At the 2024 Oscars, while accepting his flowers for the behemoth Oppenheimer, director Christopher Nolan’s emanant dad energy belied a brief but sincere tribute to the relative youth of cinema as a medium and how lucky we are to be here, now, for its rosy adolescence and unlimited potential. Despite a long technological trajectory and a barrage of business-driven blows in its short history, games are also, relatively, young. Dragon’s Dogma 2, Capcom’s open-world RPG, feels somehow both in conversation with this history and blissfully free of it.
In the short span of time we’ve had a modern gaming market, the experiences on offer have had their creativity and wonder matched by rabid publishers and increasingly harmful business practices. It has become a space that is simultaneously holding these two contrasting forces in orbit around an audience trained to be more consumer than aesthete. Incuriosity is currency here, and norms, however established, make for easier products and smoother consumption. And as much as I can get down with some fast food, it feels like we’ve forgotten how to cook.
Once again, once upon a time…
Dragon’s Dogma 2 has the kind of premise that sets my brain on fire. Across nondescript fantasy worlds, unknowable forces have turned the struggle between fate and free will into manifest, celestial-scale entertainment. The roles in this designed cycle are the Arisen (the player), a great Dragon (your antagonist) and Pawns, the friends you’ll quite literally make along the way. Interdimensional beings compelled into your service by the fabric of reality itself, Pawns guide the Arisen on their journey to reclaim their heart from the dragon, establishing a balance between chaos and order until the “audience” grows restless and events begin anew. In a metatextual riff on the original, Dragon’s Dogma 2 places the overt Video Game nature of the premise at its forefront, gussied up by gestures toward Pawn autonomy and political power struggles across kingdoms.
The game has a bushy-tailed eagerness about a great many ideas, but its focus is sporadic as a result. This has the unfortunate side effect of leaving much of the potential weight its lore hints at feeling unmoored, while other ideas find their way to messy and fascinating conclusions. Despite the two in the title, this is firmly a spiritual successor to the 2012 original. That game’s Dark Arisen repackaging tells a more direct tale compared to this one’s esoteric reinterpretation of lore and the franchise’s storytelling pillars. This won’t be for everyone and is probably the thing that most strains its execution, but for all the head tilts and rabid googling that follow the end of Dragon’s Dogma 2, I’ve been unable to stop thinking about its conclusions since.
Despite overwrought, heady concepts and familiar fantasy elements, Dragon’s Dogma 2 crafts an emotionally engaging experience unlike almost any other. Its kingdoms are built with cliches and tropes instead of brick and mortar, but the cracks between are teeming with the markers of human touch. Neighbouring kingdoms Vermund and Battahl, home to humans and beastren respectively, operate like moss-covered clockwork dioramas. Their inner workings and systems are never all that far from sight but are so textured by the game’s rich art direction, player-reactive systems, and ideas that you buy into the simulation fully. It’s easy to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain when you’re keenly aware of how the game’s inexorable march of time is impacting quest progression and the ripeness of the fruit in your backpack. Or balking at the physics of a toppling beast. Or sitting at camp watching live-action footage of meat searing over an open fire. Or. Or. Or.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is so evidently considered and considerate that its ballooning reputation as uniquely player-adverse feels more like a reflection of design ideals and goals breaching containment. Concepts that now find themselves in gaming culture taught to instinctually categorise and isolate experiences that eschew immediate understanding, let alone gratification. This isn’t an unknowable game designed to antagonise. If anything, I’ve found the opposite to be the case. Dragon’s Dogma 2 doesn’t hate you; it loves itself.
We love our bread, we love our butter, but most of all, we love each other
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is unwavering in its commitments, taking widely accepted staples of open-world action RPGs and unceremoniously discarding them in favour of its own, slightly obtuse, interpretations. These changes are always deliberate: for every carefully introduced friction point, there’s reason to be found elsewhere, and the discovery of those systems forms the moment-to-moment joy of the game. It’s in a constant call and response with the player, playfully inviting you to relinquish genre and mechanical expectations so you can more fully embrace the risks and rewards of the unknown and the uncomfortable.
The Arisen’s journey across the sprawling kingdoms refuses to be contained by traditional fast travel systems. This has become a particular sticking point in the game’s growing reputation. But meet Dragon’s Dogma 2 where it is, and you’ll find an affordable and affable ox cart to ride through Vermund, a pulley system high above the canyons of Batahl and a play space that gently guides you along well-worn paths and shortcuts. Friction and balm. There’s harmony in design choices like these. The basic and repeated action of walking to and from objectives enables you to sink roots into the world, familiarising yourself with its small and unremarkable places. As you trek through wilds, gear and sundries must be properly sorted before leaving town, and the impenetrable darkness of night requires you to make camp at your favourite bluff. The next morning, you follow your Pawn as they call out a point of interest you might have missed the first time through an ocean-blasted coastal path.
Through an endless cycle of walks and meals taken with friends, there’s a permeating warmth to your adventure in Dragon’s Dogma 2. The clashes with daunting foes might make for easy marketing and killer gameplay, but Dragon’s Dogma 2 isn’t really about those things. Instead, it’s an epic action fantasy RPG entirely uninterested in its power fantasies that extend a single inch beyond combat. Achieving immersion through the mundane and systemic, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is riddled with ordinary tasks and subtle mechanical touches it asks you to care a great deal about.
On the Volcanic Island, an old man has thrown his back out and can no longer cross the treacherous cliffside paths to a local healing spring in his current state. You can escort him, and he will follow at a glacial pace as you dispatch some lazy lizards, or you can use the game’s grab mechanic to scoop him up and carry him slightly faster than he can walk. You drop a few coins for the party to enjoy a soak too, cartoonish steam clouds covering your dogma. You try to take a screenshot, but the function is blocked. This is a private place of rest, show some respect.
Elsewhere, Batahl’s hostility toward Pawns is felt in the strangest of ways. Within the borders of a town, you can enjoy unlimited stamina for quick traversal, but in the small, ramshackle settlement just beyond Batahl’s city, in which Pawns have been ostracised, you’ll get no such allowance. Here, these are not a recognised people, and so neither are the systems they use. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a wellspring of these anecdotes and observations, some of its best emotional work done in mundane tasks and small fancies.
Apawnable? Apawning? A Pawn by any other name? You get the pawnt
Technicalities aside, I hesitate to call Dragon’s Dogma 2 a single-player experience. You’re more than welcome to play offline, of course, but in playing online, you’re treated to one of the best asynchronous multiplayer experiences you’ll ever have. Pawns are tremendous, and despite their narrative importance and funky lore notes, they enable Dragon’s Dogma 2 to achieve Strand game status, filling your discreet instance of a game with echoes of other players. Alone but never lonely, your journey is spent huddled by fires and delving into caves with reflections of real people. Their cosmetic choices and silly names are a constant support system that doesn’t detract from the rewarding and contemplative isolation of a solo gaming experience.
A Pawn is an oddity. Fully customisable from aesthetics to combat prowess and personality, your Pawn will be distinctly yours. I travelled with Bastian, a beefy cat boy with a no-nonsense attitude and a sword the size of my whole body. Pawns can do just about anything to bolster your adventure, from filling in the gaps of your class structure to shouldering the burden of heavy items, thanks to the game’s short-leashed carrying capacity. Bastian’s dry drawls about ladders and journeys he had taken with other players while I slept kept the solitude at bay on longer treks, even repeated barks never really getting tiring. There’s a surprising amount of inherent comedy to Dragon’s Dogma 2, from slapstick physics to goofy one-liners, almost all of which come back to your Pawns and their effervescent presence.
When Bastian’s sardonic humour sharpened to a finer point, I became paranoid he had picked up the infamous Dragonsplague, a virus that infects Pawns while in the rift, turning them against their charges over time. I began to observe him more closely in combat and out, taking mental note of small behavioural changes, caught between fear of losing my best mate and raw curiosity about what he might become without his compulsion to my service. I had heard whispers from other players that the sickness would break badly if it happened. Because Dragon’s Dogma 2’s earliest moments had forewarned me what the collision of flesh, blood, and steel meant in this world, the idea of coming to blows with Bastian turned my stomach.
Beauty and the Beast
Dragon’s Dogma 2’s violence is fascinating. As the Arisen flees imprisonment in the game’s opening credits, they take flight on the back of a gorgeous griffin. Cutting an uneven path through the clouds and over the kingdoms below (amusingly unveiled on the game’s map after the cutscene), you’re treated to the beast’s view of the world, and it is breathtaking. As the griffin levels out and the score begins to swell, we cut to a small gathering of humans far below. They let loose a ballista shot that skewers the griffin, blood pouring from the wound as it falls from the sky, and director Hideaki Itsuno’s name appears to end the credits sequence. Majesty, violently removed from its place in the world. This is Dragon’s Dogma 2’s thesis statement.
Well, at least academically speaking. Practically speaking, the developers at Capcom are still masters at crafting incredible combat systems. Things can be challenging, one does not simply fell a chimera, but Dragon’s Dogma 2 has a deft touch when it comes to difficulty. Encounters are less reliant on acute reflexes and more on situation adaptivity, your awareness of both foe and arena more of a factor than your ability to perfect parry. You can perfect parry too, of course, but you’re just as welcome to pull in high-level Pawns to buttress you while you figure out which of the game’s ten vocations (classes) best suit your playstyle. Buffed Pawns created by strangers cost more to summon, but your mates’ Pawns are always free to pull across the void regardless of level disparity, the difficulty mitigated by genuine human connection.
Meanwhile, the tools the game gives you to fend off all manner of foes are fucking magnificent. I began my journey as a Mage, hanging back in battle to summon great storms of ethereal lightning and dole out healing as needed, though this eventually felt a little too passive. I turned my hand to the Mystic Spearhand, one of three Advanced Vocations that utilised a combination of rapid melee skills and Force-like magical powers. I was a beast in combat and fairly certain of my path until the wife of that lovely old fellow I carried to the hot spring taught me the ways of the Magick Archer, a godly Vocation that combined the best of my previous experiences into a single, unstoppable force.
As you walk a Vocation’s path, you’ll organically level it up through repeated use, eventually unlocking passive Augments that can used on any Vocation or Pawn. This adds a nice layer to the Vocation system, allowing for a bit of player expression while still ensuring each Vocation adheres to its well-balanced limitations. Truly, the only gripe to be found in combat is the game’s camera, a cumbersome thing that doesn’t allow you to lock on and will frequently get caught in the environment. It barely registers in the grand scheme of the game. The imprecise nature of targeting eventually becomes charming, given the lack of friendly fire, and the camera catching is limited to small blips of annoyance rather than outright frustration.
Enemy variety can run a little thin too, but the core combat experience remains engaging and fun until credits and beyond. But the sombre tone of the game’s opening was never that far from my mind, especially as the party would slay dangerous but undeniably beautiful creatures. Atop a small cliff in Batahl, I faced down another Griffin, my recently acquired Magick Archer abilities making quick work of its multiple health bars as Bastian proudly clung to its left wing, grounding the beast. Before we could finish the job, the Griffin made a final push for survival and managed to get loose, returning to the air for an attempted getaway. The only ranged Vocation in the squad, I lined up a shot, traced the creature’s uneven flight…and let it go. I didn’t need the experience, or the loot— in that moment I just needed to let something beautiful and chaotic live a little longer.
Take the road less travelled
I don’t know if this disparate collection of anecdotes is enough to convince you that Dragon’s Dogma 2 is worthy of your time, but I hope at least to have made it worthy of your consideration.
The relative youth of games as a medium has wrought such wonderful and terrible things on audiences and markets alike, but Dragon’s Dogma 2 is not uniquely fated by unknowable forces like its Arisen. Capcom’s disastrous insistence on bolting on microtransactions to its single-player experiences is both broadly exhausting and damaging. While Resident Evil 4’s add-ons were egregiously worse to my mind, the additional content you can nab for Dragon’s Dogma 2 is simultaneously fairly worthless in-game and running active interference on what are unconventional but otherwise wholly genuine design choices.
The game’s classification as unknowable, or even hostile, to the player is hyperbole. It’s cemented by a collision of shit business practices on Capcom’s part and the audience’s rigid expectations, established by equally shit businesses operating elsewhere in the genre. But Itsuno’s vision is uncompromising in its service to the player, not against. In our rapid march toward fidelity and streamlining, we’ve inadvertently internalised a series of arbitrary “best practices” around modern game design, practices that Dragon’s Dogma 2 is almost entirely uninterested in. That might mean it’s not for you, and that might be okay— Dragon’s Dogma 2 is for Dragon’s Dogma 2, and I can think of nothing more necessary, beautiful, or chaotic than that.
Review conducted on PlayStation 5 using a pre-release code provided by the publisher.
Image: Capcom, Kotaku Australia
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