Dragon’s Dogma was a daring experiment throughout Capcom’s darkest days

Almost 12 years after recreation director Hideaki Itsuno launched Dragon’s Dogma on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is lastly nearly right here. For the reason that unique recreation debuted, Capcom has launched Dragon’s Dogma spinoffs, semi-sequels, and ports to various levels of success, however the extremely anticipated sequel seems poised to interrupt out.

Writer and developer Capcom has been on a success streak recently, due to investing in sturdy franchises like Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and Road Fighter. Nonetheless, the corporate’s fortunes weren’t so favorable in 2012 when Dragon’s Dogma debuted. Again then, Capcom was experimenting and infrequently failing, both critically or commercially, to search out world success.

Dragon’s Dogma landed amid a yr of massive swings and misses for the corporate. The Resident Evil franchise was at one in every of its lowest factors with a number of poorly obtained releases that yr, together with Resident Evil 6, which critics known as “a franchise-diminishing disappointment,” and Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon Metropolis, blasted as “an insult to Resident Evil followers.” Solely Resident Evil: Revelations, a 3DS-only facet story that caught to the survival horror core, saved the franchise related that yr.

Capcom appeared confused about what to do with its wealthy vein of properties in 2012 specifically. It’s the identical yr that it labored with FromSoftware to ship Metal Battalion: Heavy Armor, an abysmal, Xbox 360 Kinect-only spinoff of its hardcore mech motion franchise — you realize, the one well-known for its devoted 44-input controller — and reimagined the Misplaced Planet franchise as a manga-inspired shooter with EX Troopers, a deviation from the intense sci-fi presentation of the earlier video games.

The corporate’s identification disaster prolonged to lots of its oldest franchises, together with releasing a social cellular recreation based mostly on Mega Man and going crossover-crazy with Mission X Zone, Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright, and Road Fighter X Tekken. The latter, specifically, was a industrial misfire regardless of the recognition of each franchises, and it was knocked by gamers for its heavy-handed monetization techniques.

One vivid spot in that dour yr was Asura’s Wrath, the CyberConnect2-developed motion recreation that delivered an astonishing, over-the-top spectacle. However even that recreation had a wierd wrinkle; gamers couldn’t expertise the total story and “actual” ending except they paid to play its DLC.

In hindsight, 2012 appears like an inflection level for Capcom. The yr prior, the corporate pumped out each Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and the expanded Final Marvel vs. Capcom 3, with solely a nine-month window between them. It later blamed low gross sales of Road Fighter X Tekken on “cannibalism” within the combating recreation style, of which Capcom itself was notably responsible. In 2013, the writer’s experiments continued; it labored with builders Ninja Principle to take the reins of the Satan Could Cry sequence with DmC, a controversial recreation overseen by Dragon’s Dogma creator Itsuno, and Spark Limitless to make Misplaced Planet 3.

By the way, 2012 was additionally the yr of two notorious Capcom typos. The writer misspelled the title of Resident Evil: Revelations on the sport’s field artwork and even misspelled its personal title within the copyright of its Kinect Metal Battalion recreation. That’s a comparatively minor high quality management concern, but it surely’s indicative of a bizarre, chaotic yr at Capcom.

Given the messy environment of the time, it’s no shock that the modestly profitable Dragon’s Dogma could have been considered by Capcom executives as yet one more experiment of the period, somewhat than a franchise to completely put money into. They did give the unique recreation a second likelihood, nevertheless, with 2013’s Dragon’s Dogma: Darkish Arisen, an expanded re-release of the unique recreation with a brand new landmass and new enemies. Capcom additionally tried to maintain Dragon’s Dogma going with a cellular recreation and MMO, each of which shuttered just a few years after launch.

In a 2019 interview with Eurogamer, Itsuno recalled the event of Dragon’s Dogma as his most difficult challenge at Capcom. “That was a brand-new sequence — quite a lot of different stuff I’d achieved was already established,” Itsuno mentioned. “It was one of many first actual new issues.”

Dragon’s Dogma was a “actual new factor” for Itsuno himself, who had labored on Capcom’s combating video games (Energy Stone, Capcom vs. SNK) and the Satan Could Cry sequence. It was a long-held dream of his to make an unique role-playing recreation: one which simulated the expertise of an MMO, however constructed for solo gamers, Itsuno mentioned in an interview with IGN.

“I wished to make an motion RPG that did two issues: I wished to create an RPG that wasn’t a chore to play, and I wished to make an RPG you might play alone that also felt like a web-based expertise,” he defined. “I created Dragon’s Dogma by combining these two concepts. I’m proud that it appears like taking part in with mates even while you’re alone, and that it’s an RPG with motion components that really feel simply as enjoyable as an all-out motion recreation.”

“It’s at all times been about taking ridiculous concepts and approaching them fully severely,” he instructed Eurogamer.

Getting to noticeably strategy a ridiculous concept throughout Capcom’s rockiest and most experimental period paid off for the creator. In 2024, Itsuno’s confidence about Dragon’s Dogma 2 and its distinctive design selections — the sequel shuns fashionable expectations like on-demand quick journey and conventional on-line co-op play — seems to match that of modern-day Capcom’s. The corporate is nicely past its troubled period from two console generations in the past, experimenting the place it is smart however nonetheless correctly nurturing its hit franchises. Hopefully, that gained’t imply one other decade-long look ahead to extra Dragon’s Dogma.