In recent years, I’ve cultivated a bit of a reputation as an IP fanboy, or at least the most willing to admit to it. You slap something I like onto something else I like or make a cheeky little reference to other things I’ve paid money for and you might as well keep my wallet in your hands to save us both the trouble.
With this well-known love of everything branded, having Dragon Ball, one of my favourite anime of all time, featured in Fortnite, arguably my favourite live-service game, sounds like a dream come true. In fact, it mostly is, and I instantly jumped back onto The Island for the first time in months when the collab went live, grabbing Goku and Beerus without a second thought.
Most Fortnite collaborations add a few skins with unique pickaxes and gliders, but Epic really went all out with Dragon Ball. Not only do two of the skins have multiple different transformations and styles, but there are also several new points of interest across the map that are direct references to the series and lobbies where you can actually watch episodes of Dragon Ball Super. More importantly, the crossover introduces a new Kamehameha mythic pick-up that lets everyone pull off the most famous special move ever conceived, as well as a Nimbus Cloud to instantly fly away from danger, sort of like if the Crash Pad wasn’t complete shite.
As I jumped into my first match and watched in awe as Goku blasted some fool with an AK47, hit the griddy, and then flew away, I couldn’t help but feel incredibly sad inside. Not because Goku had just done a TikTok dance, but that seeing all this incredible Dragon Ball content was a sad reminder of how nothing in live games is permanent, no matter how fun it is or how much passion and hard work has been poured into it.
Fortnite has proven time and time again that all of these big collaborations are temporary, and liable to be vaulted as soon as a few months have passed. It’s done so before with Spider-Man and the awesome web shooters, Star Wars and its lightsaber weapons, and even Thanos and his Infinity Gauntlet, arguably the first big crossover Fortnite ever had. Dragon Ball is huge, but it’s not going to avoid this, which means that Kamehameha you’re having so much fun sharing clips of with your friends is going to be gone before you know it.
In most cases, you’ll at least be able to keep the skins that come attached to that crossover, being able to merrily run around as Spider-Man for the rest of time, but any item or weapon attached to the crossover can be vaulted forevermore, only popping out very rarely if another big release in the license happens to come out.
Even then, some skins get locked behind battle passes that take an obscene amount of time to level up and then never get released in another format. Sorry if you wanted to play as Rick Sanchez, but didn’t have 100+ hours to devote to Chapter 2: Season 7 when it was released.
The best-case scenario with these items and weapons is that Epic turns around and rebrands them as something original, like it did when it turned the Web-Shooters into the Grapple Glove. This does keep the item in rotation, but I’ve never seen an item from a collaboration that’s not lost its soul when this happens. The Web-Shooters used to be one of the best items in the game, and now finding the Grapple Glove is like seeing the Harpoon – a total disappointment.
I can easily see Epic turning the Nimbus Cloud into some kind of floating balloon and the Kamehameha into a powerful laser cannon, but in doing so it’ll completely miss why people are having so much fun with them in the first place. I don’t love the Kamehameha because it’s a one-hit kill weapon (although that’s pretty good too), I love it because I love seeing characters from across my favourite media all jumping in the air and pulling off a move I’ve tried to do all my life. I love seeing Fortnite accept its identity as IP soup and lean into it just to make players feel good and have fun.
Anyone who’s played a single live-service game in their life will know that this is the case for the whole genre, but it hits hardest with Fortnite because it not only gets the biggest crossovers possible, but because Epic always put so much care and love into all of them.
Dragon Ball in Fortnite is simply too special for the game it's inhabiting, and The Island is going to feel a lot more soulless when it inevitably disappears.
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