Dragon's Dogma 2: IGN First 10 Hours Preview

Draugoth

Draugoth

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  • Possible GOTY 2024
  • Game is basically DD 1.5
  • Vocations are quest tied
  • Game map is massive.
  • ferrystones are hard to come by
  • >Five vocations are available at the start
  • There are few quests in the game compared to a bloated open-world like Assassin's Creed
  • There are no Quest Boards or Quest Markers
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After a month's worth of content, hear Mitchell's own personal impressions based on 10 hours of gameplay of Dragon's Dogma 2 in our full preview. Find out what we thought about exploration, combat, the vocations, the new take on sidequests, and much more.​
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Futurama Buy GIF
 
Oh man, this looks better and better. I hope this one causes some of the people saying combat looks stiff, bad, etc in other threads reconsider.

Edit: I'll be surprised if there isn't a good way to obtain plenty of ferrystones later in the game; possibly even an eternal one for all the fast travel you want. Though that might be a NG+ type of thing.
 
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A few minutes in and it's really dialed in on the exact things I loved about the first. It's a very pure sequel that doubles down instead of changing.

I'm glad people who are whining about it weren't taken into consideration.
 
ssringo said:
Oh man, this looks better and better. I hope this one causes some of the people saying combat looks stiff, bad, etc in other threads reconsider.

Edit: I'll be surprised if there isn't a good way to obtain plenty of ferrystones later in the game; possibly even an eternal one for all the fast travel you want. Though that might be a NG+ type of thing.
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Even if the combat is mediocre, everything else looks phenomenal. I'm hoping there are more varied environments, which I'm sure there are given map size. Regardless, this game will be incredibly unique at the very least
 
I'd love to get this day 1, but until Capcom clarify their anti-modding stance or demonstrate they understand that "all mod/ders != cheat/ers" I'm going to hold off.
 
MagiusNecros said:
Imagine being so butthurt that you can't fast travel all willy nilly and actually have to play the game.
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How I play a game like this (eg Skyrim):

First 20 hrs, explore and unlock the map. Take in vistas, uncover as many locations as possible. Also collect each and every quest i can.

Once I am done with exploring I go for story and quests. At that point i jump from location to location via fastravel. Select a quest, then go directly to its location in map.

I can see limiting fastravel restricting certain play styles. Its not like you have platforming sections or interesting level design that will make your retread fun in a open world game like this.

With that said, am excited for this game cause how they described you get quests in game and focus on exploration.
 
Mister Wolf said:
Ferrystones being hard to come by dropped this to a deep sale. Like $30 sounds about right.
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Counterpoint:
A dev with the balls to limit fast travel options and to not cave in to the obnoxious mentality that everything has to be "as convenient as possible for the player" deserves only praise.
 
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Sentenza said:
Counterpoint:
A dev with the balls to limit fast travel options and to not cave in to the obnoxious mentality that everything has to be "as convenient as possible for the player" deserves only praise.
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More power to him if he wants double down on the first game's mechanics. Very interested to see how this all plays out. There is a quote by Einstein:

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Ironically I always felt DD1 map was small. It being 4 times bigger is gonna such a great experience I think. Can't wait to explore all the dungeons and have to prep oneself for a long journey before heading back to gear up. Will give the world a true sense of danger. Especially if things will probably go to crap if this is a retread of DD1 after killing the Dragon.

Gonna treat this as the Capcom Legend of Zelda game just like the first.
 
Sentenza said:
Counterpoint:
A dev with the balls to limit fast travel options and to not cave in to the obnoxious mentality that everything has to be "as convenient as possible for the player" deserves only praise.
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Its not about convenience. Its about getting to fun parts quicker.

Also, not being able to reach where you wanted cause you were ambushed after an hour of trek.

How fun does that sound?

I am all for making this a game mechanic, but then they need to focus on making it fun as well. Like, show us locations of creatures on map and how to avoid them if we are weak … etc.
 
It sounds fucking terrific, actually.
Also, WHINING aside, it seems pretty much obvious that the fast travel options will keep getting cheaper and/or easier to access as one progresses through the game. Which is exactly as it should be.

Some people don't seem to grasp the idea, but it's not even a matter of "choosing if you want to use fast travel or not".
The featureset of your game implicitly affects its design. If you give designers and playtesters the ability to warp around at will from the beginning, they will shape a game that takes that feature implicitly for granted. So they won't worry on how quests are paced, how much traversal is required and how proportional the reward can be to the effort.

For the record, I don't even advocate that games should necessarily be ENTIRELY devoid of fast travel solutions, but ideally...
  • every open world game should be designed around the idea that if the player wants to traverse the world organically the game shouldn't be an absolute slog with tons of unnecessary time sinks.
  • quests should never ask the player to traverse large distances for trivial benefits and every area/region should be more or less a self-sustaining microcosm/quest hub with few notable and meaningful exceptions (i.e. If the quest is "Find my spoon so I can eat my soup" I shouldn't need to jog through half a continent to close it).
  • Fast travel options should be contextually appropriate and their convenience relatively limited (Yes to "This carriage connects two cities", no "From the beginning you can warp back and forth anywhere").
  • The system should ideally scale and become more forgiving over time, starting with limited (or NO) fast travel options but expand the player's tools as the time goes (i.e. at first on foot, then mount, then in-universe transport system or portal network that need to be unlocked gradually, runes that need to be collected like in Gothic, flying mounts, etc). This allows the player to experience the sense of scale of the world at first and then gradually make it more convenient as familiarity sets in.
  • Bonus points if the unlocking of more fast travel options can be used as a reward in itself, like in Gothic or Risen where killing certain monsters or reaching a well guarded treasure sometimes included in your loot the teleport rune for that area. Or Dark Souls 1 when you unlock the Lordvessel only after a specific achievement. Or the first DD where you occasionally got additional Portal stones.
 
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I'm replaying the first one and 3 things they have to vastly improve are enemy variety (not terrible but it could be much better), improving the pawns ia by a lot, and the retarded inclinations thing for them, make this shit less volatile without the need to chug dozens of elixirs to change them every couple of hours hours just because you play the fucking game normally and give them order or because they get traits from other pawns (people knows what i'm talking about).

Just give them fixed inclinations that you can choose from the rift menu search, this bullshit interchanging ia is absolute retardation and just busy work.

P.s. they turned warrior into a mh GS user, love it 🕺
 
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Mister Wolf said:
Ferrystones being hard to come by dropped this to a deep sale. Like $30 sounds about right.
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This actually makes this an easy pass for me.

Was kinda on the fence, but then I remember I didn't like DD because of the clunky combat and having to walk all over the place.

No fast-travel in an open-world is an auto-pass for me anyway.
 
Sentenza said:
Counterpoint:
A dev with the balls to limit fast travel options and to not cave in to the obnoxious mentality that everything has to be "as convenient as possible for the player" deserves only praise.
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I don't know if you are actually feel this way, but I do. I want my games to respect my time, but I also want them to hold some sort of vision for the game and not just pander to every whim of the social media mob.
 
Killjoy-NL said:
This actually makes this an easy pass for me.

Was kinda on the fence, but then I remember I didn't like DD because of the clunky combat and having to walk all over the place.

No fast-travel in an open-world is an auto-pass for me anyway.
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Dragon's Dogma had fast travel in spades.
Up to 10 or 12 portal stones to collect and place at will, single-use ferrystones to make use of them and at some point an Infinite Ferrystone to get rid of that money sink.

Anyone playing the game for more than one hour and half should be aware of this.
 
Sentenza said:
Dragon's Dogma had fast travel in spades.
Up to 10 or 12 portal stones to collect and place at will, single-use ferrystones to make use of them and at some point an Infinite Ferrystone to get rid of that money sink.

Anyone playing the game for more than one hour and half should be aware of this.
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Possibly, but I already quit the game after 1 hour.

As I said, the combat was clunky af. Graphics looked rough as well.

It's never a single reason for me, but knowing that fast-travel is limited already is a major con for me.
 
Killjoy-NL said:
Possibly, but I already quit the game after 1 hour.

As I said, the combat was clunky af. Graphics looked rough as well.

It's never a single reason for me, but knowing that fast-travel is limited already is a major con for me.
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That's an entire matter entirely compared to your original complaint.

You are also entirely wrong about that, too, Incidentally... But as I said, different matter.
 
I haven't paid much attention to this game. This video changed that. March 22 was reserved for Rise of the Ronin, but that game can wait. DD2 is looking damn fun.
 
Sentenza said:
Dragon's Dogma had fast travel in spades.
Up to 10 or 12 portal stones to collect and place at will, single-use ferrystones to make use of them and at some point an Infinite Ferrystone to get rid of that money sink.

Anyone playing the game for more than one hour and half should be aware of this.
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After 1 hour and a half you are still in the "tutorial" basically, you are far from having fast travel in spades after 90 min (or even 10 hours, especially on hard mode where progression is way slower).

What you say is true but you make it sound way easier and streamlined than how it was, let's be real here.

You have to first collect these 10 rare items, they are heavy and you have to bring them in your inventory, and it's nowhere near as comfy as "modern fast travel".

It was on purpose and i'm kinda ok with it but nobody has the right to criticize people who didn't liked how fast travel was handled in that game and the infinite stone was added with a remaster, many people played the vanilla game.
Also, not every dude has much time to play with a family and shit, and it's not like other great open world didn't had fast travel, from elden to w3 to zelda tokt and more, it is not something that inerenthly make a game worse.
 
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GymWolf said:
After 1 hour and a half you are still in the "tutorial" basically, you are far from having fast travel in spades after 90 min (or even 10 hours, especially on hard mode where progression is way slower).

What you say is true but you make it sound way easier and streamlined than how it was, let's be real here.

You have to first collect these 10 rare items, they are heavy and you have to bring in your inventory, and it's nowhere near as comfy as "modern fast travel".

It was on purpose and i'm kinda ok with it but nobody has the right to criticize people who didn't liked how fast travel was handled in that game and the infinite stone was added with a remaster, many people played the vanilla game.
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You start having fast travel as soon as you collect the first portal stone and a ferrystone as complementary, though, not when you "caught them all".
And the Infinite ferrystone is at reach as soon as you get to the central city, which is... 4 hours into the game at a leisure pace, less than two hours if you purposefully rush toward it.

You have to first collect these 10 rare items, they are heavy and you have to bring them in your inventory, and it's nowhere near as comfy as "modern fast travel".
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II see this as an absolute plus.
 
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Killjoy-NL said:
This actually makes this an easy pass for me.

Was kinda on the fence, but then I remember I didn't like DD because of the clunky combat and having to walk all over the place.

No fast-travel in an open-world is an auto-pass for me anyway.
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Well, had you stuck with it, you'd find that as you progress and your character/party grows travel becomes less of an issue. Same as most other games!

Generally speaking warping point-to-point only matters if the game demands you to constantly jump around -say to farm a certain enemy or item that can only be found in a certain place. So its only really an issue if the game design makes it so, and with DD it really didn't as once you got to Gran Soren you were essentially at the central hub of the world.
 
Sentenza said:
That's an entire matter entirely compared to your original complaint.

You are also entirely wrong about that, too, Incidentally... But as I said, different matter.
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No, you just disagree with me. To me, DD looked rough graphically. You could point out all the graphical settings, it wouldn't change a single thing about the game looking rough to me.

Same goes for combat being clunky.
Gameplay in DD2 looks similar to me, in that regard.

The reason I said I was kinda on the fence, is because most of what I see is off-putting to me. I was just considering if I should give it a try because it has such a loving fanbase and the Trickster looks like an awesome class.

But if fast-travel is (quite) limited, it's easy for me to just pass on the game.

There's more games coming up in the coming months, so it's not like I miss out on anything if I pass on DD2.
 
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Sentenza said:
You start having fast travel as soon as you collect the first portal stone and a ferrystone as complementary, though, not when you "caught them all".
And the Infinite ferrystone is at reach as soon as you get to the central city, which is... 4 hours into the game at a leisure pace, less than two hours if you purposefully rush toward it.
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Yeah you can travel back to the first city or gran soren after a couple of hours (also dependant on difficulty mode and approach to the game, some people are slower and love to wate time inside rpg), still limited and definitely not "in spades" aftef 90 min.

You are not gonna convince anyone who actually played the game that the title has a great fast travel system dude, half the people who hated the game was because of the convoluted fast travel or lack of it.
 
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Killjoy-NL said:
No, you just disagree with me.
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Oh, I absolutely DO.
DD isn't even just decent. It's arguably up there with the BEST action games when it comes to combat and it absolutely nailed controls and feeling.
You wouldn't know, of course, because you hardly went past the tutorial and in that timeframe chances are you hardly unlocked abilities for your class past the starting ones, let alone any advanced class.
 
Clear said:
Well, had you stuck with it, you'd find that as you progress and your character/party grows travel becomes less of an issue. Same as most other games!

Generally speaking warping point-to-point only matters if the game demands you to constantly jump around -say to farm a certain enemy or item that can only be found in a certain place. So its only really an issue if the game design makes it so, and with DD it really didn't as once you got to Gran Soren you were essentially at the central hub of the world.
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Maybe, but to me it's a matter of time. Traveling is mostly a chore in an open-world.

But as I mention in my other post, it's more than just limitations on fast-travel. Fast-travel is just tipping the scale to passing on the game.

Anyway, if people enjoy the game, it's all good.
It does seem like a great game if you're into it.
 
GymWolf said:
Yeah you can travel back to the first city or gran soren after a couple of hours, still limited and definitely not "in spades" aftef 90 min.
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Yeah, but that's all you need at that point, since you have yet to explore in any other direction.
And if you were to, that's where you'd find the additional portal stones, as well.
 
Sentenza said:
Oh, I absolutely DO.
DD isn't even just decent. It's arguably up there with the BEST action games when it comes to combat and it absolutely nailed controls and feeling.
You wouldn't know, of course, because you hardly went past the tutorial and in that timeframe chances are you hardly unlocked abilities for your class past the starting ones, let alone any advanced class.
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It's all opinions.

I feel the same about The Witcher 3 as I do about DD. Probably amazing to the fans, but to me it's whatever.

It happens, people like different stuff.
 
Sentenza said:
Yeah, but that's all you need at that point, since you have yet to explore in any other direction.
And if you were to, that's where you'd find the additional portal stones, as well.
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I'm replaying the game these days and it's not super annoying because i just found 2 portal stones and i can place and pick them where i want, but i can't fault people for noto liking this system, i'm at home with my leg injured so i have time to waste but i can't get mad at other people not liking this system.

Pawn ia being retarded and changing all the time is way more infuriting for me :lollipop_grinning_sweat:
 
Sentenza said:
Yeah, but that's all you need at that point, since you have yet to explore in any other direction.
And if you were to, that's where you'd find the additional portal stones, as well.
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Unfortunately I don't think you're going to be changing any opinions here. These people already have their minds set on the game, even though it isn't out yet and they haven't played it.
 
Sentenza said:
Some people don't seem to grasp the idea, but it's not even a matter of "choosing if you want to use fast travel or not".
The featureset of your game implicitly affects its design. If you give designers and playtesters the ability to warp around at will from the beginning, they will shape a game that takes that feature implicitly for granted.
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giphy.gif


This was immediately obvious when comparing the intricately interwoven world design of the first half of Dark Souls, where fast travel was not possible, to the later post-Lordvessel areas or to the design of Dark Souls II in general. Why bother spending time designing a world or map that cleverly folds on itself with strategic shortcuts between areas if the player is just going to fast travel everywhere anyway?
 
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