The first DLC character for Guilty Gear -Strive- has finally been announced, and it looks like the dataminers were right. Arc System Works just unveiled a trailer for Goldlewis Dickinson: not just America’s Secretary of Defense, but the Secretary of Absolute Defense!

Just look at this majestic mammoth of a man!

If you have no idea who Goldlewis is, then you obviously haven’t watched the absolutely insane five-hour anime that is Strive’s story mode. It’s basically Olympus Has Fallen, but with the anime dial turned up to eleven. When I said that Goldlewis was the secretary of defense, I wasn’t kidding. He stands in a command room and shouts worried orders as anime characters try desperately to save the president and his robot arm from mind-controlled guards dressed as killer bunnies inside the spaceship that the White House transformed into.

If that didn’t sell you on Strive’s story mode, and on Goldlewis himself, I don’t know what will.

Guilty Gear Strive - Goldlewis Dickinson

Goldlewis is a slow tank of a bruiser, but unlike Potemkin, the other walking tank of the game, he isn’t a grappler. Instead, his design seems to be focused around pestering the opponent in ways that make him hard to approach, but that will also punish you if you don’t.

What does that mean?

First, we have his weapon, a giant coffin at the end of a chain. Inside that coffin is an alien — except Goldlewis doesn’t believe in aliens so he swears it’s a cryptid of some sort.

Seriously, you need to watch story mode right now.

Anyway, aside from using it as a bludgeoning implement, Goldlewis seems to have a rapport with the alien cryptid, who helps him out in battle.

Guilty Gear Strive - Goldlewis Dickinson

The first moves shown at 0:26 may be normals or some kind of wide-swinging specials, but most importantly, they are guard breaks. In Strive, a guard break puts you in a special stun state when the move is blocked. While in this state, you cannot use defensive maneuvers like Yellow Roman Cancels or Bursts. In addition, they greatly raise the R.I.S.C. gauge, and if you eat a mix-up while in this state you’ll actually take more damage than usual. Finally, they also tend to do a ton of chip damage. In short, you are screwed whether you get hit or attempt to block crushing moves like this.

Goldlewis seems to be built around the guard break. A few seconds later — at 0:28 — Goldlewis shows off similar moves against Faust. First, he does a shoulder charge and cancels it into massive swings with slightly different animations but similar guard-break properties. These two variations make it seem more likely that they are special moves and we are seeing slash and heavy slash versions. The versions we see here appear to be slower, but they also swing over his head, so they might be able to be used as anti-air.

At 0:32 Goldlewish dashes in on Millia to do what appears to be his normal throw, a headbutt. You can see for a frame the startup animation, which seems relatively quick and hits in two frames, just like every other normal throw, pointing toward this not being a command grab. It appeared as if Millia was in a knockdown state afterward, further evidence for this being a normal throw, but the video cuts away before we see her hit the ground.

Guilty Gear Strive - Goldlewis Dickinson

Now we get to some real bonkers stuff. At 0:40 Goldlewis crouches down with his coffin on his back and it opens, a glowing alien cryptid hand swiping above him. Few moves in Guilty Gear hit purely vertically except for 2H (crouching heavy slash) so that’s my best guess here.

It’s clear it’s some form of normal, because it is then canceled into a special, and a very peculiar one at that. The alien places a sort of floating bomb drone overlapping Goldlewis while Nagoriyuki is knocked down. The drone then flies forward slowly, hitting Nago multiple times before exploding. Goldlews could walk and follow this drone the entire time without having to spend any resources, like tension for a Roman Cancel. He just casually walks behind it. This will likely be one of the ways that Goldlewis can apply pressure, considering his mobility is limited. In fact, we did not see him air dash the whole trailer (though we did see him run).

We see two normals again, first his jumping H or D (it’s unclear) which seems to be a body splash. This will be good for ambiguous crossups as its hitbox seems very large.

Guilty Gear Strive - Goldlewis Dickinson

Next we see his standing 5D, his special overhead launcher at 0:43. It operates the same as most launchers, coming out slow and giving a massive return on damage. The tricky part here is that he’s able to hide the orange flash that telegraphs it behind the explosion of his drone.

0:44 gives us another peculiar set of moves. He swings his coffin down on Zato-1 (perhaps an overhead) and then cancels into a minigun. There is no super flash here, so that absurd barrage of bullets seems to just be a special move, and a powerful one at that, as it did enough damage to break Zato through the wall.

Guilty Gear Strive - Goldlewis Dickinson

Speaking of supers, 0:51 gives us a look at one. Goldlewis fires a targeting laser from his eyepatch, which signals an orbital strike. It seems like it is hard-to-impossible to combo into, however, as it forces the opponent to deal with an incoming massive laser while Goldlewis still gets to move.

This, more than anything, shows his design philosophy. Goldlewis is slow, so he has a number of moves that activate while still allowing him to move. If he can knock you down, he can set up pressure with these moves to compensate for his lack of mobility. The laser hits May long enough to allow him to casually walk up to her, without even a dash. Meanwhile, if you simply choose to run away, he can use moves like the minigun to harass you.

That’s all the info we got on his playstyle, but it wasn’t the last of the info the trailer had to show us. For one, we got a release date. Goldlewis Dickinson will be available to play for all season pass holders on July 27, or he can be purchased individually starting July 30.

Guilty Gear Strive - Season Pass Roadmap

We also got a revised roadmap for season 1 of Guilty Gear -Strive-. Another DLC character is going to be announced and released in August (this time a returning Guilty Gear character, Jack-O if we can believe the datamined info). A third character will be announced and released sometime later in 2021. Then, two more characters will be announced and released in early 2022, along with two new stages and an expansion to the game’s story mode…

… which, by the way, you should totally watch.

At some point, we will also be getting an additional color pack, though we weren’t told when.  

And if you just can’t wait for more news, don’t worry. Guilty Gear -Strive- is a headlining event at this year’s EVO. If you’re unfamiliar with EVO, it’s basically the Olympics of fighting games, and this year it will be held over two weekends in early August. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, EVO has to be held online this year (thankfully -Strive-‘s netcode is up to the challenge). That being said, headlining games almost always come with new trailers and announcements, so expect more information then.

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