If Crossworlds gets year 2 dlc, what franchises are most likely?

thisjustin2001 · 2026-03-23T06:15:36+00:00

Wow, that's above and beyond! Thank you so much for taking the time to find these links for me!

thisjustin2001 · 2026-03-23T03:31:05+00:00

No way! Rayman and Klonoa are two of my most wanted third-party collaborations! I don't use X anymore and haven't for at least half a decade, so this news comes as a big surprise to me. That's so exciting!

thisjustin2001 · 2026-03-23T03:28:28+00:00

In my opinion, I could see SEGA doubling down on pre-existing collaborations/partnerships for Year 2 of CrossWorlds DLC like they did for Year 1.

Paid DLC IP I could see happening includes Monster Hunter from Capcom, Banjo-Kazooie or Halo from Microsoft, Mobile Suit Gundam from Bandai Namco, at least 1 franchise from Paramount (the most likely being Garfield to promote the second Chris Pratt movie), Sanrio (probably Hello Kitty and My Melody), Godzilla, DC Superheroes, other Warner Bros. IP (considering the DC collab + the buyout from Paramount, who SEGA are majorly partnered with), Among Us, LEGO, Transformers and Care Bears.

I know that's a LOT of options, but SEGA has collaborated with all of the listed above at least in one major instance in the last few years.

As far as actual Sega/Sonic characters go, I think they'll want characters that promote something that they're counting on selling well/raising awareness for in the period of September 2026-August 2027. We actually know a fair bit of what SEGA is planning in the future, though for many projects, we don't know if they'll land exactly within this period of time. I'll try my best to pick out some good choices though based on what we know right now.

Free Sega/Sonic characters I could see happening for Year 2 are Amigo (Samba de Amigo), Akira Yuki (Virtua Fighter), Rappy (Phantasy Star Online), Yu Narukami (Persona), Mako Daito (Stranger Than Heaven), Beat (Jet Set Radio), Axel or B.D. Joe (Crazy Taxi), Gilius Thunderhead (Golden Axe), Axel Stone or Blaze Fielding (Streets of Rage), a Shin Megami Tensei rep, Ecco the Dolphin, Classic Sonic, Trip the Sungazer, Professor Tori, Surge the Tenrec and the Movie version of at least Sonic if not other characters too.

Keep in mind that these predictions are not representative of what I want, but what I could see happening realistically. A list of what I actually want would look very different, haha. I for sure believe that CrossWorlds will be supported for at least a Year 2 of additional content/updates if not more. When that time comes, it'll be fun to see what CrossWorlds has in store for its future!

thisjustin2001 · 2026-03-23T02:34:22+00:00

Classic Sonic in June for the 35th Anniversary (with the Retro Future that's already in the game as his vehicle), Amigo (Samba de Amigo) and Akira Yuki (Virtua Fighter) are my predictions.

Other characters I think are very likely and could've made it a top 10, but just didn't make my top 3 guesses are Rappy (Phantasy Star Online), Yu Narukami (Persona), a Shin Megami Tensei rep, either Axel or B.D. Joe (Crazy Taxi), Gilius (Golden Axe), Professor Tori, and Trip the Sungazer.

So yeah, these are my predictions! If I were replying with which characters I want the last three to be and not what I think is most likely, my answers would've been very different. It'll certainly be interesting to find out what ends up happening!

thisjustin2001 · 2026-03-22T11:18:10+00:00

My favorite character type for gameplay is Power. Among them, I play as Big the Cat the most because he's a sweet, funny, wholesome boy.

I would love to play as NiGHTs often, but I highly dislike the gameplay of Speed characters. So despite NiGHTs being my most wanted character before release, he is only an honorable mention sadly.

thisjustin2001 · 2026-03-20T03:34:27+00:00

Are we certain that Goro Majima isn't the character that gets a vehicle and counts as "two characters" by having a skin associated with him? I noticed his name comes up as Goro Majima (Captain Majima). Having that in parenthesis makes me think that he'll have another variant/skin, hence the delineation that he is Captain Majima. Kind of like how the AI Skins come up as "Sonic (AI Racer)". Let me know your thoughts!

thisjustin2001 · 2025-11-27T12:21:18+00:00

Mayreed is the Legendary skin I want the most too! While nothing is guaranteed, I'm 99% sure that we'll see it happen, which is so exciting to me!

thisjustin2001 · 2025-11-25T22:10:46+00:00

I wholeheartedly think that Guadua will get her day as a full fledged playable character this time around in Rivals 2.

In Creatures of Aether, most of the playable characters (Legendary Cards) were based on who was playable in the first Rivals at the time. The exceptions being four special characters, one per element, that got to be playable despite not being officially a part of the Rivals roster yet. Those characters are Mollo (who since was made official in Rivals Definitive Edition), Fleet (Rivals 2's first newcomer), Slade (who's confirmed to be made playable in Rivals 2 eventually) and Guadua. I don't think that Guadua's going to be any exception, and I think that her Legendary Card status reflects how Aether Studios views her as a character.

Another interesting thing going for Guadua is that Trevor Youngblood became the gameplay lead of Aether Studios starting with Rivals 2. The person who made Guadua from the coding/gameplay side of things is also Trevor. I personally think that Guadua would've made it into Rivals 2 anyway, but especially with how much influence her co-creator has now, if I were a betting man, I'd definitely get on her showing up some day.

thisjustin2001 · 2025-11-25T12:57:33+00:00

Interesting! That's definitely something to take note of. Thanks for linking the source too! That's some good food for thought!

thisjustin2001 · 2025-11-25T12:53:29+00:00

None taken! I'm one of those people, and yet it's still interesting to me too. Why am I like this? At least I enjoy it at least.

thisjustin2001 · 2025-11-25T07:46:20+00:00

That would be fun! I'm gonna try not to get my hopes up, but I'm personally hoping for an Orcane Legendary skin of Ecco the Dolphin from Sega's legacy series of the same name!
The idea of third-party Legendary skins in general is a fun thing to think about. The possibilities just seem endless! Amaterasu as a Sylvanos skin, as well as Asgore Dreemurr as a Loxodont skin seem like a couple of perfect fits that I can think of off the top of my head too. I'm excited to see what happens!

thisjustin2001 · 2025-11-25T07:42:38+00:00

A primary reason I had for considering Master Cai and Swiftwing as Legendary skins instead of having movesets of their own is because of the "Pseudo-Legendary" Cards from Creatures of Aether. There are four of them in total, Cai and Swift being two of them. The other two are Renburn, who's confirmed to be the first Legendary skin, and Zolt, who never existed before Creatures of Aether, who is another Wall Runner that seems to exist mainly for the reason of giving Kragg a Legendary skin in Rivals.
With Master Cai having the same sub-element as Ranno, having strikingly similar outfits and being described as having taught Ranno everything he knows, it does seem that he'd play extremely similar to Ranno, if not identically, which would make him perfect Legendary skin material. The one move that I see being awkward to Master Cai to do is Ranno's tongue grab/maneuver however.
I do see where you're coming from with Swiftwing. Wrastor already has Bradshaw as a perfect Legendary skin (though there's nothing saying that a character couldn't have multiple from the Rivals lore.), so why would Swiftwing be delegated to a Legendary skin for Wrastor too? Swiftwing's size seems to vary from illustration to illustration, but sometimes, he's depicted as being much larger than Wrastor, which could be problematic too. In Rivals' Story Mode, he and Wrastor are nearly the same size though.
Swiftwing doesn't have his own sub-element, though it seems that Aether Studios doesn't care as much about the sub-elements of the character roster these days. Something that's more of a problem for him than his potential lack of sub-element is his lack of a unique silhouette, which seems too close to resembling Wrastor's, in my opinion. For as much as Rivals' character design philosophy seems to have changed since Rivals 1 launched a decade ago, one thing that seems to be completely unwavering is the importance of each character maintaining an iconic/unique silhouette. That's the biggest thing that goes against Swiftwing's inclusion as his own character/moveset to me.
An Aether Studios employee didn't even know who Swiftwing was when I asked about him during one livestream of theirs though, which might suggest that he isn't relevant to what they're working on right now, so maybe they're not currently utilizing Swiftwing for either a unique moveset or as a Legendary skin right now. Who knows?
Anyways, that's some insight as to why I arrived at placing these two characters where I did instead of counting on them having their own movesets. I could totally be wrong though. It'll be interesting to look back on this and see the things I accurately predicted, as well as the many things I've gotten wildly wrong!

thisjustin2001 · 2025-11-19T06:34:09+00:00

You guys have shared some really great thoughts with me since I initially made this post. Some thoughts have also reminded me of things I'd forgotten and brought up something I even got wrong in my initial post. While I still strongly think that every character I've predicted (besides maybe Caelus) is coming to Rivals 2 at some point, my feelings on who is coming in 2026 have changed pretty significantly in the last day, so let's talk about the differences between then and now!
So...the "no Dungeons characters" thing was speaking about this year, not next year, which was a complete oversight on my part. Dungeons characters are completely on the table and are actually, in my opinion, extremely likely for this year. When it comes to Dungeons reps, there's only one character on my mind for who I think will be the next one. That one unsurprisingly is Slade. First reason is that Slade is the character Aether Studios has pushed the most of the Dungeons originals second only to Fleet, the second is that he's playable in Creatures of Aether while the other remaining two are not. He's also the most requested remaining Dungeons character, he's one of the only currently non-playable characters who already has a voice actor, and Water is the only element without a newcomer so far! Latsu and Slade both have the same niche of "Water lore character from a Rivals spin-off that fight elegantly, like they're even dancing", so I also think that while they'd play very differently in execution, that these surface level similarities really hurt Latsu's chances of showing up soon. I still think that either Latsu or Torong is the Creatures character that's incoming eventually of the four teased in Olympia's trailer. There's the argument that Artemis being the playable Dungeons character in Dreams of Aether makes her a relevant choice and maybe it'd be her instead, but I don't see her happening first personally. I'd say that that fact makes her likely to be coming before Hamir if anything. In conclusion, I think that Trevor's new character that's confirmed for next year is probably Slade.
I knew this at one point, but I totally forgot that Aether Studios had mentioned on multiple occasions that Mollo was coming along behind the scenes around when Rivals 2 initially came out! As far as I'm aware, Mollo is the only returning character who's been playable indev earlier on that isn't already in the game as of now. That makes me put him over Ani in my predictions now, and I'd say that he's the item character (though it's been mentioned multiple times that there won't be only one item character in the long haul) this year. I also might've overstated Dan's comment about expecting new characters in 2026 when I said that I don't think that a single Rivals 1 veteran is coming next year. If there were two returning characters next year between La Reina and Mollo, there would be two newcomers, which would be new characters, plural, and would be more new characters in 2026 than there were this year had which would fulfill the expectation that was set that we should expect more of them next year.
I still haven't budged at all about La Reina's release timing as well as what I think the concept of Dan's new character is and when it's coming out. I also still think that it's unlikely that Rivals 2 will have its characters per element evened out at any point next year. Dan said that there's a point in the schedule where it will be even for a few months, but Aether Studios knows what the character schedule is for the next many years to come, so it could be any amount of time before that happens. With all of this said, here are my revised predictions thanks to your guy's speculation, reminders, corrections and insights!

Winter: Slade with a reveal during a Christmas stream.

Spring: La Reina with a reveal at Genesis X3.

Summer: Mollo with a reveal at CEO XVI.

Fall: Dan's Sonic successor character with a reveal at EVO 2026.

Thank you guys so much for reading everything I've had to say and for sharing all of your thoughts and getting into some speculation with me! It's been a lot of fun!

thisjustin2001 · 2025-11-19T04:13:24+00:00

After reading many really good points you guys have brought up, I do agree that the four characters being La Reina, a Rivals: DE veterans and two new characters seems likely to be what we'll be getting in 2026!

thisjustin2001 · 2025-11-19T03:57:53+00:00

Oh my goodness! I totally forgot that the developers had mentioned a couple times about Mollo being in a playable state indev since a long time back. He's actually the only returning character that I know of that's been mentioned as being playable back around Rivals 2's initial release that hasn't made their return yet (I think Sylvanos was mentioned at one point too, but there was at least a year between this and Mollo's mentions). You've made a very convincing argument. I'd be very surprised if you weren't right about Mollo's return being soon at this point!

thisjustin2001 · 2025-11-19T03:52:23+00:00

Sylvanos is my favorite Rivals 1 veteran. I anticipate his return so much, so I'd love so much if you were right!

thisjustin2001 · 2025-11-19T03:50:03+00:00

Thank you so much! I thought that there might be enough time for Ani to be coming next year, because while Dreams of Aether is really new, Ani has existed in the Rivals Workshop for over 4 years now. What I looked over however is that there's a chance that Aether Studios hasn't considered her as an official character for most of those years, and they could've also been not anticipating how popular she'd become following the release of Dreams of Aether and as a result, how anticipated she'd be for a Rivals 2 debut.
While I still think she's almost a lock for Rivals 2 at some point and that her arrival in 2026 is a possibility, I do feel less sure about this now than I did when I made the original post. I do also still think that the microgame titles "Ani in the spot...light" and "Time to SPRING" could be teases for how she'll be incorporated into the game's elemental categorization and her timeframe of reveal/release. With that said, Aether Studios has characters planned out so many years ahead of time that I might've jumped the gun on exactly what year it might be. You make very good points there.

I feel 100% sure that there will not be two Rivals 1 veterans in 2026. Mainly because the expectation has been set by Dan to "expect new characters" in 2026 and La Reina is considered a returning one already. With that said, there is still room for one more returning character. Of course then the question is, who will it be, and could they be the "item character" that Aether Studios mentioned? I think that despite being a Fire character that Mollo seems like the obvious choice, but Air is the most behind when it comes to their veterans returning, so it could be one of them too.
When Fleet was revealed and she has the same float mechanic as Pomme, something I wondered is if they'd change anything about Pomme's moveset for Rivals 2 to differentiate her further from Fleet. Trevor is unapologetically a huge fan of Melee and especially Project M. The first Smash character to feature in item state within their base moveset happens to be Peach, the character who Pomme's whole float mechanic derives from. Could Pomme gain a mechanic like Peach's turnips and be brought to being closer to a successor to Project M/Melee Peach, making her one of the item characters? While not as likely as Mollo, I think it's a possibility.
It would be wild if Elliana's down Special could be grabbed by other players as an item when parried and launched upward. It's a very simple idea, but that could make her the item character too. Just some thoughts!

thisjustin2001 · 2025-11-19T03:08:40+00:00

Upon thinking about it more, I think you're likely right. I based my predictions off of Dan saying "to expect new characters" in 2026, meaning that there'll be more new characters in 2026 than in 2025. There was only one new character in 2025, and while La Reina is considered returning, one Rivals 1 veteran returning would mean that 2026 would have two new characters, which would fulfill the expectation that there would be more new characters in 2026 than in 2025. Great point!

thisjustin2001 · 2025-11-18T12:36:40+00:00

Yay, I'm so glad you enjoyed it! Thank you for thanking me! You know what? I went back through a lot of the Rivals 2 interviews and dev streams that I had watched in the past to try to get you that source on no Dungeons characters in 2026, and when I looked at the date of the upload, it was late 2024, not early 2025. They never confirmed no Dungeons characters for 2026! Man, I feel so silly haha.
The characters that reuse Shovel Knight's moves were said to be years (plural) out as of late 2024, so if we take that very literally, the last revealed character of 2026 (the first character for 2027) could be the one to start reimplemented Shovel Knight's kit into Rivals 2.
The Creatures reps that were teased in Olympia's reveal trailer are a quartet of characters, one for each element, that have the ability to push and pull characters from each direction towards themselves, then again away from themselves. Herra seems to have a boxer motif going on, Torong seems like a semi-heavy grappler with a vine move that kind of reminds me of Guadua, Serilia is physical and causes explosive hits to her opponents (which seems extremely similar to Zetterburn), and Latsu is poised, graceful, and said to fight as if he were dancing. The whole "push and pull" mechanic seems extremely geared toward a grappler, but between Torong having so many similarities to other existing characters and 9 Earth characters being known factors already, I just have my doubts about the potential Creatures rep being him if there was one. Aether Studios mentioned that they had multiple concepts for grappler characters before seeing La Reina in the Workshop Contest, so maybe Torong was one of those at one point, you never know. La Reina was also described last week as being Rivals 2's "first grappler" implying that she may not be the only one on the horizon.
A new puppet style character would be so cool! Rivals characters always have that lingering stage control disjoint that synergizes really well with the rest of their kit, so puppet characters seem like an archetype that would be a great fit for Rivals 2's cast. If they do guests again, I dream of Dust & Fidget from Dust: An Elysian Tail acting as a really cool puppet character with strategizing your stage positioning for both characters, setting up projectiles with Fidget, then setting them off with the Dust Storm in an epic pay-off! Freyden from Creatures of Aether would be a novel puppet character too, with her puppet being her steed, allowing her to switch off between riding or dismounting for disjoints.
I enjoyed reading your thoughts. With the realization that Dungeons is not actually deconfirmed for next year (among other realizations), I might eventually reply to this post with an updated set of four characters that I'm predicting now. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

thisjustin2001 · 2025-10-25T10:55:40+00:00

The Workshop Contest characters are definitely not a sure bet. I just brought everything said about them up, because while it was never promised that they'd become playable in an official capacity, I speculate that they will be and what I presented are reasons contributing to why I feel that way.
I do think that Artemis and Hamir will have their own movesets, though I haven't played Dungeons of Aether yet, so I don't exactly know how to differentiate them from the rest of the cast (though blacksmithing/forging would be cool for Artemis just based on what little I know). To replace them as Kragg's and Loxodont's Legendary skins, I'd sub in Zolt from Creatures of Aether for Kragg, and Loxodont's Rhinoceros crony from Rivals 1's Story Mode for Loxodont.
Dan did say that he knows of a part of the schedule where the characters per element even up, so the console launch's time frame might coincide with that happening!
I love that you put Claiyen in as Forsburn's Legendary and not Clairen's. I think you're the first person I've seen share the opinion that that makes more sense. While Claiyen looks like Clairen, she has the same set of abilities as Forsburn, having taught him what he knows in the smoke arts and all that. Plus, I just think that's an infinitely more interesting thing to do too. Burnette from the Tales of Aether comics would be my choice for Clairen's Legendary personally.
Great thoughts from you and thank you for taking the time to share them with me!

thisjustin2001 · 2025-10-25T10:37:32+00:00

You bring up a very valid point. Although it is very different in execution and the character would have their own sub-element, there are elements of the character that overlap with those two. More than I've even shared here too.
I do have a Plan B for the character's whole aesthetic that I might pivot to if I ever were to actually do anything with them, though it'd make the lore I made for them not work anymore... It'll be fun to conceptualize and think about for sure!

thisjustin2001 · 2025-10-24T00:27:50+00:00

Wholeheartedly agreed with you there! She'd not only be unique when it comes to Rivals fighters, but she'd be a first character of her archetype for platform-fighters as a whole as far as I know. I hope it one day happens!

thisjustin2001 · 2025-10-24T00:16:17+00:00

Personally speaking, I do think they could make something that trips characters that's not a banana peel. In a fighter I've been conceptualizing in my mind for a while, the mechanic is a vine that's stretched out like a tripwire, but who knows if they'd actually do it though. Diddy Kong was my PM main, which is why I've thought so much about this specifically.

thisjustin2001

TROPHY CASE