The Dragon Ball franchise lends itself more naturally to video game adaptation than most others. Unfortunately, since the Dragon Ball franchise is so action-packed, it's often pigeonholed into the fighting game genre. Additionally, since the release of Dragon Ball Z coincided with the advent of modern gaming consoles, the franchise's progenitor has been largely overlooked despite its indisputable video game potential.
Despite the massive success of recent Dragon Ball Z-related fighting games, the franchise is still at risk of oversaturating the market with the same product year after year. In order to break up the monotony, future developers could look to the franchise's roots and the early adventures of Goku as a source of inspiration.
Young Goku Is Weak Enough To Work In An Open-World Title
It's hard to imagine the later seasons of Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super as a believable open-world action-adventure. By the end of the Frieza Saga, Goku has the ability to instantaneously teleport across extreme distances—a power that quickly becomes ubiquitous for nearly all characters in the series. By the Cell Saga, there are probably a handful of characters that would have little trouble destroying the entire planet. It's difficult to imagine as a typical open-world adventure game. By contrast, Goku's relatively humble abilities in the early episodes of Dragon Ball are a perfect fit for a Breath of the Wild-esque title.
Long before Super Saiyan 4, God, Blue, Ultra Instinct, and the seemingly endless string of Saiyan power-ups, Goku was fairly weak. Yes, he could still take out gigantic dinosaurs with a single smack of his staff, but he couldn't fly—without the aid of the Flying Nimbus—and his patented Kamehameha could barely dent a car much less destroy a planet. This version of Goku would be ideal for an open-world title.
Stripped of the most powerful abilities in Dragon Ball, Goku is still powerful enough to be exciting, but weak enough to fit within the confines of an open-world title. He'd come equipped with a wicked double jump, enough speed and power for exciting encounters, and a built-in vehicle in the Flying Nimbus to cut down on pesky travel times. An open-world Dragon Ball title might lack the flare of its successors, but its humble nature opens the door for a much more grounded adventure.
An Open-World Dragon Ball Game Writes Itself
The plot of such a Dragon Ball open-world game is fairly straightforward. The early seasons are when many Dragon Ball characters started their iconic story arcs, and a potential game could center itself there. The main focus would have to be Goku, but it would be intriguing to see overlooked characters like Krillin, Yamcha, Master Roshi, and the like get their due.
Intriguingly, Dragon Ball perfectly follows an open-world action-adventure formula. Goku learns more techniques as his opponents get increasingly difficult. It's even difficult to describe Goku's earliest adventures as anything other than classic side quests. He roams from place to place battling low-tier enemies, retrieving objects, and exploring the area. Plus, the overarching objective goes without saying: collect all the eponymous Dragon Balls.
The incidental details are all pre-written as well. A Dragon Ball game has a built-in quest and trading hub in Kame House. It also has a slew of quest-giving NPCs like Bulma, Master Roshi, Krillin, and the like. It could even easily populate the open world with roaming mobs from the Red Ribbon army or dinosaurs. Since the show already closely mirrors a typical video game progression, there's very little work to be done in terms of adaptation, making it an ideal candidate for developers.