Major announcements for fighting games Guilty Gear Strive and BlazBlue were made during this weekend's CEO 2021 presentation. The announcements included a new Guilty Gear Strive DLC fighter and an important addition to BlazBlue's online services.
Who is the new Guilty Gear Strive DLC character?
After last months reveal that the third Guilty Gear Strive DLC character would be Happy Chaos, we've now got a teaser for a fourth fighter. The trailer is pretty brief, but it reveals that itinerant samurai Baiken will be joining the roster early next year. It's just a teaser trailer, so we didn't get much of a look at how Baiken will play, but this does nevertheless confirm that July's datamine was at least partially correct. It's likely that the next DLC character for Guilty Gear Strive will therefore be gentlemanly Vampire Slayer. You can check out the Baiken teaser trailer here.
What was the announcement made about BlazBlue at CEO 2021?
In addition to the new Guilty Gear Strive character, we also got some important news regarding two major fighting games in the BlazBlue franchise. Both BlazBlue: Central Fiction and BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle are getting rollback netcode. There's a lot of technical jargon surrounding rollback, but suffice it to say it's the standard used by reflex-heavy games like King of Fighters and the aforementioned Guilty Gear Strive. In essence, it makes the online experience smoother and provides a much more stable and reliable way to battle opponents online.
If you're a fan of BlazBlue, you should notice improvements in the online play modes of both games after rollback is implemented. It's coming to both games in 2022, with Central Fiction up first in February (although only on Steam). You can access the rollback beta via Steam right now. Cross Tag Battle will also be getting rollback on Steam, as well as the PS4, later this year. The Switch version is out of luck in this regard, unfortunately.
Are you looking forward to playing BlazBlue with netcode? What DLC character do you want to see in Guilty Gear Strive next? Let us know in the comments below!