Unscripted Encounter in Dragon's Dogma 2 Fool Even the Game Director

Dragon's Dogma 2 is shaping up to be a game with a lively and unpredictable world. Game director Hideaki Itsuno recently shared a surprising experience he had while playing, that highlights the game's dynamic nature.

In the latest issue of Edge magazine, Itsuno talked about a sudden encounter with a cave troll that almost ended badly for him. During the game, he decided to run away as he saw no other option to save his character.

"I ran because there was nothing else to do. But the troll kept following me. I didn't know how to survive," Itsuno said.

He ended up in a nearby village, hoping to hide in a crowd of villagers. Instead of panicking, the villagers started climbing on the monster and attacking it, similar to what the main character can do. Together, they managed to defeat the troll.

This incident seemed like a scripted event. But Dragon's Dogma 2 doesn't have scripted events. There are no invisible flags or triggers to cause certain things to happen. Everything that day happened naturally, based on the game's rules and systems interacting with each other.

The game's dynamic and open-ended nature is somewhat reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: BOTW, where players can use various tools to solve problems in unconventional ways.

While many action role-playing games focus on complex combos or precise timing for attacks, the chaos in Dragon's Dogma offers its own charm. The way the game's systems interact with each other provides a variety of encounters that keep surprising the players. It looks like the sequel is aiming to build on this kind of gameplay.

While working on a 15-minute demo of Dragon's Dogma 2 for events, producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi mentioned that even in such a short segment of gameplay, the unpredictability of the game kept surprising them.

15 minutes is a relatively short amount of time, but when we were playtesting this brief segment, team members kept coming up to me and saying: 'Come and see what just happened to me!' Even within such a tiny portion of the game we keep being surprised by what's happening, even though we're the ones who originally designed the possibility space.

Dragon's Dogma 2 will be available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series, but the release date is not yet announced. This episode and the design approach of the game hint at a promising experience of a player-driven narrative, setting Dragon's Dogma 2 apart from many action role-playing games out there.