Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen Catch-All

So I just hopped onto a Griffin and climbed onto its back while it took to the air, hacking and slashing at its wings until it dropped to the ground.

No quick time events.

Pretty much the sort of thing I have always been expecting to do in video games by now.

Yeah, I'm gonna like this game.

I also want to play that quick two-dagger class they had you play as in that section of the demo. Good stuff.

I've been spending the greater part of my afternoon off waiting for the damned demo to finish downloading. I've been getting impatient, but the above sounds like a really good sign. I'll report back with this evening's findings ASAP.

Just played the Prologue and Countryside quests in the demo. I was a bit overwhelmed at first as the game is more fast-moving than I expected. Once I got the hang of the pacing and started to figure out the controls, I really liked it. ccesarano's remarks are pretty on the money here - this feels like what I've been expecting to see in an action-RPG for a while in terms of what you seem to be able to do in combat. Definite strong epic fantasy vibe but with an emphasis on adventure tones, and unlike KoA:R, I like the way it looks. I've been trying to avoid adding to the pile this year, but it looks like I'll be picking this up on release for sure.

I'm definitely looking forward to this game. I can't remember when I saw it but I immediately knew I was going to buy it. The lack of multiplayer has only slightly diminished my excitement for this game.

I've avoided some of the gameplay videos because I don't want to know too much about how to fight the enemies. I do know I can grab on to the Griffon and attack it while it tries to fly away. This game seems like it is a cross between Shadow of the Colossus and Monster Hunter, with some impressive magic that you might find in a game like Magicka.

I really enjoyed the demo. I'd love to get a better sense of the full, open world experience and quest structure. Still, really digging having companions running around with me and saying random things in the middle of combat. Hard to judge the AI but they seem to handle themselves pretty well.

We'll see how they do when they're eating all my health items and telling me over and over again what I'm supposed to be doing.

I can see what you mean, Certis - the demo's really short and doesn't give a good impression of the full game's scope or structure. At one point, the griffin flew out past the boundaries of the demo and I was treated to a message about how I'd be able to pursue it past the wall if I bought the full game. As soon as it flew back in and I killed it, the "quest" was over and I got the "5.2012" screen presented at the end of the prologue. There's no indication of how much quests may vary in length, how they're parceled into the overall game, or if there's as strong a break between them as we've seen here. I'm assuming there won't be a list of quests to pick from at the titles and we'll instead see some sort of in-game menu system for managing active quest lines. Mind you, that assumption's based on having enjoyed the action sequences presented in the demo and naievete I should likely have long ago outgrown. We'll see, but I'm looking forward to the final product. There's some definite promise here.

ianunderhill wrote:

I can see what you mean, Certis - the demo's really short and doesn't give a good impression of the full game's scope or structure. At one point, the griffin flew out past the boundaries of the demo and I was treated to a message about how I'd be able to pursue it past the wall if I bought the full game. As soon as it flew back in and I killed it, the "quest" was over and I got the "5.2012" screen presented at the end of the prologue. There's no indication of how much quests may vary in length, how they're parceled into the overall game, or if there's as strong a break between them as we've seen here. I'm assuming there won't be a list of quests to pick from at the titles and we'll instead see some sort of in-game menu system for managing active quest lines. Mind you, that assumption's based on having enjoyed the action sequences presented in the demo and naievete I should likely have long ago outgrown. We'll see, but I'm looking forward to the final product. There's some definite promise here.

This preview from Destructoid (note the title: Dragon's Dogma is Gooooood) makes it sound like this is a proper open world game full of quests to complete at your leisure, like TES/Amalur etc.

After creating your character, customizing its look, and choosing its class (picking from a warrior, mage or strider), you'll set off on a seemingly endless fantasy adventure, where you'll explore a vast open world, taking on countless quests, lengthy treks and huge monsters...

Dogma's world can be freely explored in that Elder Scrolls kind of way where it seems like you could walk for days, constantly finding something interesting in the distance to make your way towards. It also shares another trait with that franchise: managing to suck you in to its world and take over your imagination.

Thanks for the link, Blind_Evil. Very encouraging news to be sure. Looks like I may not have to sleep away the last few days before Prometheus comes out after all.

I really wish I could drop the combat flow and variety of this game into the Witcher 2.

Interested, concerned Capcom will f*ck it up with paid extras.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I really wish I could drop the combat flow and variety of this game into the Witcher 2.

Truth told, the way the game plays in general is just the sort of action RPG I've been yearning. It only slightly reminds me of Dark Souls, which would have been my ideal RPG were it not for the unforgiving difficulty.

Curious thought drawn from several abortive replies to ccesarano's remarks - do we have any indication as to how death works in this game? I found it a compelling mechanic in Dark Souls. This is nowhere near as plodding, though the combat seems more challenging that your run-of-the-mill console FRPG. I'm curious to see what element sparks the notion of investment/dedication once the "this game is visually fantastic, the combat mechanics are dope, and fighting mythological beasties is really cool" thing wears off.

Pawn system sounds like real fun but as they say the proof is in the pudding.

"So when you hire Pawns from the Rift Realm, you are actually hiring characters made by other players who are currently offline. You can hire Pawns from other players then, once you are done, send them back to their creator with a thank you note, Pawn review, or even attached loot as a thank you gift for their help. But this is only a fraction of what the Pawn system is capable of."

What happens if someone is using your pawn and you load up a game ? a pawn is not a single exclusive piece of code i hope.

I got a chance to play the Prologue mission. It was a nice sample, and it was fun to command a small army. The boss fight was frantic, but in a good way. However, the controls were a bit overwhelming - I couldn't keep up with them at times.

I'm not too concerned about a short demo. The Resident Evil 5 demo (also by Capcom) swayed me away from the game but I eventually played and loved it.

I'd love to see a Giant Bomb quick look on this one.

Man, that was a good demo. I climbed up onto the Griffin's back and it took me for a little ride, until the WizaaAAaaAAaard set it on fire and I surfed it into the ground.

Also had fun climbing up the Chimera's tail to stab it in the snake head.

I agree that it's very fast, which in turn makes me notice that it's also very easy. I basically dove in recklessly every time and was fine. Once or twice I backed off to give the healer time to help me out but I didn't feel like I was being punished for my mistakes. The Griffin went down remarkably quickly. Maybe that'll be different in the full version, or maybe that's not such a bad thing.

I did kind of miss the epic scale of the monsters from Monster Hunter but I get the feeling that their cling/climb mechanic isn't perfect and would start to show its cracks if I had a lot of monster to climb around on. Or maybe it works too well, and they don't want to give us a lot of places we can cling and stab without repercussion.

Either way, it's fun and I'm in. It doesn't quite deliver the same grand scale as a Monster Hunter game and felt more like pounding on boss monsters than actual hunting, but again: fun.

There's a cyclops pictured in the link I posted above that is much larger. One of your pawns is hanging from its tusk.

But yeah, it's not MH. I really want a new console MH, but I don't think that's going to happen. This is made by some of the MH people, but also some of the DMC people, so the lighter combat isn't terribly surprising.

One thing I didn't catch at PAX East was holding Left Bumper or Right Bumper to increase the moves available. Definitely adds more depth than I thought was in the game.

There were a couple things that annoyed me. As Lobster mentioned, it is easy, even easier this time around actually than playing at PAX East. It was satisfying for now, but I'm hoping the game doesn't swing the challenge pendulum away from Dark Souls. I'd like a nice happy medium, where I need my Pawns, but they also need me to do something other than standing back and watching them kill everything.

But the other thing was how frequently in the prologue the game went to one of the Pawns. Dude kept smacking his shield, and every time it did it zoomed in on him. Every time he grabbed a Goblin it slowed down and zoomed in, only for another Pawn to take the kill or for him to give the goblin a kick.

You can turn off those Pawn zoom-ins, I think. And I'm hoping there'll be a harder difficulty.

I was also kind of floored by how easy the chimera was, but then I was fighting with just one Pawn at PAX. Took me way longer.

Wow, that is a crazy good demo.

Interestingly, the prologue actually left me a bit underwhelmed, but I now realize it was mostly because the warrior playstyle didn't jive with me (and maybe somewhat due to the environment feeling a bit claustrophobic). The countryside mission was the exact opposite, though -- I played it maybe four times in a row, and then immediately placed my order on Amazon.

Pretty much the sort of thing I have always been expecting to do in video games by now.

Exactly. I'm tempering my expectations given that this was about a three minute sliver of the game that didn't include a single taste of what you'll spend most of your time doing (you know, the whole open world RPG part?), but the combat and unique party building mechanics alone seem well worth checking out.

One little tip: go into the options and try out control type C. It switches the functions of LT and LB, and while it may seem a tad odd to break the symmetry on the two "extra attack" buttons, it feels much more natural to me, ESPECIALLY when it comes to archery; it's just far more natural to hold LT then hit RT to fire than to hold LB and hit RT.

Oh, one other thing: once I noticed the help text in the menu that said your character edits would be importable to the retail game, I spent some time with the character builder. While it might be a tad limited in certain ways compared to other character builders (i.e., less options regarding sizing, positioning, and tweaking of many types of facial features), there are some excellent UI additions that I wish everyone would steal: selection of parts via menus with nicely sized preview thumbnails, and the ability to cycle thrown facial expressions and body poses to see how your changes will look in action. Also, they managed to light the editor in an aesthetically pleasing way that is representative of how things look in gameplay, which is a distressingly rare accomplishment these days (yes, I'm looking at you, Bioware and Bethesda).

The character creation system isn't perfect. There are so many options for each feature it becomes very hard to compare. It'd be nice if we could make custom lists of two or three "front-runners" to compare directly against one another, but that aside it's a pretty great system. I really like how you can pick things like skin color on one menu, eye color on the eye menu, make-up color on the make-up menu, but they also give you a separate tab where you can tweak ALL colors. Usually character creation systems seem terrified of redundancy even when it improves usability.

I was pretty underwhelmed with the demo. The pawns, I found actually kind of annoying and distracting - their canned comments were already repeating during the demo, I can only imagine how repetitive this would get in the full game. Having just finished Reckoning, I can't help but find the more realistic world design bland and brown, and the combat felt equally bland, though there did seem to be at least a lot of options and moves. Nicely detailed character creation though.

AcidCat wrote:

I was pretty underwhelmed with the demo. The pawns, I found actually kind of annoying and distracting - their canned comments were already repeating during the demo, I can only imagine how repetitive this would get in the full game. Having just finished Reckoning, I can't help but find the more realistic world design bland and brown, and the combat felt equally bland, though there did seem to be at least a lot of options and moves. Nicely detailed character creation though.

While I can't agree in regard to the combat being bland, all fair criticisms otherwise. However, I've come to realize with something like an art style you just can't please everyone. For every person in the Amalur thread that liked the vibrant colors, you had someone put off by them, saying they preferred a gritty realism like Skyrim's (or this, by extension).

The issue with the demo's combat is you never really NEED to use those additional abilities (except for the skyward strike against the harpies if they ever got in range).

I may try it a second time without ever activating the other helpers to see how much more difficult it is. I imagine a lot harder, as it is magic that heals and also stuns the Chimera, and you'd have to keep a good eye on your own health as well as your comrades. At the same time, you'd actually get quite acquainted with the inventory.

Blind_Evil wrote:

For every person in the Amalur thread that liked the vibrant colors, you had someone put off by them, saying they preferred a gritty realism like Skyrim's (or this, by extension).

In my case, it's not so much "gritty realism" I want, but damn it, if freakin' Todd McFarlane's going to be involved, I expect the answer to "BROOOOOOWWWWWWWN!?!" caterwauling to be more substantial than a gummiworm pallette lazily splashed on cartoony character models that'd be more at home in a Dreamworks cartoon. Dragon's Dogma's visual aesthetic seems like it's got potential. Not too serious, not too wacky, and most importantly, it looks to be something I could actually stand to look at for 30-40 hours without retching. The main thing I want is something that looks good without being distracting - I'm not just watching, I'm playing. I'll withhold further judgement until I see some more of the mobs, whom I haven't really gotten a good look at because the ones presented in the demo were just so damned easy - the button-mashing criticism relevant to them is completely valid! I'm hoping what we saw is, if not just incomplete, stuff from way-early in the game. Still hopeful!

A preview in a UK games mag gave me the impression that this games was going to be bad but the demo does seem good. I think I'll wait for the dust to settle after release before I buy it.

ianunderhill, I will never, ever pass up the opportunity to caterwaul "BROOOOOOWWWWWWWN." Ever.

I must suck since I tried killing the griffin twice and died both times. At least I learned you don't have to keep holding onto the grab button.

I think this one is going to slip under the radar with Diablo 3 releasing a week before.

Aristophan wrote:

I must suck since I tried killing the griffin twice and died both times. At least I learned you don't have to keep holding onto the grab button.

I think this one is going to slip under the radar with Diablo 3 releasing a week before.

It might slip under the radar, but I doubt D3 will be the reason. Max Payne 3 seems more likely. I think there's enough of a console-only or -preferred audience to make D3's release a separate situation.

So this was totally not on my radar because I had thought for some reason it was going to be some punishing difficulty thing like demon's soul, but I saw some decent looking screens the comments here saying it was easy have got me more interested.

Here's a video with gameplay footage of the mage class, at the 4:00 mark.

Seems the magic will be used for more than just attacking. Ice spell there made a platform you could use to jump higher to grab an aerial foe, or grab a monster to hold it in place. The magic looks as well developed and varied as the melee. He makes a whip out of lightning. Of lightning!