The Burrow

While Looking Back at the Origianl

Way back in 2012, over ten years ago, to my astonishment, there was a lovely little game named Dragon’s Dogma. Announced via a special event hosted by Capcom, it was looked at as a departure from the company’s usual flair. My own first exposure was through Game Informer Magazine sometime in 2011, and I was immediately taken by what I saw. RPGs were something that I had grown to love during the PS2 era, though Western RPGs weren’t something that I got a lot of exposure to on that platform. It was Japanese RPGs that caught my eye back then. Final Fantasy, Star Ocean, Grandia, and the like were epics. They had a lot of stories to tell, as evidenced by the playtime my friends and I racked up on them. There were one-offs here and there for me, though; Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance is a stand-out. Fable on the original Xbox. But the Japanese had my attention more so than any other.

So then, when I got my PS3 in the fall of 2005 (thanks, mom.) I started branching out more. The earlier years of the PS3 were pretty light on games, so I was always on the lookout for something new to try while I waited for my old standbys. Enter Oblivion. Showcased in Game Informer for the Xbox 360, it was unlike anything I had ever seen. “Live another life, in another world.” Bethesda’s latest entry from their marque franchise had already received ample amounts of buzz after its release on 360, so finding out it was coming to the PS3 had me quite excited. I picked it up on launch day and spent that summer doing nearly nothing else. From then on out Western RPGs became a staple of my “gaming diet.”

That generation of games really allowed Western RPGs to gain a foothold in the culture; they became mainstream in the way JRPGs did in earlier generations. And I tried a great deal of them. So when I saw Dragon’s Dogma for the first time, I was intrigued. A marriage of Japanese game design with a Western aesthetic was cool. The screenshots of the fight with the Hydra, its detailed model with its realistic snake heads and its scales. The player character wielding their sword in his heavy plate armor. What is this? So I read on, and the game was described as equal parts Devil May Cry and Dungeons and Dragons.

I wouldn’t play the game when it came out. Why this was, I cannot say. It just came and went for me. However, about six or so months later, while I was working at Gamestop, I decided to take it home. Wow. I fell in love the same way I did when I first read about it. Its action game bonafides were instantly apparent. This was not Skyrim. Jumping, double jumping, swapping vocations, swapping pawns. Dragon’s Dogma felt like a genuinely fresh experience. The game is not perfect. There is some amount of “jank” to it. However, I think that adds to its charm. You are the Arison, the hero of the land, and when your heart is stolen by the Dragon, you set out on a quest to get it back. Being the Arison comes with a handful of perks; chief among them, you gain the ability to summon and command pawns. These are characters that players create alongside their main characters, and they travel with you wherever you go. But that is where things start to get interesting.

You see, Dragon’s Dogma is an online game. That does mean it has a multiplayer component; it means that all the player’s worlds out there are connected. Players can borrow each other’s pawns and take them on quests. By doing this, you are contributing to the pawn’s knowledge of the world. They remember quest locations, people, where items are, how to defeat different enemies, and so much more. Borrowed pawns do not level up while they are in your party, so you are encouraged to change them out often. When you are done with a pawn, you send them back to the Rift, where all pawns live, and rate them based on helpfulness, appearance, and how fair in battle. This is also how players can trade between themselves as you can also send items back with pawns as well.

The game is full of charm. Pawns shout during battle. Characters meander about towns and the paths in between them. There’s an obscure relationship system. And many of these things seem to be being carried forward to the sequel. That is a breath of fresh air to me. Capcom is not reinventing the wheel with this one. It is expanding the game greatly; new races and new environments are abundant in the recent demos and trailers they have released. I am very much looking forward to it. If you want to check out the original game, it is available everywhere now. It comes highly recommended by yours truly.