBZ: Kakarot’s release that the time machine was given an initial release date (and seemingly internally pushed back), and it may have been a feature which CyberConnect2 was planning to include from the get go but simply didn’t have the time to, or perhaps the time machine was omitted to avoid joining thenumerous games delayed in October of 2019. Either way, the broad scope of the recaps in conjunction with the somewhat broad time travelling capabilities of the time machine complement each other nicely.
Time travel mechanics in the game are not without their flaws, and there are many things that could be done tofixDragon Ball Z: Kakarot’s time machine, but it is important to focus on what developers got right just as much as what they missed the mark on. The time machine is incredibly useful for players looking to finish sub-stories or relive great moments fromDragon Ball Z, and the story recaps which accompany the loading screens provide helpful context for the various moments in time players will be travelling back and forth between.
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarotis available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
