Dragon's Dogma

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[360] [PS3] [PC] [PS4] [ONE] Dragon's Dogma

Unread postby Ununpentium » 02 May 2012 05:01

http://www.dragonsdogma.com/

Japanese publishers have always inspired a cult following among gamers in the know – and perhaps none more so than Capcom. Known primarily in recent years for three franchises – Resident Evil, Street Fighter and Devil May Cry – it has understandably been characterised as a purveyor of action-adventure and beat-'em-up games.

But it's about to enter the competitive but potentially rewarding field of open-world role-playing games with Dragon's Dogma, which conspicuously eschews the typical Japanese RPG blueprint that marries turn-based gameplay with anime-style visuals. Indeed, Dragon's Dogma's real-time action, giant game-world and medieval fantasy setting put one more in mind of the likes of Skyrim, and the ability to climb up bigger adversaries to target your attacks adds a hint of Shadow of the Colossus. We caught up with Dragon's Dogma's producer, Hiroyuki Kobayashi (best known for being a leading light of the Devil May Cry games), on a rare visit to London.

So, Mr Kobayashi, where did Dragon's Dogma – an undoubted departure for Capcom – come from? "First of all, I'm glad you think it doesn't sound like a regular Capcom title. We wanted to try something new, and break into this open-world RPG genre, but of course include all the Capcom elements that we have in a lot of our games. The idea first started off with Hideaki Itsuno, the director of the game, and right around the time when Devil May Cry 4 finished, we started talking about what the next big game we wanted to make would be.

"Itsuno-san really likes the Lord of the Rings series, for example. And when he was in elementary school, he read lots of choose-your-own-adventure books. So that was one inspiration. Another one was going back to the Lord of the Rings, the way that a lot of the fantasy movies are represented – we wanted to create epic battles. There are a lot of games where you fight bosses and hack and slash at their feet, but we wanted to add to that, where you can actually climb onto these enemies and aim for their weak points. So you can climb on a Cyclops and aim for the eye – that kind of stuff. We really wanted to create that realism of being able to take down those giant enemies, just like in the movies.

"In the story, the main character is called the Arisen, and at the beginning of the game, he or she – you can choose – is in a town which a dragon visits, and takes their heart out, rips it out of your chest. So the Arisen becomes more of a hero in this world, and is on a quest to get his or her heart back. A lot of the questions that people have – like why did the dragon take your heart rather than someone else's, or why is it beckoning you to come on and defeat it – these are mysteries that you will figure out as the story progresses."


Creating a new open-world RPG franchise undoubtedly makes sense for a publisher like Capcom – such games can be fantastically popular. But they also require huge teams and costly resources, so represent a bit of a punt. It's vital, then, that they sport unique features, and Kobayashi-san singles out the "pawn" system, which lets you assemble a party of fellow-adventurers with complementary skills, via rift-stones in the game: "It is, I think, the first of its kind. A lot of open-world games like this are multiplayer, but we specifically chose to make this a one-player open-world game – with network functions. The pawns are a sort of legion of not-quite-human people: they don't act under their own volition, but they follow. As you play the Arisen, you can command them at your will. There are plenty of pawns you can choose from as your support pawns, and your main pawn will be with you throughout the game. The reason for the existence of the pawns – why are there pawns in this world, and why aren't they human? – will also be answered as you play the game."

The pawns add a hint of multiplayer, or at least community-style gaming, as you can make your favourites available to other players via the game engine, Facebook or Twitter. Kobayashi elaborates: "You can reach the pawn community from the main menu, so you don't have to go through Facebook. It will open up two options: you can either share your main pawn or do a pawn search, which will show all the main pawns that are up on Facebook and Twitter. And you can narrow down your search – look for a Mage, or search by skills and gender. You might find a message from the owner. And if you note their online ID, you can search for that pawn in the rift."

Action-wise, Kobayashi contends that Dragon's Dogma, despite being a first stab at an RPG, preserves the ethos that pervades Capcom's other, more action-focused, franchises: "For example, if you grab onto a gryphon, and the gryphon flies off, as long as you're still holding on, you can continue that battle in the air and bring it down that way. And you can do things like hold an enemy while your pawns attack them. You can grab enemies and throw them off cliffs. That action element, I think, separates Dragon's Dogma from a lot of the other fantasy games."

The levelling-up system, too, is unconventional, placing unusual emphasis on the weight of the objects you collect, and letting you expend XP on upgrading them. Kobayashi explains: "Basically, there are two different ways you can level up your character – by accepting quests and completing them, or by fighting random battles. By, for example, exploring the world, you can find different items and, of course, money; with that you can buy weapons, or upgrade them and level up your character. So if you buy a better sword than you had before, it will raise your strength. Also, each weapon and item of armour can be upgraded up to three stars. So you can make weapons stronger, and make them lighter as well – weight is an important concept in the game, and if you make equipment lighter, you can move a lot more freely."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/ga ... a-producer

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJEnNOlj ... ature=plcp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gm-HYqq ... re=related
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[360] [PS3] Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

Unread postby Joshua » 29 Jan 2013 06:44

An expansion is being released called Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (dated April 23 for US and the 25th for Japan). Since the original wasn't designed with any expansions in mind, they had to re-release the whole game with the new content and are not making the new content available separately for download for previous owners.

http://www.vg247.com/2013/01/23/dragons ... w-details/

http://www.vg247.com/2013/01/23/dragons ... -packshot/

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Unread postby dinopoke » 11 Feb 2013 02:57

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Unread postby icycalm » 12 Feb 2013 17:10

Renegade has a review of the original game up on Scathing Accuracy, but it's not good enough to be posted on the frontpage. He gives the game a B+, which I guess would translate to 4/5 here, but he never manages to sell me on it. There's just not enough praise in there to justify the rating. I mean I am sure there's some solid observations in there and you'll learn a lot about the game from reading it, but it's just not up to what I consider a good enough standard for a piece of writing to be called a review. So let's call it impressions and post it here for people to read, and I guess I'll have to play the game myself to find out what all the fuss is about and whether there's any substance to it.

http://scathingaccuracy.com/reviews/324-doggmatic

Posted: Tuesday, 26 June 2012 by S.A. Renegade in Reviews

Final verdict: B+
Final playtime: 126 hours

DAMN, yo. Finally a game that is good. In case you somehow don’t know, what makes Dragon’s Dogma special is that it’s made by the director of the Devil May Cry series, the producer of Resident Evil 4, and a lot of the staff members that worked on said games. Now, the interesting thing about Dragon’s Dogma is that I actually hated it when I first played it. The reason why is because they hyped up the combat too much, saying they designed the game with their knowledge and expertise in action games, that they wanted to make an RPG that really put together the action part. They compared the combat to DMC, said you’d even have a moveset similar to it, etc.

What you gotta understand is that all of this is plain, blatant, bald-faced, pants on fire lies. Do NOT be fooled by the lies and the hype, the combat in Dragon’s Dogma is NOT good. It’s not even REMOTELY anywhere near DMC territory, hell, just the very act of comparing the two is insulting. There is nothing to compare because they are 100% completely different games and completely different genres. So that’s one of the reasons I hated the game, because the combat was terrible and I was promised something good. The other reason is because the art is shitty (only the characters though. The world itself is beautiful). The characters are fucking ugly and almost look like something pulled out of Elder Scrolls (I say ALMOST because, let’s face it, few things can actually achieve that level of character fuglitude. You gotta be trying to make something that ugly. And yeah that‘s right, I‘m making up new words, what up). So shitty combat, and critical lack of style. Not only that, but the plot was completely uninteresting and I didn’t give a single shit about any of the characters. It was looking grim for this game. It was even looking like I might just give it an F and never finish it.

But you know how it is. I don’t review lightly. Gotta stay legit. So I kept playing, and my opinion about the game eventually changed completely. Not because the combat eventually got good. It didn’t. It was because I saw that the game was good, but for completely different reasons than what was advertised. Before we get into that though, let’s finish talking about the combat. As I said before, it’s not good, there’s absolutely nothing remarkable about it, it’s not even remotely close to an action game (except maybe fucking terrible ones) and is much closer to, say, Demon’s Souls. First of all, it doesn’t have a real dodge move. Everybody knows this is probably the most important aspect for an action game. Some kind of roll, dash, slide, something to get out of the way quickly and avoid attacks. Dragon’s Dogma lacks this very basic thing. Oh sure, there is a skill that allows you to roll, but guess what? It’s only available as a dagger skill AND it’s not even very good anyway. Which means that the absolute most basic and fundamental of moves is relegated to something only specific classes can do, and even then only when they have a dagger equipped. So you wanna use a sword on your assassin? Welp, say goodbye to that roll. Not like you even needed it anyway though.

But anyway, secondly: just mobility in general. Good mobility is paramount in action games and this game completely lacks it. Your character is more grounded in reality and physics and that just makes for a bad system. The lack of a dodge move is part of it but even just moving around and your pitiful jump all feel lackluster and inappropriate for an action game. A good example is the warrior class and its 2-handed weapons. 2-handed swords in this game are SOOOO fucking slow it feels like they weigh a ton. You swing that shit and your character is just like…HEAVE… WIND UP… SLAAAAAAASSSHHHH… etc. And if the enemy happened to move? Get ready to sit there for the full strenuous animation killing the air like a retard. Now, I will admit, giving real weight to your weapons can be cool, and it’s definitely satisfying to whack an enemy with your gigantic sword and crush them, but let’s be real, that kinda shit doesn’t make for a good combat system. Do you see Dante struggling against the unrelenting forces of gravity to swing his sword? Fuck no, he spins that shit around like it’s a piece of paper and juggles enemies in the air with the force of his bullets.

Thirdly, the presence of the stagger and knockdown stats is incompatible with any real action game. Basically, if you fight a strong enemy, he can hit you and said hit stuns you, and then he can just keep hitting you over and over and you cannot do SHIT other than just hope your controls start working again at some point. Needless to say, this is annoying as shit and makes for terrible combat. But it also works the other way around: if you are strong, then your attacks will do this to enemies while their attacks won’t even faze you. Which means eventually you can just go balls out wailing on enemies and they can’t do shit to you. Again, not a good combat system. But all of this that I’ve told you leads to a very important point about the game: Dragon’s Dogma is 100% a pure RPG. The sooner you understand and accept this, the sooner you can begin to appreciate the game for what it is, rather than resent it for what it is not (or for what it was advertised as being, as the case may be). You see, when you fight a strong enemy in an action game and you fail or do badly, the answer is always to go back in, try again, get better (pussy). However, in Dragon’s Dogma, the answer is always build yourself up, level, get better gear, improve your party composition. Why? BECAUSE IT IS AN RPG.

And as an RPG, Dragon’s Dogma is very good. It’s an open-world RPG kind of like Elder Scrolls ‘cept not exactly ‘cause Elder Scrolls sucks some massive cock. Dragon’s Dogma doesn’t because even though the world is very big, it’s all designed and crafted by hand, which does away with that generic/sameness/pointless feeling in Elder Scrolls games. Not only that, but places are very well designed so exploring in this game is a lot of fun. It’s like the developers thought of everything and put hidden chests, items and secrets pretty much in every nook you can explore. You can even trigger dialogue from your pawns just from walking somewhere, even if it’s a totally inconspicuous corner.

Oh right, pawns. Gotta talk about those. They’re basically your party members, you have a main pawn which you create like your own character and who stays with you all the time and then you can recruit 2 more to round up your party, which you have to be replacing every now and again because they don’t level up like you or your main pawn, so they lag behind like bitches. They’re called pawns because that’s what they are. They’re tools, not characters. I think I would’ve liked if at least your main pawn were more of a character, had some sort of personality or some semblance of SOMETHING going on to make him interesting. But nope, he’s just a weapon. No emotion, no thoughts, no growth, no development (except maybe at the very end of the game). In fact they’re so devoid of personality that you can just set it (ordinary, arrogant, timid etc) and change it around at any time. Now, of course despite this lack of personality they still chatter fucking ENDLESSLY. Maybe a little too much. But aside from this, gameplay-wise pawns tend to have serious left syndrome and can be extremely retarded and annoying. They can jump off cliffs for no reason and die forcing you to reload, which is always gay. Or just in general they tend to not fight effectively. For example, fighting ghosts which are only affected by magic when you’re a job without access to it, even if your pawns are mages it takes fucking EONS to kill ONE god damn ghost. Just ONE. BITCH. Because they’re running around like a buncha headless chickens instead of doing something good for a change. So you just stand there tapping your foot waiting for their dumb asses to hurry up and kill it already.

And oh yeah, vocations, that’s another good aspect of the game. There are 9 jobs in the game and you can switch between them at the inn. Each job has 10 ranks which you advance through as you fight and kill enemies with it and each rank you learn new skills and powers with that job (and powers that you can use on any job). The system works well, offers good progression, more incentives to get exp, and it’s fun to try different jobs and rank them up and unlock new moves.

Another thing I like about the game is how there are tons of quests everywhere, and every time you advance new ones pop up in old places you’ve already been, so you can be rewarded even more for your exploration with new quests.

I would’ve liked it if the game were a little harder, because eventually (read: too quickly) you become too powerful and nothing can stand up to you anymore. I would’ve liked it if there were more instances of very difficult areas that forced you to get stronger in order to explore them. But that never really happens except early on and even then only if you really go out of your way to go to places you’re not supposed to.

Something that fucking pisses me off is that the game only has one save slot and it’s constantly auto-saving and overwriting it. Which means if you do something wrong or if it’s something really stupid and obscure that you couldn’t have known beforehand, you might not be able to go back. This kind of dick move with saves has never been cool in any game. Ever.

I also would’ve liked it if they had fleshed out the affinity system more. You can raise your affinity with a character by doing quests involving them or giving them presents they like, but the problem is that there are WAY too many characters in the game. I’m talkin’ hundreds here. So of course since they have too many they only give them the barest minimum of a background and development. Which means that maxing characters’ affinity doesn’t…really do that much.

But whatevs. Despite all my bitchin’ Dragon’s Dogma really is very good. The world is very big and compelling (but not so big that they have to resort to shitty design), there’s a lot to do, and it’s very addicting and fun. It’s honestly one of the best games I’ve played in a while, so I fully recommend buying it.


He recommends BUYING it, not playing it. What about borrowing, renting or stealing it? Etc. His writing is full of this kind of shit, so I am not gonna bother pointing it out. Just realize that when I am copy-pasting his stuff it doesn't mean I approve of all of it.
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Unread postby icycalm » 12 Feb 2013 17:17

I mean look at that last paragraph, it's atrocious! DESPITE ALL MY BITCHING IT'S ONE OF THE BEST GAMES I'VE EVER PLAYED THE END.
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Unread postby movie » 04 Mar 2013 12:56

http://www.vg247.com/2013/03/04/dragons ... explained/

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen mostly takes place in the underground caverns of Bitterblack Isle. Capcom has shed light on how players will literally ‘shed light’ within the dark catacombs using Rift crystals.

Siliconera reports that unlike the full Dragon’s Dogma, Rift crystals are less-rare in Dark Arisen. In fact, you’ll come across them regularly.

You will come across broken Rift stones within the island’s caverns, which require a specific number of Rift crystals to repair. Once fixed, you can use them to enter the Rift and hire new Pawns as usual.

Rift crystals are also used to light your character’s torch, which is essential seeing as most of the game’s caverns are pitch black, leaving your team vulnerable to sneak attacks from the game’s new batch of gruesome beasts.

Torches don’t just light up the world either. They can be used to cast a holy ray of light down on foes, inflicting significant damage.


Dragons-dogma-dark-arisen-1[1].jpg

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Dragons-dogma-dark-arisen-8[1].jpg


New trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekj-nBuHDug
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Unread postby movie » 14 Mar 2013 01:02

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Unread postby movie » 14 Apr 2013 02:50

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen - Enemy Showcase: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MqJNdL99Vc
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Unread postby alastair » 24 Apr 2013 01:40

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Unread postby Some guy » 08 Sep 2015 23:06

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen Comes to PC This January
http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2015/09/dra ... to-pc.html

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Dragon’s Dogma Series Makes Western Debut on PC this January with DD: Dark Arisen

For the first time ever in the west, the popular and critically acclaimed Dragon’s Dogma series will be coming to Windows PC in January 2016. Initially released for consoles, Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen contains all the content from the original Dragon’s Dogma plus the additional content from its sequel including the Bitterblack Isle area, challenging new enemies and quests, and additional high level weapons and armor sets, making this the ultimate franchise experience for PC players. The title will be available to purchase globally on digital PC platforms for MSRP $29.99 / €29.99 / £23.99.

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen for PC will present stunningly high resolution graphics with increased fidelity. The game also includes full Steam platform support with Achievements and the ability to play using both Xbox 360 and Xbox One controllers, plus the traditional keyboard and mouse control scheme are all available for players to customize the way they play.

Set in a huge open world, Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen presents an exhilarating and rewarding action combat experience. Players embark on an epic adventure with three AI companions, known as Pawns. These partners fight independently, demonstrating prowess and ability that they have developed based on traits learned from each player. PC users can share these Pawns online and reap rewards of treasure and tips and strategy hints for taking down the terrifying enemies. Pawns can also be borrowed when specific skills are needed to complete various challenging quests.
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Unread postby earthboundtrev » 23 May 2017 13:44

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen Coming to PS4 and Xbox One
http://gematsu.com/2017/05/dragons-dogm ... x-one-fall
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Unread postby ExiledOne » 25 Mar 2018 19:54

There's a mod for the PC release to change the intro song to the versions from the English/Japanese versions from the console releases: https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/c ... creen_mod/
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