Despite having launched three years ago now, Bandai Namco has announced a new wave of DLC for One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 that introduces Luffy's most powerful form - Gear 5.
July 22 marks One Piece Day and to celebrate, a ton of news for the series was announced, such as a new trailer for the Netflix series, a teaser for some important events happening in the anime, and some new merchandise. As expected considering where the anime is at, a lot of the announcements focused on Luffy's Gear 5 transformation, which debuted in the manga some time ago but is just about to show up everywhere else.
To go along with the anime's introduction of Gear 5 (which also got its own dedicated teaser) Bandai Namco has announced that One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 is going to be getting three new character packs starting in September, with the first DLC pack including a variant of Luffy that also acts as the debut of Gear 5 in a One Piece game.
Bandai Namco already announced a few days ago that Pirate Warriors 4 was going to be getting DLC that added a few new characters, but the contents of the character packs were only just teased during One Piece Day. As highlighted by PS360HD2, the announcement was made through a new trailer that reveals that one of the new playable characters introduced in the DLC will be Luffy as he appears in the Onigashima Battle of the Wano arc, fittingly named "Onigashima Final Battle Pack".
We get to see a very small glimpse of this version of Luffy in action, but it's Gear 5 that truly makes him interesting. The trailer teases Luffy's transformation into Gear 5 before revealing his in-game render for the first time. Sadly, we don't get to see him in action just yet but the character art for him suggests that he's not a fully playable character and is instead a transformation that this version of Luffy can take on during battle.
This was also confirmed by Famitsu, who said, "Luffy can only be controlled in the 5th gear when using a special move" when reporting on the character pack. This isn't too surprising considering how powerful the transformation is, but it's a little bit of a shame we don't get to use him with complete free will.
Outside of Gear 5 Luffy, the first character pack will also feature two unannounced characters. There are two other character packs in the works and the silhouettes used to tease who will be added with them confirm one of them will feature Gold D. Roger and the other will feature Uta from One Piece: Red.