Dragon’s Dogma 2 Director Says Some Gameplay Can Feel “Like a Scripted Event”

Dragon’s Dogma 2 director Hideaki Itsuno has spoken about the upcoming action RPG’s emergent gameplay, likening it to Grand Theft Auto 5 (which the team took inspiration from). Speaking to EDGE in issue 391, he talks about running away from a cave troll who took down his Pawns and wouldn’t stop pursuing him.

“I was just running away for lack of anything better to do. But it kept following me. I didn’t know how I was going to survive.” After arriving in a village, he was surprised to see its residents climbing up the troll and eventually bringing it down with their advantage in numbers.

“It felt like a scripted event. But Dragon’s Dogma 2 doesn’t have scripted events. There are no invisible flags or triggers that cause certain events to occur. Everything that happened that day happened dynamically because of how the game’s rules and systems interact with one another,” said Itsuno.

Producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi revealed that even the 15-minute demo for the Tokyo Game Show showcased some astounding occurrences despite its length. “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 is coming to Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC. A release date hasn’t been announced, but the development team has confirmed a seamless open world, four times the original’s size, with no loading screens. Check out some extensive gameplay here outlining the game’s Vocations and combat. You can also watch a boss fight against a Griffin here.