Dragon's Dogma 2 is confirmed

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It takes something very special to have me writing in stereotypical football hooligan slang; and Capcom popping out a Dragon's Dogma sequel is certainly something 'very' and 'special'. That is a game which is easily one of the most underappreciated role playing games of all time, and I do not use that term lightly or often, because it means a lot to me. For something to be 'underappreciated' by my standards, it needs to be deprived of an interest it should have gained because of factors outside of its own control. That doesn't mean it should have been the biggest game ever made, or that it launched in a broken mess and lost momentum before it was patched back into a working state, I'm talking about a game that was fit and primed to be a moderate hit before a tiny game called Skyrim rolled around and totally robbed all the air from the Role Playing community room. Any game that launched back then should be asking for it's marketing money back from Bethesda.

From day one Dragon's Dogma was doing things that no other RPG of the time was doing and what few dare to do even now, such as actually making the act of travelling from A to B a gruelling proposition due to the vast dangers and scale of the road, climbing and scaling huge terrifying beasts for the bonus of locational damage spots and having a companion system that is designed and maintained entirely by the online community. And these weren't just half-assed experiments that tried a few cool things and ultimately didn't amount to much; Dragon's Dogma cohesively and successfully pulled of so many interesting mechanics in its body that the rest of the world just refuses to acknowledge thanks to the slight oddness of the package itself. It's graphics look dated, it's world seems bland and largely flat, the monsters are traditional European fantasy beasts instead of wild fantastical originals; and apparently that's grounds to write the whole game off. Well I say 'nay' to that, good sir! Nay!

Because everything that makes Dragon's Dogma seem like another generic stone on the road is merely freckles on the face of a unique masterpiece in its own right, a game which plays like no other RPG I've played before or since; and I'll stand by that. The enemies based off of European fantasy: that's unique in a space that so often borrows those vague names and attaches them to hardly representative derivatives, Dragon's Dogma is the only game that takes them right from the storybook and devises ways that their storied characteristics can be utilised in a gaming formula. That world of mostly flat greenlands, serves as plains from which to exemplify the scale of the journeys you embark on so that at any point the player can look back or forward and take in the distance they've gone or the road they have left. And the dated graphics are just indicative of the time. Dragon's Dogma doesn't have a megalomaniac game director rereleasing it every four years, it's had to make do.

Where Dragon's Dogma excels for me in the places that matter the most for an action RPG games; such as the combat and levelling. It's split into a comprehensive job system that takes the basic classes we're all used to and gives them vastly different playstyles, unique equipment, evolutions and even advanced hybrid classes so that you can make a character who is in themselves unique, but still at the top of their game. Something I'd love a Bethesda game to be able to commit to, instead of their forever march towards character hegemony that their late game dichotomy always demands. Which is something I'm even hopeful that upcoming Action RPG games learn from, such as Avowed. (Looking at Starfield's levelling system, I figure they're already long past such an evolution.)

And then there's the Pawn system which to my eyes lacks an equal in the entire genre. Essentially players are tasked with hand designing their own personal side kick to roam the country side with, and to fill out their party with other player's personal side kicks. And when you aren't playing the game, your sidekick will travel with other players and learn from them. That's not just lip service either, they actually learn! Which is to say that as they fight new enemies or complete quests, that companion will remember the weaknesses of those foes or the locations needed for that quest and chime in to help the other players or yourself when they return and are put in those situations again. Admittedly, this learning system is the only flagship feature that feels a little experimental and maybe not utilised to its fullest potential especially on the quest department. (Given that most quests are excessively straightforward) But with a sequel who knows what could happen with systems like these!

What I'm hoping for, if I let me imagination run wild, is actually decently robust. (I've had a long time to think about this.) First I want a new location to explore, one where the central city is as much a playground for action as the wilds because I know there could be an incredible dragon set-piece battle set in a city, and I would love to see it. And I want to see a completely new dimension bought to the combat theatre, which in my mind could be the water. There's so many cool European fantasy monsters who live and dwell exclusively under the depths, and the ability to interact and battle them in a meaningful fashion would be awesome. I can just imagine grapping onto the scales of a some fast-moving aquatic abomination and holding tight as it torpedoes through the waves, all the while thrashing and flailing as it tries to shake me off- That's how you push this series further forward.

Additionally, from a narrative standpoint I hope the team learns from the mistakes of the first game, namely in how reductively vague and non-committing the core narrative was. Everything that happened after the wrap of the main story, including the epilogue and Dark Arisen, were absolutely great fertile grounds to build a franchise off of; but the main story felt so generic that people who value great and challenging stories were immediately turned away from the project. So I encourage the writing team to lean into the darker elements, explore the nature of the Dogma more, and maybe give the player a chance to flesh out the personality of their main character if that isn't asking for too much. (Although it definitely might be given how some JRPG protagonists act. Looking hard at the Dragon's Quest rooster here.)

Last but by no means least, the music. I feel like this goes without saying, but maybe it doesn't; the main theme that Dragon's Dogma launched with was trash. Dark Arisen reintro-ed the game with a perfectly apt track that evolved from a medieval old English ditty into a sweeping adventure orchestral love song to epic fantasy. You don't need to break it down piece by piece, especially when I've already done that whilst talking about my love of the game in the past. So whatever Dragon's Dogma 2 brings to us, let it be more in tune with that second song rather than the first, let us know that this new game will be firing on every cylinder. All of which is to say I'm ecstatic that Dragon's Dogma is back after it's extended exclusive stay in China and I just know that this time the game can go that extra distance to establish itself in the history books that exact same way which circumstance denied the first game from doing... unless history repeats itself and this game lands at the exact same time as Avowed... Please God, don't let that happen.