Guilty Gear Strive Offers a Tiny Peek at 2.0 With New Character Select

While the community is still restlessly awaiting the 2.0 update for Guilty Gear Strive, the official account is treating us with one of the tiniest potential teasers.

Specifically, the Guilty Gear Official account over on X has posted the new character select screen, and as miniscule of a preview as it is, there are still some takeaway to be had here.

The most obvious one is that the character portraits are now smaller and grouped in a more compact way. Guilty Gear Strive initially came out with a fairly modest 15 character roster, and at this point it expanded so much that the entire bottom bar is filled out.

Going by the new layout, there should be room for roughly 20 or so extra characters. Obviously there is no guarantee that the space would be filled out, but it is an indication that ASW might be planning for at least 2-3 more seasons of 4-5 characters each, potentially even more.

The big blank spot also likely alludes to the new character that will be revealed during Arc World Tour finals, but there's not enough here to guess who that might be.

Lastly, this is just a tiny note, but doesn't this look a tad more metal?

While the stylistic changes appear to be minimal, the two most prominent background changes include the sharp, bold, and rugged font that people associate with Guilty Gear, and the clean bars on the sides now have a bit more grit to them alongside big new chain images.

Anyone who has been around knows that Strive has often been criticized for the big shift in aesthetics compared to the older games. The developers even responded to beta feedback telling people "rest assured, we will make it rock!" And well, they didn't. At least not to a point where you could say it lives up to the hard rock/metal aesthetic of older games.

This new update could bring us a revamp that finally changes this in a big way, although it's clear that developers want this game to remain very clear and readable, so the aesthetics sometimes have to give way to function.