HYPE
Capcom’s fantasy RPG returns with an emergent agenda
One year ago, deep into the development of Dragon’s Dogma 2, the sequel to 2012’s chaotically loveable action-fantasy romp, director Hideki Itsuno sat down to stream a playthrough of the game to his colleagues. The pandemic months had pushed Capcom’s staff out of their Osaka office, and while Japan had started to tentatively reopen for business, many of Itsuno’s colleagues still worked from home. He put on a head mic and, with the determination and glee of a Twitch streamer, began to play through an early build, commenting on what was occurring on the screen as his team attentively watched his exploits while taking notes.
Itsuno crested a hill together with his pawns – hired AI companions that fight alongside the game’s protagonist, healing one another, and shouting archaic words of encouragement (“Methinks we shall explore today!”) – and made the reckless decision to attack a nearby cave troll. The troll was several levels above his ragtag band of adventurers and the ensuing fight bloody. Things did not go Itsuno’s way. Soon his pawns lay bleeding out in the tall grass while his own character’s health bar had been chipped away to a sliver. Itsuno turned to flee. The troll gave chase. “I was just running away for a lack of anything better thing to do,” Itsuno recalls.
“But it kept following me. I didn’t know how I was going to survive.” Soon, Itsuno arrived at a town. He sprinted through the front gates. It was an irresponsible, self-serving decision. Itsuno’s character would find safety in numbers among the terrified villagers. But in leading the troll back to the settlement, he had imperilled the community. Still, as his character entered the village, Itsuno was met not with fear or judgement, but with an act of collective courage. In Dragon’s Dogma 2, characters can clamber onto larger enemies, finding handholds in the rough skin of their prey, a mechanic that echoes the giant-felling work seen in Fumito Ueda’s Shadow Of The Colossus. The villagers rushed the troll and began to launch themselves at their attacker, overwhelming it with sheer force of numbers, drawing the beast to its knees. “It felt like a scripted event,” Itsuno recalls. “But Dragon’s Dogma 2 doesn’t have scripted events. There are no invisible flags or triggers that cause certain events to occur. Everything that happened that day happened dynamically, because of how the game’s rules and systems interact with one another.”
