This game is huge. Far too huge for an eight-day embargo window. Paste will have a review later, but for now here are my impressions after just over a week of play. This is how I spent my first 65 hours in Dragon’s Dogma 2. Suffice to say, we are so back.
The first proper dude I meet in Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a white boy named Justinn. Ser Justinn. Two Ns. Incredible. He’s not the only incredibly named white boy in Dragon’s Dogma 2; there are so many. I want to ask Itsuno who came up with all these names. Who stocked the name generator that kicked them out.
As for Ser Justinn…
It takes about five minutes before I throw him off a cliff, down a deep ravine, into one of the most beautiful, photorealistic rivers I’ve seen in a videogame. A red cacophony of churning water and fluid tentacles grabs him, consuming and submerging at once.
“We are so fucking back,” I say to myself.
A few seconds later he reappears next to me, hale and hearty (and drenched). This isn’t supposed to happen.
I throw him off again. And once more he reappears. We do this dance over 20 times. And then I throw him at a stone wall repeatedly, watching him grow increasingly flustered as the grass and rock become slick with his crimson blood decals, until finally he fucking crumples and stays still. And that’s when the entire, and I mean entire, garrison comes for me.
This is how the first half hour of my time as The Arisen, Sovran of Vermund, is spent.
Hours 1 – 5
Having realized that I was actually disappointed with Lasagna and Lady Omelet’s appearance in the open world, I start over and dive deep into the character creator.
There are options I had missed before. Hair options. Face options. Teeth. I adjust the lighting so I can make the perfect mackerel tabby coat. I fail. I choose a lovely golden yellow color base with a blotched pattern.
I slide in and out of the face types (there are nearly 80 scanned faces for this game’s base heads). I wonder if they scanned cats. How many scanned cats does it take to make a compelling anthropomorphic cat character generator? I click a button to edit the teeth, you can individually delete teeth, it makes my cat boy smile. It’s terrifying.
I remember my second stepmother’s cat who was allergic to her teeth. Lasagna, I decide, will not be.
Hours later, I create a golden god of a cat boy. A good and heroic leonine lad who is soft in the middle, but sturdy, with arms and traps like an Internet-famous cat. He reminds me of that titan of fur who used to stalk my father’s fifth apartment balcony. “Tut,” his owner called him. He mostly slept in sunbeams on the fire escape. He was so big.
Then I recreate Lady Omelet, my darling chaotic, green-haired and tan and maybe soulless daughter. Because of the redesigned classes, I have to decide: do I let my daughter play with knives and become a teenage pickpocket? Or does she attend summer archery camp?
As a responsible parent, I send her to camp. She can buy knives when she’s older.
What a pair we make.
Hours 5 – 15
The benefit to playing Dragon’s Dogma 2 before launch is the sense of discovery and wonderment. There is no community to have laid out the orthodox character builds. No story beats have been spoiled. Everything is an unknown building on or undercutting expectation and previous knowledge.
I make it to the main city and I know this urchin is more important than he lets on. But I don’t know how. I know the regent is corrupt, but I don’t know why. I meet the handsome Black knight who wants to help me take my rightful place. We conspire on a dimly lit patio of the nearby tavern to exchange information. Yes, the classic Dungeons & Dragons taverns have terrace dining in Dragon’s Dogma 2. Also, yes, there are people of color. A lot of people of color, everywhere, in all strata of society.
I am vividly reminded of things I love about Dragon’s Dogma: the strange vernacular, and the skillful melding of fantasy aesthetics, anime bullshit, and real world cultural ephemera from the 10th to 19th centuries.
He sends me far afield to fight monsters, rescue his soldiers, and make the people of Vermund believe in me.
Lasagna has become such an efficient killer. I fight so many monsters it’s time to change my vocation, and learn new ways of fighting monsters. I hang up my shield and pick up the greatsword.
I am disappointed by Warrior. It’s not like it was in Dragons Dogma. I bitch and moan about this. I am cranky from lack of sleep, there is so much game, and the lifting of the embargo looms. Part of me wants to go back to Dark Arisen. I wonder what if anything we’re truly getting from a new version of this game.
Hours 20 – 45
Lady Omelet screeches at me about a ladder. This is what they do instead of marking the map. For all the marketing bluster about pawns not repeating themselves or talking too much, it’s a ruse. I haven’t once heard “Goblins ill-like fire.” But Lady Omelet is constantly wondering aloud if aught we seek will be found above. There are many ladders in the game. And chests. And caves. There is a resplendence of aught.
When we’re out in the world, Lady Omelet is constantly telling me about chests and detours to take. She’s seen things I haven’t. She’s been hanging out with other Arisen and learning about the world.
She hung up her bow and started stabbing things. Dragon’s Dogma 2 does a really great job of being upfront about which classes have which augments, what those augments do, and it makes deciding on vocational training a straightforward matter.
I miss the old way. I miss the old ways a lot at this point. I miss the broken, bastard Warrior vocation. I miss the Knowledge Chair. When I release a pawn from my service I can only give them a thumbs up, a heart, or nothing. I can still offer them gifts, but I can’t rate their fit.
Speaking of gifts, it’s been dozens of hours now and I haven’t found a single skull. How am I supposed to wander the land giving random members of society skulls I picked up off the ground? Itsuno, please. I need my skulls back.
As soon as I start pouting about the old ways, I let Lady Omelet guide me to a chest; the other two pawns I’ve hired for this current adventure haven’t seen it before. “I shall have to tell my Master about this.” The pawns aren’t just learning, they’re teaching now. They’re teaching each other. It’s incredible. We’re so fucking back.
Hours 45 – 65
I have become Dragon’s Dogma 2 pilled. Warrior makes sense to me now. At first I was frustrated that they took away my simple three-button system—Jump and Heavy for bosses, Jump and Regular for trash. Now I have to use skills. I have to manage stamina. But I have learned to become a slow wall of death, and it rules. Capcom knows how to make a fighting system.
A rich asshole in Vernworth wants to talk to me (a beastren) about his great replacement theory regarding beastren. I throw his racist ass over a ledge onto a slightly lower cliff, remembering The Brine doesn’t take people anymore. He lays motionless for a moment, and then struggles to find a way off the ledge. He cannot. This has become his gaol. Maybe a harpy will espy him. I head out for the desert kingdom. The land of my peoples.
In Battahl, the kingdom of Beastren, I am accused of being a race traitor. In Battahl, I am almost fleeced by an Innkeeper who is charging exorbitant prices for his convenient and obvious hotel. In Battahl, I suffer my most egregious narrative failure that I cannot walk away from.
I blow up Austin Walker‘s DMs. He is shocked by my failure. I am shocked by his success. Like two pawns passing notes behind the Arisen’s back we speculate and share knowledge.
“Have you figured out what the name of this continent is? Are we on a peninsula? An island?” It’s 3 a.m. and my partner is insisting I go to bed, but I have questions and theories, and because of the review embargo the list of people I know playing Dragon’s Dogma 2 is very small. I am vibrating out of my skin about this game and have to share. Austin tells me he just got to a point where it becomes clear this game is for “dogma sickos.” That “they made this game for Us.”
How am I supposed to go to sleep now?
It’s 4 a.m. and I’ve half-a-mind to get up and go back to playing, even though the reason I’m in bed is because I fell asleep at the controller and ran myself off a cliff onto a drake, which is different from a wyvern and a dragon (all draconics in Dragons Dogma seem to have four legs, with the main difference being fire vs lightning type, and only one is The Dragon). I am immediately demolished, but now I know where he is for when I have rested.
Austin passes on the pro-tip of changing your pawn’s vocation back to their best class and loadout so they’re more likely to get hired when you stop playing for the night. I had believed in my heart that Lady Omelet would be an archer, but watching her ricochet her way across the battlefield with two flaming daggers like a maniac pinball is revivifying. She needs that last vocation level to unlock her bonus strength augment anyway.
Before long it’ll be off to Sorcery School for her; there’s another augment to pick up. I want my daughter to be as deadly as she is dear to me.
Austin and I talk about how long the game is, how big the world starts and stays and becomes. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is huge. I wonder who is borrowing Lady Omelet right now. If they’re being successful. What she’s learning. What she’s teaching. There’s less than two days left before the embargo lifts, and there’s no way I’ll be done in time. I don’t even feel like I’ve seen the shape of this game yet. It’s been 65 hours and I feel like I’m just now finding my footing.
Dia Lacina is a queer indigenous writer and photographer. She tweets too much at @dialacina.