Oh baby, you knew I had to bring this one up! If there's one person who had to weigh in on the brand new news that Dragon's Dogma was getting it's own Netflix series it was the lunatic who can't stop praising the damn thing. Seriously, even seeing this game's title in the headlines was enough to make my brain do a backflip out of it's skull- you know- before reading the rest of it and settling down a bit again. But hey- baby steps am I right? If Dragon's Dogma has the kind of life left in it's body to be paraded around in front of the Neftflix animation-consuming audience than maybe, there's a small chance, that we can get around to actually seeing the damn thing come back to the world of gaming. You know, the world it left oh-so-long-ago with a measly one entry to it's name? (Dragon's Dogma's China exclusive 'Online' entry does not count.) 'Castelvania' at least wracked up a good number of games before resorting to a Netflix adaptation! But I'm getting worked up, let's break this down to it's base.So on the off-chance that you are here and somehow haven't come across the unhinged adoration I have for this title, firstly there's a blog on the topic that you can read, and secondly let me give you a quick rundown. 'Dragon's Dogma' is a third-person open world hack-and-slash adventure game that was the first game of it's kind to come out of the storied studio of Capcom. It was a title that took a very literal look at a world positively seeped in European Medieval fantasy and did it's best to replicate that to-the-letter, as opposed to Dark Souls which merely used that setting as a historical backbone for it's own creations. The basis on the gameplay was on moments of 'David v Goliath' type fights, wherein the player character's party would be towered over by intimidating beasts and they would have to whittle down health bar's in order to bring the beast down.
The reason that the title stood out so profoundly to me was because it was a game that focused on the journey far more than the destination. Much of the game required the player to travel to a spot, or escort a merchant somewhere else, and every time it would involve crossing great tracks of land that would cover varied environments. It was up to the player, with the help of their pawns, to learn about the dangers they could encounter in each location and arrive prepared for them each and every time, thus it was a title that encouraged crossing over the same tracks of land beacuse it was all about learning as a player. The bigger monster fights were an exciting and flashy cherry on top of that cake, but that basic gameplay loop of crossing dangerous medieval lands and slowly learning how to cope was the soul of the game.
That, as you can imagine, is one of the reasons why I'm so dubious about a Netflix adaptation; because there's no way on god's green earth that they'll manage to replicate that feeling through a TV show. (At least not completely) However, there's still the case of the big epic boss fights that'll lend themselves beautifully to the Anime-looking aesthetic and that's something to keep an eye out for. What I want to see out of this anime, should the fates be merciful, is some sort of representation given to the game's trademark ability to clamber up and over the big monster in order to get a good hit on them; it was a selling point during the marketing and I still do it whenever I play to this day. (Even if it's not quite as effective as one might think.) Or at the very least I want to see one of those ogres get it's eye shot in, that's literally one of my favourite spam moves in gaming.
I think what interests me the most about a Dragon's Dogma anime-style show is the potential in terms of tone, because that's something which I think the game struggled with. In visual style, the game featured a great deal of muted fauna, oppressive grey skies and dark deadly dungeons; but given the open nature of the game and the player's constant encouragement to get familiar with the peril, it was hard to quite make the world feel as deadly as it always seemed to want to be. With a story line and more characters to it, I can certainly see Dragon's Dogma Netflix adopting an incredibly brutal tone in order to match the setting, perhaps peppered with sudden and violent moments that shock and keep the viewer ever unnerved for the next scene. I'm thinking something akin to 'Attack on Titan' or 'Demon Slayer', as the world of Dragon's Dogma seems just as deadly at times.
What I'm a tad more dubious about, If we're being totally honest with one another, it's the content of the main story itself, which was notoriously weak with Dragon's Dogma.The tale of discovering what the deal was with the Dragon felt like the first act to a story and unfortunately it turned out to be the entirety of the main game's narrative. It was almost entirely lacking in memorable characters (Aside from the side character who briefly touched in, only to have their more interesting arcs solved in optional quests) and only really the final battle stands out as a memorable set piece in my mind. (And, I guess, the initial Hydra fight; but that was literally the first major monster battle in the game, so that hardly counts.) That being said, the finale of the story is genuinely fantastic in terms of story and the post game contains some of the most interesting lore I've ever seen explored in a fantasy game, so it's not like the show will have nothing substantial to draw on. (If I were them I would play on the concept of 'Eternal Return' heavily, instead of just saving it for a surprise reveal at the end.)
Another elephant in the room is what the team intend to do about the infinitely better written 'expansion'; 'Dark Arisen'. That was a whole new storyline added onto Dragon's Dogma which transported the Arisen to a heavily Souls-inspired gauntlet of challenging bosses whilst adopting that series' allure for obscure and subtle storytelling. The narrative of 'Dark Arisen' is great tale that absolutely should be told in Netflix form, for it bears such great moments of rebellion, betrayal and the inability to escape the inevitability of fate, but it also doesn't even remotely fit in neatly with the main plot and so I wonder how they will address it. (Probably with a second series of the show that'll follow a fresh protagonist or something, that's how these usually go.)
Even though my initial response to this news was mild repulsion, I didn't want something so personal to be ruined, I'm starting to warm up to the idea and see the potential in it. They could make it so that every series of the show follows a new plotline and has a new protagonist, similar to how 'Jojo's Bizarre Adventure' does it, in order to keep things feeling new and interesting. But even then that only leaves them two series' of story to tell which means that they either have to start making new stories or Capcom have to make a new game (or DLC content) and I'm literally down for either, anything to stay in this world just a little while longer. So, as the biggest English fan of Dragon's Dogma I officially give this adaptation my blessing, which I know will be a huge sigh of relief for the team involved, whilst crossing my fingers and hoping beyond hope that this serves as a prelude to something big coming out of the franchise. (Please guys, I'm begging you at this point!) So go watch Dragon's Dogma on Netflix when it debuts (This September) in order to show Capcom that the series has some legs in it, and go buy the game on Steam while your at it, and go write Capcom a letter about, whatever it takes to bring the Dragon's Dogma series the justice it rightly deserves.
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