We don’t look in to see what he’s doing while he’s away, the Narrator just tells us he’s training. We don’t get to play any of these moments in Kakarot, and it makes Goku’s in-game absence that much more obvious. While Goku’s trying to reach planet Namek in his spaceship, he’s training to fight Frieza. While his friends wait for him to return to life in the Saiyan saga, Goku is training on King Kai’s world, and running down the giant Snake Way. What’s specifically frustrating about the long swaths of no Goku is that he is never this absent in the show. In Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, I regularly go five or more hours without even seeing the titular character outside of cutscenes. I know Goku is the main character - his name is on the box! - so what am I doing wasting this time in someone else’s shoes for so much of the experience? Where in the world is Goku? Every mission as Gohan is just waiting for Goku to show up like this Image: CyberConnect2/Bandai Namco Entertainment But the wait for our hero suffers in an interactive medium like this. It works in the show, because we always have a good sense of where Goku is and what he’s doing. The constant wait for Goku is a faithful recreation of the anime. Most of my fights as these heroes feature me tiring out an insurmountable bad guy or killing off their goons knowing Goku will eventually join the battle 10 times stronger than when I last controlled him, and he will lead us to victory. Playing as Gohan, Piccolo, or Vegeta ultimately makes me feel like the opening act before the headliner, the small plate before the main course. It may have been series creator Akira Toriyama’s original vision to put Goku’s son Gohan in the leading role of Dragon Ball Z, but it’s not the way the show played out. Goku has always been an absent hero, but he’s still the leading man in the show - and I get to watch him get stronger every episode: training at 100 times Earth’s gravity on his way to Namek, or chasing Bubbles the monkey on King Kai’s planet. ![]()
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