The sequel to cult action RPG hit Dragon’s Dogma has a new, nine-minute gameplay deep dive out of Tokyo Game Show 2023. The look at Dragon’s Dogma 2 with game director Hideaki Itsuno goes over some key gameplay concepts, outlines the four starting classes, and shows off combat and exploration, which is apparently four times the size of the first game.
Among the new features shown are facets of the day-night cycle, traveling between towns via ox-cart, and the new beastren nation of Battahl. Battahl in particular offers a lot of new sights for the series, as it’s an arid, rocky country whose capital city is located in desert crevices away from the scorching sun.
We also see monsters used as tools in this showcase of the expanded exploration, which is very Dragon’s Dogma. There’s footage of a character riding a Gryphon’s back, of another character grabbing a harpy’s legs to force it to carry them upward, and a third clip of an adventuring party making a cyclops fall so that it bridges a chasm, allowing them to scramble across.
The video shows off the four base vocations of Fighter, Archer, Thief, and Mage, up from three in Dragon’s Dogma by splitting the Archer and Thief into separate categories. The animations are overall much more up to 2023 standards, and still quite grounded and weighty: A fighter bashes his shield to get monsters’ attention, a wizard slowly chants magic to a soft glow, and attacks emphasize heavy hits or speedy stabs. (Also, shout out to how much better aiming a bow in third-person looks.)
Itsuno also reveals two advanced vocations, the Mystic Spearhand and Magick Archer. The Magick Archer is a returning vocation from the first game, giving you auto-homing arrows and explosive shots. The Mystic Spearhand is something wholly new, wielding a double-bladed spear and using some straight-up Jedi looking powers to deflect incoming attacks and, in one very delightful moment, using a bunch of hyena corpses as improvised projectiles against a Chimera using some kind of telekinesis.
Back when we first saw Dragon’s Dogma 2, PC Gamer’s Wes Fenlon said that it “sure looks like Dragon’s Dogma.” Lo and behold, this look at Dragon’s Dogma 2 sure looks like the same, and god bless it for that, because that’s really what Dragon’s Dogma fans want.
The first Dragon’s Dogma, and its expanded version Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, are beloved by fans for their unique exploration and distinctive action RPG combat. They have much of the same purposeful, timing-based fighting that has made Dark Souls and Monster Hunter such successes, but add in twists like grappling onto monsters in order to climb them. Everyone likes to run up the arm of a cyclops and stab it in the eye, or cut the tail off a giant lizard.
You can find more about Dragon’s Dogma 2 on Steam and on its official website. It doesn’t yet have a release date.