Overlooking Dragons Dogma (part 1)

   You don’t have to be the Son of Sparda to see that Capcom has been trying to get on the western development train for the last few years. With frequent outsourcing and redesigns, constant re-evaluation of their core IP’s and if you’re a little scared that this is going to read like a piece of actual Journalism, don’t be alarmed we’ll get to the videogame in a second.
   When it comes to talent, Capcom was never shorthanded. Shinji Mikami, Keiji Inafune; those are two names that are immediately recognizable to just about anyone who has more than a passing interest in videogames.
    The thing is though; neither of those two men have worked for Capcom in at least a couple of years. Keiji Inafune cited creative differences when he left Capcom, right around the time Capcom seemed to decide to move in a different direction from their Archetypal mascot, Megaman.
     Regardless of their decision to stop making platformers with a blue robot, or turn the ‘award winning’ formula of the Devil May Cry series into…whatever it is that DMC tries to be, that is neither here nor there.
    You have to recognize that without Capcom’s desire to make Asura’s Wrath or cancel Megaman Legends 3; that every decision they have made has brought them here.
Here is of course, 2012 release of Dragon’s Dogma a rare example of Capcom releasing an in-house studio title to the AAA videogame market.
    Dragon’s Dogma is unique because it accomplishes the Herculean effort, namely ‘make a good videogame’ (for the most part) but not in a way that Capcom itself has been striving towards, like because it’s not a joint-developed game.
    We’re living in a time where the Japanese game industry is far from the behemoth it once was.
Even giants like Square-Enix recognize the advantages of owning a western-based studio and even further than that, western properties. Konami is doing it with much success from the Lords of Shadows franchise, Mercurysteam’s attempt to rewrite and redesign Castlevania so it will be more appealing to those with the mental faculties of a four year old child.
    There’s a list of examples longer than just that slightly too-long paragraph, but the difference between Capcom and almost every other developer that’s been trying it is that Capcom can’t seem to find land with any traction. Bionic Commando was very much a Cult Game, most reviewers unable to look past the fact that you could shoot people in the game, but that the mechanics weren’t focused around it.
    DMC definitely exists, and that’s probably the most polite thing that can be said about the game.
Capcom continued to try it while experimenting with their in house development, but whatever they once had, that ‘magic’ that people commonly associated with earlier titles, was gone.
     Even worse is seeing it as magic that belonged ‘to’ Capcom, with their dubious role as sometimes publisher/sometime developer. Like any company, that ‘magic’ was and continues to be built on the backs of other people; in other words, the pool of talent the studio drew from had dried up.
    When a sports team loses its key players, you begin to doubt whether or not the rest of the team can still strive and reach success. The game industry is no different, except Baseball doesn’t suffer as a whole when a studio is shuttered or someone decides to retire for shitty reasons or negative fan reactions. The surprise that comes when that team wins the world cup without a key player is as genuine as when a talentless (literally) developer manages to release a game that's actually enjoyable.
   Dragon’s Dogma surprised me, and I’ll immediately concede to saying that if nothing else it will always have that going for it.
Taking a lesson that From Software taught videogame developers, Dragon’s Dogma’s core approach is a concept you’re familiar with; which is Roleplaying games.

Japanese studios aren’t necessarily known for this type of game, it’s more the hallmark of western studios than anything else. The type of open-world, lore based RPG
isn't something that comes out of Japanese studios very often, so Dragon's Dogma is a unique endeavor.
    Dragon’s Dogma could almost be thought of as the Japanese take on Skyrim. It even follows ultimately similar storyline beats, only involving one dragon instead of many.
Whereas the focus of Skyrim’s world is to wow the player almost from the outset, Dragon’s Dogma is much plainer. There are monsters, but the majorities of them are no larger than you.
   When you run into something like a Gryffon or a Wyvern, the game wants you to think those particular encounters are special. Using lore to actually tie the world together – not merely as a way for the player to experience story that they weren't directly involved in, is used to great effect. The first time a player stumbles upon an ancient Golem on a cliff overlooking the sea, it's particularly surprising.
    Dragon’s Dogma excels at presenting a world that is still familiar, but has the touch of originality, yet mark that the above sentence should always be appended with “for a videogame.”
The game’s world elements are strictly mythological fantasy instead of having much to do with America’s obsession with a certain middle-of-the-road mediocre British writer who popularized the heroe’s journey for a modern audience.
    Those world elements are also important to Dragon’s Dogma because they fit. The monsters that are more wild in nature are appropriately found in places that match them, undead stalk the crypts.
A golem is perched on the edge of a great cliff by the sea, surrounded by massive stones with a purpose the game never tells you about.
    Keener to be used as an example is what the game refers to as ‘The Pawn System’. In addition to the player character, the player also can make a secondary character that has a role as support, freely able to be built just the same as the protagonist but not controlled. In this Pawn System, the player can freely summon up to two other players pawns for support, though those Pawns come as-is.
    This system exists solely for the benefit of the player, it is an artificial system entirely that has no place in the world. People hate pawns though, and deride them for lacking in personality and emotion, and for seemingly coming from nowhere instead of being born. Pawns are an entirely artificial system that’s been given a place in the game world through the actual fiction of the game itself, that’s brilliant because the player never then notices because it’s just another experience.
   Altogether, it’s a thoroughly unique way of including something deeply entrenched in the mechanics of the game and tethering it closely to the narrative. As it’s commonly said, there are many books that do things Videogames are just now starting to learn.
   While it is ultimately a shame that Dragons Dogma does it in such a Video Game kind of way, it’s still neat to see modern AAA titles do.
Ultimately, Dragons Dogma is kind of a parallel of a lot of other titles that have been released in the twilight years of these consoles lifespan. Where I think it excels is the way it borrows concepts from its forerunners and refines them to fit whatever pseudo Dark Souls/Monster Hunter template it fits under.

   It also draws I think, on roleplaying tabletop games, especially in the way it handles its relatively small cast of characters. Each character is more like the fleshed-out NPC's from a campaign in a fantasy roleplaying-game than the relatively huge casts of modern AAA games.    
   Standout among these characters is Mercedes fits the role of closest-ally. If the player had a best friend, it would probably be Mercedes.
   She also has probably one of the only voice actors in the game actually capable of effecting anything close to the stereotypical fantasy accent, but also being capable of putting on a decent performance as well.
    Looking at the game from the point of a massive tabletop campaign I think is interesting, because that closely follows the way Dragons Dogma approaches not just its plot, but the world that the game is set in.
    Appropriately, this is a world where people have been adventuring in for centuries, and the player is expected to not just believe that, but closely adhere to the rules and prophecies laid out by those that come before. By using a cyclical prophecy as the narrative underpinning, it lets the writers do some creative things (for a videogame).
   One of those is the hallmark of letting the player fight previous incarnations of him (and his pawn) at the end of the game. Creative players can recreate the first arc of Berserk, as both of the main characters equipment sets make a cameo. (Mercedes herself looks almost exactly like Casca, without the problematic fate her character eventually met). Steeping the game in a deep mythology and giving the story a cyclical nature, it’s a lot easier for the player to fall into their role than most contemporary RPG’s that try to wow the player with so-called epic set pieces right from the get go. 

    To define the philosophy with the cleverest of analogies, Dragon’s Dogma doesn’t play its full hand until roughly half way into the game, changing what the player is used to – and offering new things to expect right around the time most games are allowing you to get comfortable.
   Dragon’s Dogma’s most important feature has to be the way it approaches the Day/Night system.
It’s a small feature in other games, mostly taken for granted or used to enhance immersion.
What you’ll notice just from looking at screenshots of nighttime in Dragons Dogma is it doesn’t use the standard film or videogame concept of night, replicating the look with in movies what amounts to some stage lights propped up with a black background.

   When you’re out at night in Dragons Dogma, the game is appropriately steeped in darkness, you can hardly see even in the brightest areas where the moon is in full view, much less in the middle of a dense forest.
   The lantern in Dragons Dogma offers only a small pittance of light; a field of radiance around the player character that turns the night outside of his vision into a pitch black void. Dragons Dogma, especially at lower levels, is one of the few games where the player aught be afraid of the dark besides maybe Zork.
   Halfway into the game, Dragons Dogma turns the already dangerous night into something actually meant for the player to be afraid. Not only are monsters more plentiful, they're also twice as strong (stacking ontop of the fact that the game gets notoriously difficult here)
The best effect of this is that on the borders of the players vision, they're likely to see the red glint of a monsters eyes in the distance.
   Suddenly, this makes the lantern not just suggested but pretty much required.
Much of the praise I have for Dragon's Dogma is based around how they turned a mechanic that is often taken for granted, and made probably the most important part of the game.
It is also one of the only RPG's I can think of where I actually put my character to rest at night, you know, instead of just when I need to wait ten hours for some dude to not be fucking sweeping or something.

  Even so, you still spend a lot of time in Dark Places, and even though the player can sometimes afford it, the game has its way of forcing you into surviving the night (especially on longer journeys).
Notably, Dragon's Dogma has very few in the way of dungeons, but each one of them is important in their role of taking the player out of a setting he's familiar with.
  Familiarity is what Dragon's Dogma does its best to subvert just when the player is getting comfortable. At the time you're finally settling into navigating the world, it throws a whole new series of challenges at you and completely moves around the many different monsters and where they can be encountered.
Unfortunately, few of the encounters scale with the player, and there's definitely a point in which the player may notice they're becoming stronger than everything thrown at them up to that point, which kind of lessens the impact of the end of game journey.