If you went in fresh, not knowing anything about it, you could easily mistake Dragon's Dogma for an American or European action RPG. It just has that look.
"We really wanted to make a game that would be accepted in Japan as well as abroad," says Hideaki Itsuno, director of Dragon's Dogma. "Our intention was to aim globally, but we didn't want to exclude the Japanese market. It's a tough line, Japanese and western games. We wanted to blur that line."
Dragon's Dogma fuses eastern and western design ideals to create an unfamiliar open world game with interesting goals. "You can do anything you want to with the action," Itsuno says. "If you think you can do it, you can do it."
While Itsuno speaks hyperbolically, this basic idea is sound. Dragon's Dogma keeps itself contained for the first hour or so before blossoming into an exploration-heavy open world. Even early on, when it funneled me forward, the combat was dynamic enough to encourage the "do anything" mentality.
To facilitate this, Dragon's Dogma employs "stray bosses," as Itsuno calls them. Among the army of wolves, harpies, and other sword-and-sorcery fodder, the world is littered with big and scary monsters just waiting, similar to Skyrim's dragons, for someone to stumble their way. These appear in addition to the main bosses, such as a hydra, griffon, and other mythological beasts. "We want players to try to take down bosses in different ways," Itsuno continues.
This is precisely what I did.
I tried something different after each death in my many failed fights against a Cyclops. As a mage, my weak magic missiles couldn't kill before the one-eyed enemy closed the gap and stomped on my head. Another time, I tried smacking him while he snoozed, and then climbing up his back when he woke up. The big guy brushed me off his shoulder like I was dust. Finally, I grabbed a flying harpy, steered it above the Cyclops, and dropped onto it. Again, he beat me to a pulp. Even at a low level, I got a great impression of the combat flexibility. Though I didn't succeed in slaying the thing, everything I tried worked as intended.
Itsuno explains that my vocation – Capcom's fancy word for "character class" – probably didn't help. "Some vocations grab and climb better than others. [The mage] runs out of stamina quickly," he explains. "Sometimes, if you have the wrong vocation when you're fighting a boss, it'll feel like a difference of 20 levels. That does, of course, affect the grab and climb function."
I sacrificed stamina for healing and range. Dragon's Dogma is all about doing things the way you want. This extends from combat – where button modifiers turn basic attacks into flourishes and taunts – to customization. The character creator is as deep as you've come to expect from these tools, to the point you can create a hideous, big-headed dope of a hero. This applies to the Pawns -- teammates you recruit through the campaign – as well. They bring an additional option to the fold: behavior.
"You can change your pawn's personality," says Itsuno. "Say, if you're surrounded, do you want them to be gung-ho and go for the frontlines, or do you want them to hang back and [heal] or pick up items?" I made an aggressive Pawn to get in the thick of it while I covered from the rear. At one point, he made a run at the hydra boss and began climbing it on his own. That's an enthusiastic ally, right there.
After seeing the game in rough condition before, I worried Dragon's Dogma would rely on its grab gimmick to piggyback on Shadow of the Collosus' popularity. It would be an easy way to distract us from its otherwise uninspired basics. It certainly falls back on grabbing and climbing, but it does so in enough exciting ways to keep each battle from becoming predictable.
Itsuno clarifies, "you'll be able to use the grab function in other ways, not just for the bosses. You can pick up an explosive barrel, throw it, and then shoot it with an arrow to take out a whole bunch of enemies. Another way to use it is to pick up enemies and throw them off a cliff. There's actually a quest where you have to grab somebody and bring them somewhere."
Capcom isn't aiming to compete with similar games. As Itsuno intended, Dragon's Dogma is a fascinating and ambitious action game that lives in its own world. It brings some of everything genre nerds expect, and a bit of what they don't. It won't rock the industry, but Dragon's Dogma will generate conversation, could develop a respectable following, and may, with any luck, become the next big action franchise.
Dragon's Dogma
