SPEAKING OF! With the Mario x Rabbids game's DK DLC considered, and the nature of the game being a strategic shooter... It's HIGHELY LIKELY that IF K.Rool is gonna be present in that game, he'll use the Blunderbuss as his main weapon.
Damn, feels good to be speculating K.Rool's chances again with a grain of hope!
I dunno, the animated trailer from January is showing rabbids with what seems to be a Tiki attire, and that trailer indeed made me think that Tikis would be the main enemies in this DLC. However, I'd love to be wrong and to see Kremlings being involved too. Maybe we could expect enemies in this DLC to be based on Kremlings, Tikis
and Snowmads? That would be awesome.
How would you guys prefer K. Rool's role in the next DK?
Would you want him to exclusively be a King persona, as to re introduce the character to casual audiences and feature him only as the big bad at the end(Like DK games of the past)?
Or would you rather the developers go all out with K Rool and give him multiple unique personas and fights to fit world themes? For example, a beach/water world would bring a fight with Kaptain K Rool, maybe a desert world could bring a Kowboy K Rool, a mountainous/sky based world could hold the legendary Aviator K Rool, etc, etc, with a huge fight with KING K Rool at the finale.
Personally I'd like it if they got a little creative- not enough to sort-of "cheapen" K Rool by making him the only boss character you fight in the game, but maybe at major checkpoints across the adventure (Like 1/3, 2/3 and 3/3 through the game, think Bowser's role in Mario Galaxy 1 but with new personas and attacks), with a proper fight with the King for the final boss.
I hope they'll make him appear regularly and not just in the final battle. I also hope he appears regularly in cutscenes and participates in storytelling that way; it was funny to see him express cognitive dissonance when he learns that the Kongs are doing much better than he thought they'd be capable of every time you enter a new level, but it would be cool to see him participating in the game's plot events.
When it comes to persona, I could imagine him appearing as the King most of the time, and I want him to be fought several times in the game. I also imagine him adopting a different persona for the final battle, one adapted to the game's plot. Like the Kremlings want to make a circus and the final boss is Klown K. Rool in a circus arena where the Kongs are trying to interupt a performance in order to sabotage the show and liberate other characters that have been forced to participate.
Also I'd like to see some new lore in a new DK game, but rather than a new category of enemies, add a new category of protagonist-friendly characters. I remember more than two years ago I suggested the idea of adding a new Lemur race to the DK series, that could be a good way to add a new category of characters without adding a new category of enemies that would take the Kremlings's place as the antagonists.
My personal plot idea is something like this: the Kongs are invited to take vacation on another island inhabited by a lemur race, but this invitation was a trap made by the Kremlings who took over that island and are slowly making an authoritarian regime there, where the lemur inhabitants are forced to participate in the Kremling Cirkus which is used by the Kremlings to promote their image and become famous worldwide. The Kongs will have to escape the same fate as those lemur people, but they need the help of the lemur people to go back to their island, and they will only be able to get their help if they stop the influence of the Kremlings on the island and the lemur people. And also make a lemur one of the playable characters.