Capcom Announces Dragon’s Dogma for PS3: Monsters, Magic and Melee

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Capcom Announces Dragon’s Dogma for PS3: Monsters, Magic and Melee

Dragon’s Dogma is a new intellectual property from the creators of Devil May Cry 4 and Resident Evil 4. And while it resembles another Capcom series featuring monsters and the hunting thereof, we’re promised a unique experience when the game launches in ”early 2012.”

I played a short demo and met with the game’s director, Hideaki Itsuno, and it’s producer, Hiroyuki Kabayashi, at Capcom’s Captivate event in Miami last week.

“While they may have some superficial similarities, they are very different games at heart,” explains Hideaki when asked about comparisons to Monster Hunter. “One key difference is that Dragon’s Dogma has an overarching story whereas in Monster Hunter the focus is on the hunt.”

Dragon's Dogma for PS3

In a nutshell, Dragon’s Dogma is an open-world action adventure set in a world of swords, sorcery and enormous, deadly monsters. “When I was at junior high school I was really taken in by The Lord of the Rings, so I’m sure that has had a strong influence,” explains Hideaki. “You can expect to see a lot of those creatures from Greek and Norse mythologies that fantasy fans will be familiar with.”

“While we don’t share a common history and mythology, Japan has had access to the same pop culture experiences over the last 30 years, and I think that Japanese people do like fantasy games, movies and books. Because of that, we have the same working knowledge of myths and creatures such as the Hydra and the Griffin and people in Europe and America do.”

Dragon's Dogma for PS3Dragon's Dogma for PS3

Dragon’s Dogma has been in development for three years and currently has more people working on it than any other Capcom game. “This is a game that I have wanted to make for many years,” Hideaki adds. “I’ve never felt that we had the technology in place to take on a project of this scale. Now, we have consoles powerful enough and a development team at Capcom knowledgeable enough to bring this vision to life.”

The demo playable in Miami was a quest to take down a Griffin using the Strider – one of three character classes alongside Mage and Fighter – and the flexibility of the combat was the aspect that most stuck in my mind. You’ve got your standard sword melee attacks and daggers for very close combat. You can grab on to the griffin’s wing and hack away as you both fly across the verdant fields or have your mage enhance your weapons with fire and take it down with a volley of flaming arrows.

Dragon's Dogma for PS3

I went back four times overall to experiment with different solutions to the same boss fight, which is impressive pulling power considering I also had Street Fighter X Tekken and Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City at my disposal (more on those later in the week).

Your three accomplices in monster-bashing are a key part of the gameplay and are known as Pawns. You can issue commands to them using the directional buttons and they respond with tips along the lines of “Orcs hate fire” and “deploy the rolled-up newspaper” (I made the second one up), and they can develop abilities of your choosing. Interestingly, there are more than 200 individual NPCs in the game world, each with spoken dialog and a full 24-hour daily routine, and any of them can be recruited as Pawns and then customised to your needs.

Dragon's Dogma for PS3

We are told that there will be “a brand-new approach to multiplayer” but were unable to squeeze out any further details. The answer to that other ubiquitous interview question is that the main quest is expected to deliver around 30 hours of gameplay, not counting side quests.

As you can see from these screens and the trailer above, Dragon’s Dogma is a looker and we’ll be keeping an eye on it here at PlayStation.Blog. Feel free to ask questions and look out for more Capcom posts later in the week based on my time with Street Fighter X Tekken, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, Dead Rising 2: Off the Record and more.

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76 Comments

5 Author Replies

  • looks kinda cool, nice job Capcom, hope it can deliver though

  • Look like CAPCOM is trying to capture the WESTERN gamers. It look more like a WESTERN style game then the normal Japanese type game that CAPACOM is known for . Either way, I have to say this is ………. a DAY ONE buy for me so far.

    Is it a RPG, Action or Adventure. It look more like an Action / Adventure in my opinion.

  • ill have to keep my eye on this, not so sure yet though

  • It looks AWESOME, I’m in!!! 8)

  • Oh my…. this looks like they read my mind and came up with the perfect multiplayer game, however… Lost Planet 2 suckitude keeps me from getting overly excited. DON’T SCREW THIS ONE CAPCOM

  • Looks good.

  • So they mention that it has some things in common with “another of CAPCOM’s games fighting monsters and hunting…”

    I got all excited thinking this was going to be CAPCOM’s PS3 version of a Monster Hunter game. After having seen the trailer though—guess not. *bummed* Still looks frikkin’ pretty fantastic though. I mean, if it has the one thing that kept me wanting to playing MH constantly, which was the fun/4-player online, going for it—I’m in. (or whatever the player count might be)

  • Dragons and all the mystical creature you can find… I’m liking this one very much!! =)

  • This is looking great!. I’m surprised that this isn’t an RPG(It looks like one).

  • I hope this has some gathering elements to it, or a quest board sort of like Monster Hunter. No matter, I’m very, very interested in it after watching that video. Will be keeping my eyes on this one.

  • inb4 it gets canceled & ported to the Wii

    I’ve stopped playing Crapcom’s games this gen and I won’t play any of them in the future either. That whole company reeks of mediocrity as does their games.

  • Looks amazing. Can’t wait to see more.

  • DO WANT!

    I expect nothing less from the minds behind DMC and RE. I will be tracking this game relentlessly from today on.

  • Some of the visuals looks good, but the voice acting is ‘distracting’ (read as: bad). Also, since my sixth sense is mewing in my ear about voice acting I can tell that there is is a icky-sticky layer of ‘Japanese crazy’ under what looks like a nice western style game.

  • Capcom….PS3? We can expect another port for PS3 owners, less content that the other versions and on disk DLC. Will pass as usual

  • Wow… I was not expecting that. The game looks awesome! I can’t believe they went from Devil May Cry to something like this, it’s surprisingly appealing. I will be looking forward to this one for sure. Go PlayStation!

  • Why do I keep getting this message when I try to enter the blog “Maintenance

    We’re making a few quick changes and the site will be back online in just a few moments.” It has been over a week. I had to use google to get this far. Please help!

  • Just, Just, just WOW! This meshes the gameplay of Western RPG’s puts in JRPG’s and capcom has how charlie sheen would put it A BI WINNER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • this one and asura wrath.. wow… both look awesome…

  • Game looks AMAZING!

    Definitely on my radar, since I love open world RPGs.

  • This game looks really good. I’ll be keeping my eye on it.

  • great :)
    looking forward to this

  • i love the feel of the game! very demons souls meets… i dunno. something that has combos? you could almost call it dragons souls! lol. i don’t really care about using magic, but i never do in these games. i just want to fly a gryffon!

  • Stop saying this game is like Demon’s Souls, it is not, not even close.

  • Is this an exclusive?

  • @75

    Exclusive? LMAO. If anything it would be a 360 exclusive as that kind of game is the only thing that sells decently on that console besides FPS…and it’s Capcom, what do you think? You should already be concerned if PS3 owners will get the short end of the stick (lame port), since you know Capcom seems to be very American this generation and they develop primarily for the American console/market…what ever happened to that japanese company which built its success on japanese consoles….

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