2023-09-23 15:00:00
It was on the occasion of the Tokyo Game Show that a one-hour session was organized at Capcom’s premises to get our hands on Dragon’s Dogma 2. The game was (finally) announced in May 2023 for a release in 2024. The first of the name arrived on consoles in 2012 and here we are twelve years later to return to the universe of this action-RPG which had marked us at the time.
A point of history
Dragon’s Dogma centers its story on the power granted by dragons. It may be that when a human demonstrates bravery once morest a Dragon, they are chosen to become an Insurgent, a being who then becomes immortal and bonds with the Dragon (who previously devoured their heart). The web of destiny changes completely and then opens up countless possibilities, the purpose of which remains the same, to defeat the Dragon to recover his heart.
In 2012, Dragon’s Dogma was clearly a game ahead of its time, while drawing inspiration from everything good that was happening at the time. Take a pinch of Monster Hunter, a dash of Shadow of the Colossus, and a helping of Dark Souls and you have pretty much the gameplay of Dragon’s Dogma. There was an explosive and downright impressive mix for the time (and still today). Climbing on the back of a cyclops or being carried into the air by a griffin were commonplace in the proposed adventure.
One of the other innovative mechanics was the system of “pawns”, NPCs who might join our squad via online functionalities and who participated in the adventure. It was also possible to create a personal pawn that might be personalized from head to toe which accompanied the player as they leveled up throughout their epic journey, while two other partners had to be chosen from those created by the community. Our pawn might also be sent on a mission each time we spent a night at the inn and was thus visible and recruitable by other players on the game’s servers. He might then learn from his journeys in their games and bring back anecdotes but also some modest gifts along the way. This system was very interesting, like the ground messages in Dark Souls.
Second of the name
To give a little context on the game session, three scenarios were proposed at different times of the adventure: starting at level 5 with an archer, then level 15 with a warrior and finally level 25 playing a thief.
The plot was not at all at the heart of this handling, the goal being to discover the universe, explore and test the three classes available in combat.
First observation, the artistic direction and graphic quality meet current standards very well, unlike the first which did not particularly flatter the eyes. The handling is quite intuitive and familiarization with the different keys is done quickly, even if it seems complex at first glance.
The high triggers provide access to different skill wheels in combat and also allow actions during exploration. The first sensations have a little “Wow” side in the presentation of the different powers.
Even if the archer is not very spectacular in itself, it is more of an ensemble since we are always accompanied by our pawns (as explained above). Here, we had with us a mage as well as two warriors and the AI played its role quite well depending on its class, thus letting us act from a distance with our bow. The fact of being behind made it possible to correctly analyze the battles that were taking place and our colleagues were literally rolling over all our enemies they encountered, doing some rather disconcerting antics.
It was especially during the warrior test that we really took matters into our own hands. We were able to explore the open world by going to different quest markers. And it is up to us to find the path that leads to the objectives. Following a path or cutting through fields can be a solution since the world map is gradually revealed depending on where you go. The exploration is therefore total and not scripted (except perhaps in the demo) since each explored path might lead to an event or place of interest. It was surprising to have this richness, certainly simple, but welcome, which spiced up our discovery.
At a crossroads, we might come across a mountain troll attacking merchants, or a griffin diving at us from the sky, but that’s not all, at the bend of a waterfall, it was possible to find the entrance to an old mine or a goblin camp. You will understand, absolutely nothing revolutionary, but we were quickly immersed in the world and the exploration, although simple, is very effective.
The medieval artistic direction also has its little effect and the portion of the map explored was quite diverse. Between small hamlet, fortified village and town, forest path, wheat field and cliff, in one hour, we still saw the country!
RPG action in all its forms
To come back to the fights, in particular the warrior and the thief, the different skills are very “artistic”, it goes a bit in all directions sometimes. Each class has its basic attack by pressing the a jump shot, a forward rush and a classic shot. The thief performed a “spin top” in the air, threw a smoke grenade and laid a mine. It is obviously by leveling up that we will be able to assign various skills.
The gameplay is quite dynamic and maybe even too much so. Between our actions and those of our three pawns, certain situations and special effects made the fights difficult to read and messy. The mage might enchant our weapons with fairly classy elemental effects at the time, but in reality, we no longer understood anything that was happening before our eyes.
The fault may be in the camera being too close to our character, zooming slightly in certain places because of the environment in the field of vision, but above all because of the assisted self-targeting to deliver our blows. Yes, there is no manual targeting of enemies, but assisted aiming which automatically directs certain attacks at the enemy in front of us. It’s disturbing at first, you get used to it, but it gives this messy aspect to certain actions in combat.
Finally, as in the first opus, it is still possible to grab onto our enemies, climb on the back of a troll to beat him with blows, ride a griffin that takes flight and more. It’s still just as exhilarating and even more so today with the graphic quality offered.
Moreover, although the version given to us to test was several months old, the overall quality at this stage was already very satisfactory. There were a few clipping issues here and there, but nothing severe. On the other hand, the quality of the display distance was quite strange, at medium distance the drop in resolution was already felt and we hope that this will be refined. For a release in 2024, the team has plenty of time to polish the title and we would like to add an option to manage the camera distance as well as manual targeting.
To conclude, the game session clearly got us excited for the sequel: the fights are dynamic, everything that made the first opus so special seems to have been carried over into this sequel. It remains to be seen how the plot, the narration, the NPCs, the cities and the different interactions with the game world will translate, but regarding combat and exploration, for the moment it is validated for us!
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