Guilty Gear Strive’s general director Daisuke “rock & roll” Ishiwatari and development director Akira Katano revealed some new tidbits in a 4Gamer interview. Chief among them is whether the game will get new characters after the launch.

Turns out, there will be: Guilty Gear Strive will have 5 DLC characters for the first season of the game. Out of all the 5, at least one of them will be a brand-new character in the franchise according to Katano and Ishiwatari.

“We can’t bring out any specific character names until release, but we are planning to provide release windows. All five characters have already been decided upon, so we’d like to show them to you as soon as possible.

Out of the five, there’ll be at least one brand new character.”

Here is the Season 1 schedule.

July 2021

• Additional Character #1 – New playable character.

August 2021

• Additional Character #2 – New playable character.

After Fall 2021

• Additional Characters #3, #4, and #5 – New playable characters.
• Additional Battle Stages – Two new battle stages.
• Another Story

And if you want to see who may be next in line for DLC, check out the recently-revealed story mode and opening of the game. Blue guy in 4:32, That Man/Aska in 5:36, Sin Kiske in 5:46, the big guy next to Giovanna in 5:48.

The upcoming game introduces two new characters: Giovanna the secret agent with a wolf for a spirit animal and Nagoriyuki the black samurai vampire. Ishiwatari shared some thoughts about the two:

“Nagoriyuki’s visuals were created with the story as the focus. He just appeared that way in my head and I drew him like that. The brush wouldn’t stop moving.

Conversely, we had a lot of trouble with Giovanna. As a secret service agent protecting the President, we couldn’t make her design all too extravagant and in the end she sort of ended up a character who isn’t very ‘Guilty Gear’. Seeing her end up high in the popularity polls was something of a happy accident.”

Guilty Gear Strive will be out on 11th June for PC, PS4, and PS5.