Well, March 22 is nearing. In other words, Dragon's Dogma 2 will be released in less than three weeks. Truthfully, it's been a disheartening week or so. Recently, my country's educational ministry decided to release a curriculum focusing on the Israel-Hamas War. It was a bad idea because people had already chosen their sides. Understanding is only applicable if and when people choose to. After all, you can't legislate understanding. Things then only seemed to go from bad to worse. From the alternate media not giving the Jewish community space to air its views to posters accusing NTU of aiding in Israel's war efforts (i.e. in their own words, genocide), the only thing left waiting to happen is another Six-Day War or Yom Kippur War. Seriously, this is one of those moments where I don't want to talk to people to protect myself from grief. Depending on a specific factor, I may (or may not) have a nice distraction from the Singaporean version of Hamlet. Come to think of it, are we living in a Shakespearean reality?
30 fps issue
If there is a reason for me not to get Dragon's Dogma 2, it'd be this. The rumours were finally put to rest and proven true: The game will run at approximately 30 fps. And that's not even to include the factor of instability. As expected, Reddit went Fukushima mode. Okay, it's not that bad. There's one Reddit thread entirely of complaints. However, there are others where questions are asked whether things are really that bad. Things were quite civilised since we're talking about Reddit instead of Singapore. But if there's anything I'm sure of, it'd be Capcom possibly going all out to ensure a stable 30 fps. The fact that DD2 doesn't have a performance mode may be pointing towards this. I'll wait for reviews once it is released before buying. That should be 2-3 days after launch.
Demo and patience
As a Singaporean, I'm too used to having a fast-food mentality. We're too used to wanting things fast. Especially fast grades and equally fast success. Do we admire Pep "the stereotypical Catalan genius" Guardiola? Yes. But are we able to nurture another stereotypical Catalan genius? No. If Thomas Edison was a Singaporean, I doubt he'd have invented the light bulb. Enough of my griping. Let's move on to the subject of patience. This word is clearly the polar opposite of a fast-food culture. Patience is the name of the game if you're to play DD2. Itstylo has stated the game will NOT hold your hands like an ah-kong. Once you start playing the game, you must be your own ah-kong. Can't think critically? Too bad. Don't want to fail? Then don't play this game.
And since I'm a Singaporean, DD2 is bound to be a culture shock. All the games I've played involved quest markers. So imagine playing a game where the quest details tell you which direction to go and nothing else. Using my brain, however, there's always a hope that the objective point shouldn't be somewhere far off. Of course, that's a fallible assumption unless proven right. Then, we have the return of time-gated quests. This is something I'm very sure I'll fail a lot. While I can analyse things, my ability to read maps is nonexistent. In fact, I suspect I'll be opening the map at least twice as many times as the average player if I decide to play it. Thankfully, reviewing quests is adorable. There's only this much the game can cut the players loose. So yeah, there's some semblance of a journal/quest board, so the players don't miss out on anything.
While I relish the challenge, I need to test myself to see whether DD2 is the game for me. A lot of things have clicked into place except for two: The 30 fps issue and patience. This is where the demo comes in. Now, it has yet to be announced by the bigwigs at Capcom. We may get a definite answer to this at 7 am local Singapore time. Of course, it's possible that a lot hinges on when the final vocation showcase trailer for Warfarer comes out. After all, it'd feel weird to release the demo before that. I'll only take one quest at a time if I play it.
Fighter: Either you or your main Pawn
Now information has it that your starting point upon playing the game would be the fortress village of Melve. There stands the Fighter vocation maister Lennart. Simply put, the most convenient vocation to level up is possibly Fighter. That plus there are bound to be quests in the starting area. So, that's where you start learning before doing the more dangerous and challenging stuff.
Rated M for implied sex
It's official. The sexual themes listed in ESRB's rating referred to sex scenes. Or rather implied sex scenes with sex workers. At the same time, the harpies and sphinx are officially topless, minus the nipples. In other words, this is the kind of game you wouldn't want kids to play. And that's not to mention plenty of blood, gore, and monsters screaming like angry people in pain. In a certain way, it's even more rated M than Baldur's Gate 3. One thing to note, however, is the question of why the lack of sexually explicit visuals even though Itstylo has no qualms in portraying uncensored violence. This reminds me of the Japanese release of Baldur's Gate 3, where government censors reason why explicit nudity was cut from the Japanese version. Just don't ask me why the Japanese porn industry is legit because I don't come from a political dynasty whose surname starts with the letter K, LDP or no LDP. Anyway, if my guess is correct, this was also the reason why DD2 will NOT have any sexually explicit visuals. Personally, I'm comfortable with a line being drawn. If this 30-fps game can run better than expected, I may have a go at it. That is unless Capcom screws up the PC port.
Before I continue, I'm going to speculate on Wilhelmina. There's something about the way she dresses that's definitely different from the likes of Ulrika, Doireann, and Nadinia. There's such a logic called era-relevant. If people have a problem with what I'm saying, that's because their imagination isn't my problem. Simply put, the Rose Chateau she owns is a famous brothel. In the classic high fantasy setting, it's natural that men hold all the power apart from certain exceptions like Cersei, Daenerys, and Disa. As the OF platform has effectively proven, a horny man is a useful man.
Since sex scenes are synonymous with romance in the modern era of video gaming, whether we like it or not, this raises the question of whether the player character can romance the main Pawn (note that I never said having sex because you can separate romance from sex). An interesting aspect of storytelling is the Dragonsplague. Is this an indication that the main Pawn is more relevant in the plot? If so, will this point to the possibility of romancing the main Pawn? This was something players found a bummer in the first DD game.
Press R1 for...
I won't be doing any analysis on the vocation trailers. The reason is that others are in a better position than me to do so. With that said, my assumption of Mystic Spearhand's R1 being the teleportation strike was wrong when I analysed a specific gameplay video on YouTube. So what does the Redoubted Bolt R1 command do? I'll be waiting to find out.
One interesting thing I noticed, however, is the R1 for Sorcerers. In an IGN gameplay video, using R1 when not switched to the Weapon Skills menu would speed up random spells instead of specific ones. This leads to the question of whether the random selection effect also applies to the Weapon Skills menu. Or would it be R1+the chosen spell?
Cross-posting screw-up?
To end this on a quirky note, I realised that the DD Facebook page is likely using a cross-posting tool linked to the DD Twitter/X account. In other words, whatever is posted on Facebook would be reflected on Twitter/X (Note that the other way around isn't the case). I mentioned it because I noticed something weird about the Mystic Spearhand post on X. Long story short, the said X post was removed despite vocation trailer posts always being a case of cross-posting from Facebook. I knew it because I noticed something weird when the X post was reflected via Google. In the Facebook post, the media file was a video. In its X counterpart, it was an image link. At the same time, the hashtag #DragonsDogma2 was missing in the X post. Apart from that, the text was identical.
Simply put, it looked more like a copy-and-paste job with cross-posting temporarily disabled. Then it got removed. How did I know it? I clicked on the X post out of curiosity. How in the blue hell could an image file be confused for a video file? Why in the blue hell did the hashtag go missing? Was it an angry employee out to exact some semblance of revenge? But that'd feel too contrived, as there would always be more embarrassing alternatives. It's weird.
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