There have been rumours about a Dragon’s Dogma 2 expansion since earlier this year. The fascinating game was well-received by critics, but as the public got to experience it, the conversation sadly turned away from how unique its hardcore systems were, and instead fixated on its terrible technical performance. Now, as producer Naoto Oyama and director Kenta Kinoshita get ready for the launch of the Dark Arisen DLC in October, they reflect on the original launch of the game – and how the arrival of a suite of new updates for Dragon’s Dogma 2 lay the foundations for what’s to come.
“We are trying our best to win back trust from those players who felt [disappointed] in with the launch of Dragon’s Dogma 2,” says Oyama in an interview with Eurogamer. “We’ve already seen positive responses to the title update that was just released in June with a variety of improvements and feature additions. Although, at the same time, some players are still cautious and they’re saying, ‘well, this performance update in August is going to be the real test of whether the game has got to where we want it to be’.”
Here, Oyama is referring to two big patches that have been announced for the game ahead of the DLC’s arrival later this year. One patch launched in late June and provided an update that withdrew many microtransactions that caused a stir when the game first came out, mostly because they pushed easy fast travel options and character editing options behind a paywall. Another patch, due to land in August, addresses more performance concerns and adds a cure for the controversial ‘Dragonsplague’ mechanic, and introduces a slew of updates that promise to sand down the rougher edges of the experience.
“I’m really hopeful that once they see the performance improvements we’ve made in August and what we’re doing to build towards the expansion release that players, hopefully, feel that the base Dragon’s Dogma 2 game is in a good state so that they can jump back into the expansion.”
But performance isn’t the only thing these preliminary updates are tackling: many of the more esoteric elements of the game that gave Dragon’s Dogma 2 a lot of its identity have been targeted in these patches: whilst you could find many items in-game, there were only a limited amount of, say, portcrystals you could collect per playthrough. This means that you could only fast travel six times in a game – if you wanted to move around more than that you’d either have to pay the £1.49 for another one, or use another method of travel (either going on-foot, or risking travelling by cart where you would inevitably be rudely awakened in the night by a rogue troll or something).
This is a bit of a mixed blessing; whilst it’s nice to not have basic elements of the game locked behind a paywall, the scarcity of risk-free travel is something that makes Dragon’s Dogma feel unique and hardcore in a way that many modern RPGs don’t (even Capcom stablemate Monster Hunter Wilds has been criticised for streamlining the core gameplay loop too much compared to past games, for example). Previous director Hideaki Itsuno infamously gave an interview where he said not being able to fast travel is “only an issue because [if your game] is boring” and that “all you have to do is make travel fun” in order to engage players more. So balancing the series’ identity and player sentiment is something Oyama and Kinoshita are acutely aware of.
“I think there’s a lot of strategising that was made possible by the original game design of Dragon’s Dogma,” reflects Kinoshita. “It’s got a certain ‘hardcore nature’ where the game design forces you to think about things you might not think about in every game, or even every open-world RPG. The fact you then need to develop a strategy for how to exist in this world, and then make difficult choices about how and when you adapt that strategy – that’s something people love about this series.
“I definitely don’t want to make changes that will ruin that aspect of Dragon’s Dogma, but at the same time I want to give players more choices, which means they have more strategic opportunities.” Kinoshita goes on to reference the Eternal Ferrystone, an item introduced in June’s patch that allows for infinite fast-travel around the world (“this is a good example,” he adds, of an issue “often raised” with him). The same Eternal Ferrystone which was also introduced in a DLC update to the original Dragon’s Dogma, incidentally, and was well-received when it became available in the 2012 game.
“I feel that we’re not forcing anyone to fast travel anywhere; we’re just giving those who wish to take that option an alternative – even if they don’t use it every time. I’m sure every player has times when retracing the path from the main town back to where they’re going, yet again, where they will feel the game is getting repetitive. And everyone has real-world time constraints, so they don’t want every session to feel that lengthy. Sometimes you just need to get where you’re going. That option is there for you now.
“If a player wants to make a decision to remain in the high verisimilitude version of being an adventurer who has to walk everywhere – or they want to go in the middle and take the ox cart and take the risks that approach has – that’s absolutely still an option. It’s just you now have a third option. That’s the best way to implement quality-of-life improvements: don’t impinge on the original experience, but just give the player more possibilities, if possible.”
It’s clear that Kinoshita and Oyama have thought through these tweaks and balances carefully; there are also some big changes coming to how your AI companions – named Pawns – will work in the DLC. But nothing introduced or added is designed to soften the experience too much; it’s all about balancing the friction of an intentionally difficult game with the fluidity and intuitiveness that make modern RPGs. I’m looking forward to seeing what that balance looks like in both the August update, and with the launch of Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen – though, that 9th October launch means it’s going up against a lot of competition.
