FNGC Reviews: Dragon's Dogma 2 (ft. Matt Storm aka Stormageddon)

[00:00:00] What's up everybody and welcome to the Friday Night Gamecast! You're joining us for another FNGC review where we take one game and conduct a critical analysis of all its moving parts. This week I'm incredibly excited to introduce my friend and a brand new guest to the show,

[00:00:42] Matt aka Stormageddon from Fun in Games Podcast and the Reignite Podcast, Matt, welcome! How are you doing? Good! Great to be here. It was such a pleasure to get to meet both of you at PAX East this year and I've been

[00:00:57] talking to Nick for quite some time and now I get to know Will possibly after this episode, the superior of the host. We'll see how this goes. Oh, no! I had a blast. I met you guys of course through the incredible Dave Jackson and we wanted to collaborate

[00:01:10] for a while. I've been a fan of the pod for a while. I recently just listened to your Hell Divers episode with Eric who I also adore. Eric is great. Eric is great. And so I'm happy to be here.

[00:01:19] I'm really glad to talk about a game that I'm excited to chat about and to be a part of the legendary Friday Night Gamecast. That's right. I'm so excited to get into this with you as well. And William, we're joined as always. Well, not as always.

[00:01:30] Most of the time. Yeah, most of the time. Sometimes you just drop off. Yeah, 90 years. Sometimes you sneak it in without me every once in a while. But it's always so good. I have to hide the Zencaster link from you whenever we're there in case you load in.

[00:01:40] What are you doing okay today? Well, yep, so far so good. Can't complain. It's a nice Sunday out, you know, other than it being ungodly hot but that's just how it is these last couple of weeks.

[00:01:49] You know, we've got here steaming like crabs but having a good time though. We're indoors. We're in the AC. I can't complain. That's right. 90 degrees in Winston-Stanolin, but we're staying ice cold here. And this week we are jumping in to review a brand new game from Capcom

[00:02:03] called Dragons Dogma 2. This is a sequel to the first game that came out in 2012, 2013. Time for it. I believe the Dragon's Dogma 1 was 2012 and it was directed by Hideaki Itsuno. It was developed inside of the RE engine, of course, Capcom's proprietary engine.

[00:02:21] This is a brand new game for 2023 and it's been received very well critically. It's sitting on Metacritic at an 86 for both the consoles for the Xbox series as well as the PS5 and an 88 on PC. I wonder why that might be.

[00:02:35] And then we also have a 6.3 for user reviews, which is I would say pretty strong, especially for folks who want to, you know, you know, mock the game a little bit. And then it's also sitting at a 98 or a mighty 87 on OpenCritic. So Dragon's Dogma 2.

[00:02:51] I think I would like to jump in for the start of this conversation. And let's go ahead and just start with our background on the IP here. I believe if I'm not mistaken, the both of you have played Dragons Dogma 1.

[00:03:03] So I'd like to just, you know, start with just generalize what were your experiences with the first game? How do you feel about this? Matt, we'll go ahead and start with you. Thanks. So Dragon's Dogma 1 I actually played much later on in its life cycle.

[00:03:16] So for those who are not familiar with the formerly Waypoint podcast now remap folks over on Vice to the hosts on that show, Austin Walker and Patrick Klepek, well known folks within the industry would never shut up about Dragon's Dogma.

[00:03:29] It was one of their like golden gods as far as games go. And then much later down in my games career, I became friends with someone named Wout, who if you know the hashtag in S.T., of course is working over with the folks who make Blotcher now,

[00:03:41] but has been in GamesPR for ages. And he like is the human personification of Dragon's Dogma. Like, wow. Like always pumped the game up online, told people to buy it. He did the side quest episode for fun and games on the first game.

[00:03:55] Like he's just like the guy when it talks about this game. And so between all of these three folks and a few other folks that I'm friends with keep shouting out the game. I'd been wanting to play it, never got around to it,

[00:04:06] never played it on PC at a friend who did. And when it came to switch, the expanded version of it, Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen, when it came to switch, I was like, oh, well, you know what? I'll finally give it a shot.

[00:04:16] I hear that it runs well on switch. It doesn't look as nice as other places, but it runs really well. And so I picked it up and immediately became obsessed with this game. There was something about the player, the player indifference in the game

[00:04:29] and like that you could kind of make your own path. Do whatever you wanted. The character creator was great. The combat was great. The monster fighting was great. Like it just had all those really cool stuff. The narrative was good. I didn't fall in love with the narrative.

[00:04:41] I think I just really liked the adventuring aspect of it. But the game was rewarding every time I put something into it, I got something back and so I became obsessed with it, played it through, played the DLC, really loved it. And that's kind of it.

[00:04:55] I've always been a fan of Capcom and Hideki, it's, you know, who's done a bunch of other games besides Dragon's Dogma famously has worked on the Dragon of the Dark, the Cry series, often would joke that if Dark Arisen did really well,

[00:05:08] then we'd get more Devil May Cry games. Well, and behold, we did get a Devil May Cry 5. So but like I really loved it. And it's funny too, because people were singing its praises before I ever played it, but it wasn't until the Switch version came out.

[00:05:23] I'm just a I think I've talked with both of you about this offline. Like I prefer my RPGs handheld. There's something about it. I don't know why it just it feeds the way I played a lot of handheld games growing up to a lot of RPGs handheld.

[00:05:36] And so I think it being on the switch was recipes for success. I mean, famously, I hated Persona 5 when it first came to PS4. And then when I got it on the royal version on Switch, I devoured it.

[00:05:46] It took over a year to finish, but like I really loved it. So yeah, that's pretty much my history with the series. And then, of course, when they announced the sequel, I lost my goddamn mind and couldn't be more excited. Amazing, amazing.

[00:05:57] It's so interesting you talk about playing it handheld on this on the switch or at least the first one. And I tried actually to play Dragon's Dogma 2 on my ROG ally. This is like the the beefier one with the Zen one chip.

[00:06:09] It's a more expensive tier of the handheld that fan is the one thing this is more an ally issue, but that fan is really loud and it gets really hot because they have so many assets that are loading in.

[00:06:21] It's not necessarily optimized for that specific type of console. But that's really interesting that you had such a good time with it on switch. I'm so curious how that might change or transform your experience as opposed to like playing it on console or computer.

[00:06:34] But yeah, Will, how about how about your experience with the first game? How did it start? How did you feel about it? Been a day one Dragon's Dogma look when they first started showing it off. It looked really cool. I got to check it out.

[00:06:45] You know, at the worst comes the worst, I'm going to have a fun couple of hours with it is going to be fine. You know, I'm going to hop in whatever, whatever. Look, one, the character creator, you hit that first and you're just like,

[00:06:54] whoa, this game is different because even the first Dragon's Dogma one had like for its time, a very robust and really interesting character creator. They kept the same thing that they kept on to it. I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit later where it's not just, oh,

[00:07:06] make your character look a certain way. And that's what it is. Fine. No, the height of your character matters. That will affect some of their overall stats there. Wait. So if you want to make a big, beefy man for either a pawn or

[00:07:17] your main character, then that could affect how much they carry versus if you were to make like a really thin, scrawny old man as like a wizard character, they would have higher, was on that stats necessarily, but just like the stamina meter, which a lot of them cast

[00:07:30] better spells, but then they won't be able to carry as much. So just small things like that that are at, you know, before you even set foot in the game, I was like, oh, this game is different.

[00:07:37] Oh, they're trying to do something a little, little crazy here and just playing through step after step adventure after adventure in that original Dragon's Dogma. I just continuously fell in love with that game. It's like the starting area has levels to it, which you wouldn't

[00:07:51] necessarily think of when you start going out into the world overall. Like they lead you to the main kind of area, but then after that is just like Matt was saying, it's very much choose your own adventure.

[00:08:00] So you can just run off to one of the scarier areas of the game, you know, quote unquote by accident and just have a blast if you want to. And of course, one of the things that they did carry over into this

[00:08:10] game, which they effectively had to because it was probably the most well-known thing was the fighting larger enemies and grappling them. The first time you grab a ogre or the first time you grab a cyclops

[00:08:22] and you start climbing up their body to get to their eye, I dare you not to fall in love with this game. Like it doesn't make sense. You sit up there, especially I was a I think a strider at that point,

[00:08:31] which they ended up splitting off into this game. Dragon's Dogma 2 into two different classes, but you had access to the bows and the dual daggers. So getting up into a cyclops eye and then just shredding that eyeball with the scarlet kisses attack.

[00:08:44] And I was like, this is my favorite game of all time. It was awesome. It was incredible. So I had a blast with that. It played all the way through it. I think I've got it originally on the 360.

[00:08:54] I'm pretty sure when I first came out, so I went through and beat the whole game that way and got it. I beat it before Darker Risen came out. So when Darker Risen came out, I went back through and played it again.

[00:09:03] But just having so many other games, I ended up getting sidetracked before getting to the actual Darker Risen, like endgame stuff, which I've looked up before and looks really cool. But I also really love the endgame for the first Dragon's Dogma.

[00:09:16] It doesn't really have any spoilers because that has nothing to do with two. But everything with Grand Sauron getting like destroyed in them, the Erdragon and how that's connected overall across the Internet to like everyone else. So you're fighting this big endgame dragon,

[00:09:29] but your objective isn't to beat them is to do as much damage along with other people so that y'all can get like stuff at the very end. So cool. Something that I had never seen before up to that point.

[00:09:39] So that's things like that just made me really, really love Dragon's Dogma 1. And just like Matt, I was like, oh, two may not happen. You know, this is a game that I love, but not as many people that I hear about talking about it.

[00:09:51] I'm probably the person that you were talking about, Matt, the word every single time they see someone to be like, have you heard of Dragon's Dogma 1? Like I'm the evangelical over here, just like evangelizing for it. And then, yeah, I finally saw they announced to, you know,

[00:10:03] a couple years back and I was like, it's not. Oh my God, it's real. It's real. So I've been kind of chomping at the bit until this one came out and it finally did. Yeah, incredible. So that's awesome.

[00:10:15] Yeah. And again, you know, obviously my touchstone with Dragon's Dogma purely is through Will. He was the first one to just jump out and say, hey, look, this is an incredible RPG. This is something that should be on your backlog, something that you should play.

[00:10:28] And I even bought it on Steam and I looked at it on my Steam library for, you know, months on end. And then all of a sudden, Dragon's Dogma 2 came out. So I was like, ah, you know, we can just jump in. So that's totally fine.

[00:10:40] But on that note, let's go ahead and jump in and talk about what Dragon's Dogma 2 actually is, what kind of game this is. So this is pulled directly from the Steam page. Dragon's Dogma 2 is a single player narrative driven action RPG

[00:10:54] that challenges the players to choose their own experience from the appearance of their arisen, their vocation, their party, how to approach different situations and more in a truly immersive fantasy world. And then I would like to ask each of our panelists to go ahead and jump in

[00:11:12] and put an addition to this. What do you think Dragon's Dogma is, Matt, as our esteemed guest? Would you like to go first? Sure. Yeah. So my addition is just this is a brilliantly crafted adventure that you get out of it exactly what you give to it.

[00:11:25] Player focused to a fault, complimentary. Well, how about you? All right. And mine was get lost in the world that gives you the freedom to tackle fights and some missions at your leisure. Come for the combat, stay full exploration.

[00:11:39] Nice. And I added in here sandbox driven open world action RPG. Choose your own adventure without the wonder and joy that often comes along with a good adventure. But yeah, I know this is not

[00:11:52] this is not a secret for anybody who has been paying attention to our show or will in a will in myself spanner on the previous episode or general topical based episodes where it's more laid back club style podcasting that we do.

[00:12:06] I was not as big of a fan of this game just to kind of set the tone for the episode. And then obviously, I my understanding is that, Matt, you had previously mentioned to me offline

[00:12:17] that this is kind of shaping up to be your game of the year, you know, depending on what else comes out for the remainder this year. And then will obviously you're very high. And are you are you as high as Matt on that front?

[00:12:27] Will I feel like with some of the things that I've had people like interact with and talk about that unfortunately it won't be for me personally? I'm kind of in that same camp. I think I'm up there with Matt as of right now,

[00:12:40] day and date, what June 23rd? It's my game of the year, but we also got quite a few things coming out at the end of 2024. So we'll see how they stack up. Assassin's Creed Six. We got we got, you know, score was.

[00:12:51] You know, we got so many games coming out at the end of this year. All right. Very nice. Very nice. Well, let's jump in to kind of like the general setup here. I'd like to go ahead and jump in just like make a note

[00:13:05] of something that we had previously talked about that you had mentioned. I had no idea that the original Dragon's Dogma game had such a robust character creation, but I will say in Dragon's Dogma 2, this is kind of the first thing that popped up on my Twitter feed

[00:13:18] whenever the game initially launches people posting crazy builds. I mean, I was looking at Daenerys Targaryen. I was looking at Timothy Chalamet from Dune popping up in the character creator. And I have a couple of screenshots in here for folks who are like, I mean, there's Ziggy Stardust.

[00:13:34] There's this kind of, you know, chaotic looking old couple that's there. You can play as quite literally anyone you want. You can build a scrunched over, you know, scrawny, wizened old man or you can create, you know, the the hound from Game of Thrones, whatever it may be.

[00:13:52] But yes, it's really good. And I made a note here to mention that I did not include the cursed Beestran images of Garfield and Wunny the Pooh here because it's Nightmare Fuel, pure night. Pikachu too. And there was a great looking Pikachu. That's oh my God.

[00:14:04] That was just like an eldritch horror. It was disgusting. Awful. I was just going to add to this, like so the character creator. So something that I've experienced in character creators in a while. So I know both of you know this,

[00:14:16] but listeners may not that I identify as non-binary and, you know, older character creators are very binary. It's just of the time and they're getting less so. But also body types. So I do a podcast called Reignite.

[00:14:28] It was a Mass Effect podcast and now it's Dragon Age podcast as we've moved on from Mass Effect and replayed all those games. And we used to joke me, my cohost, that there are no fat people in space

[00:14:37] because all of the Mass Effect body types were like svelte built. Like there was just no plus size anything. And as a bigger person now, who's got a bit of a dad bod without the dad. I guess I'm a dog dad, technically. Counts, they counts.

[00:14:50] A dog parent, so parent bod. But like I just my body has changed and I've not seen my body well represented in a lot of games. And what I loved about the character creator on this, and if you follow me on Twitter, I shared a bunch of screenshots.

[00:15:03] But like you were able to make a broader, bigger character with a gut that didn't look obese or, you know, like cartoonishly fat like a lot of video games do because fat bodies exist and they're valid.

[00:15:14] And not a lot of games reward you for making those kinds of bodies. They kind of just make you look oafish or or awful or round like a beach ball. And this game allowed me to make this like brick shed house of a character

[00:15:26] who just looked jacked, but had this gut and the solid frame. And it made me so happy. It made me feel seen in a game that I hadn't before. They had my hair color was able to suck my hair back.

[00:15:35] Like it just I saw myself in this game. And when creating creating an RPG, especially RPGs, let you be yourself or version of yourself like the aforementioned Dragon Age or Mass Effect often did. But with limitations, I like that I was able to basically

[00:15:49] make myself in this game without any caveats of like, oh, it's a little skinnier or doesn't have the right hair or whatever. I was basically able to make myself. I had another experience like that this year with Cyberpunk 2077, which I played for the first time.

[00:16:01] Our person often paints his nails their nails as well. And Cyberpunk was the first video game ever played that's first person where you see your hands a lot where I was able to choose a color of nail polish on my character.

[00:16:12] And at the time I chose a kind of turquoise green that I often used. And every time my hands were in a scene, I'd be like, that's me. Like it just made me feel good. And so like little things like that in characters are really great.

[00:16:22] And I would say that, like you were saying, Nick, this is probably one of the best character creators on the market for the not only saying clones you can make of real people, but like the accuracy to make it feel like you as well. Yeah, exactly.

[00:16:35] Yeah, no, it's really empowering. And it was interesting because a mutual friend of ours, Alex Van Aken, he recently posted this is similar to God of War Ragnarok when they first revealed to the characters for that game.

[00:16:47] And obviously Thor is, you know, a created character in that universe. But, you know, the reinvention away from the Chris Hemsworth idolization of Thor into like this just huge, exactly said brickshit house of a Viking, you know, with a big ol beer belly,

[00:17:01] but just the most strong figure imposing. It's it is nice and it is empowering to kind of have that moment here. I personally, I, you know, I there it often, you know, changes depending on what game I'm playing or just what I'm feeling at the time.

[00:17:14] It also depends heavily on the voice acting for the various games that I'm playing, like played cyberpunk strictly, you know, female run because I almost feel like the because I think that both of the runs, you know, are, you know, both of the binary runs of the gender

[00:17:29] that you're playing as are voiced well by the actors that they chose. I personally love Charmille. I was sure her through Fire Emblem Three Houses and I've been in love with her work ever since. Oh, yeah, I was Jennifer Hale for years in Mass Effect

[00:17:42] because Femme Shep to me was Shepard. And then when making a character to look like me for re-ignite, I went with Mark Meir who does an incredible job, but it was just something about Jennifer Hale being canonical. So I totally, I totally feel that vibe.

[00:17:54] Exactly. So, you know, being able to jump back and forth. Unfortunately in Dragon's Dogma 2, your character is voiceless. It's a silent protagonist. It's more of a, you know, tabula rosa, blank slate type situation you're working with in the world is kind of filling out context around you.

[00:18:07] But yeah, this is it was a great start to jump into the game and really, really fun experience. I'd like to go ahead and jump in and start with the story set up for the narrative of Dragon's Dogma 2, what we're doing in this game,

[00:18:19] how they kind of throw you into this world. Because I think it's pretty cool. Like the, the start is very strong for me. Essentially you start off in a slave labor camp full of pawns. Now pawns are these beings in the world that exist to serve the arisen.

[00:18:34] Their purpose in Dragon's Dogma is to be a vehicle of strength or power or military might for the arisen that they can use and summon and manipulate at your will. And this kind of manifests itself in a multitude of interesting gameplay moments.

[00:18:49] But you're in this slave camp full of pawns. It's very curious. It seems like they're being used or manipulated by this unknown force. But you, you're built different. And this kind of jumps into where you're locked up in a prison

[00:19:01] and the guards are walking down and they're like, all right, now which one of you is the one that I need to pick out? And then that's where you start selecting your character and you jump into the character creator engine that's there.

[00:19:11] Right after this, you're kind of full blast into a tutorial sequence where you are taught kind of essentially how to approach the action of fighting larger enemies in this game, which is going to be a large part of the experience in Dragon's Dogma 2.

[00:19:24] A Medusa has attacked the slave labor camp and you said, go out there and kill it, you know, for whatever your worth. And I don't care if you die, whatever. The Medusa is a really interesting and cool boss to start the tutorial sequence with.

[00:19:37] It was very striking and essentially you just learn how to jump and grab onto enemies and stab them in the head, whatever it may be, whatever class that you chose as to start this out with. Essentially kill the Medusa and in all the turmoil

[00:19:49] that's happening in a slave labor camp, you're directed by a mysterious forced ghost to flee. So you run away and you jump off a cliff onto a griffin that's flying beneath and you fly off into the sunset

[00:20:03] with the creepy sorcerer dude left being very annoyed in your wake. The griffin flies you all the way to Vermund, which is the main primary biome as well as the capital of the the region that you're staying in before you are summarily shot down by a ballista

[00:20:19] on top of a tower in this in this area. You land and you wake up in a town or a village full of people and soldiers that tell you, hey, look, something's going on. Clearly you don't have your memories.

[00:20:32] You should go to Melv and check out what's going on there and see if you can recover some of your memories. You show up and then you immediately have a flashback to realize that you are in fact the arisen, which is the sovereign of this land.

[00:20:44] You had fought the dragon in this town called Melv as he was burning it down and the dragon decided to choose you as the arisen. And so he takes your heart out with his call really cool sequence

[00:20:55] where he just kind of delicately rips open your chest and then, you know, magically, you know, tears your heart out of your chest. And so you are therefore he claims it as himself and then you are the arisen.

[00:21:06] You are the idea of the arisen is that you are this counterbalance in the world that exists in Dragon's Dogma to the destructive force that is the dragon, the lead, the fell dragon. And so your job is to kind of, you know, you know, make sure that good

[00:21:22] is still in the world and you realize through context clues as well as talking to other NPCs that because you are the arisen, you are in fact the sovereign of this land called Vermund. However, unfortunately, there's already another fake, a false sovereign that has assumed the throne.

[00:21:40] And now it's your job to go to the capital of Vermund and figure out what is going on, what are the nobility doing to usurp your throne and use and they're using some type of mysterious powers to manipulate pawns in this area.

[00:21:53] So we're taking back the throne, but this time it's different. This time we're doing it through side quest, baby. Let's go. All right, would you guys like to add anything to that story set up? Is there anything I missed? Oh, no, you're a couple of spots.

[00:22:07] Just a couple of spots. The main thing I want to do is when you first crash off of your griffin and you go to that initial area where they kind of tell you things are a little messed up, you should go check out Melv.

[00:22:16] That's why you make your pawn. So just because of how important the pawns are to the overall world, you know, you make your pawn, you sit there and it's the exact same character creator that you're making for your original character,

[00:22:27] which gives you just like we already talked about at length, you know, that really break down and you can make your character old, you know, short, tall, frail. You can give them a hunchback. You can make them walk upright looking like, you know, like the big sigma walk.

[00:22:42] You know, you can you can make them exactly the gigachat walk, right? They can have really weird gates. They can kind of walk faster or slower. And of course you have multiple voices that you can then pitch differently as well.

[00:22:53] So they have like, I would say maybe at least 20 plus voice alterations or like differences that you can pick between all the different body types and abilities that they give you, not to mention that that's just looking at it from the human side, but you also have

[00:23:06] the option of a bistron main character or pawn, which then gives you the access to all the different like fur types and all the cool looking stuff. Bistron, effectively just humanoid looking cat people think Lionel and the like from Thundercats. And that's effectively what you're looking at there.

[00:23:22] But no, so the year you get there, you make your pawns and I don't know. I that's another reason to why I love this game so much is because even before the game started, Capcom dropped the character creator as like an alternate

[00:23:33] as a thing beforehand before jumping into the game. So I made my character and I made my pawn. And at that point, I made my pawn and I gave her this cool back story. I'm like, oh, even though like, you know,

[00:23:43] yours, the original are making these pawns effectively out of clay. I was just like my pawn is a super tall elf woman. And she was ostracized from her people because she's too strong and all the elves are normally like way thing, kind of like they like to shoot

[00:23:58] bows or use magic and she's like, I prefer to use a sword and a hammer. So she was going to ostracize. But she has like still the elfie voice, even though she looks like, you know, Hulk Hogan in this prime. So I just I love that.

[00:24:11] So I kind of like kept that in the back of my mind as I was playing and that just gave me so much fun. And that's the main thing that I love doing with the first one.

[00:24:19] And now this one as well is adding myself and my own kind of experiences into the play that I'm doing. Like it sounds very goofy saying this, knowing that, of course, Bolter's Gate 3 is like the Dungeons and the Dragons game.

[00:24:31] But especially when I was playing the first Dragon's Dogma, I was just like, this is as close as I'm going to get to like maybe kind of like a virtual Dungeons and the Dragons, not in just the gameplay,

[00:24:39] but with me being able to put my own background and thoughts on these characters and allow them to go out and do things and adventure to the like and have fun like that. Right. I'm going to go out and maybe I'm not going to find the best,

[00:24:51] coolest magic thing every single time I go into a cave, but I'm going to find something neat and then eventually scrape up a bit of money to like buy a good sword from the store. So I always thought that was cool.

[00:25:00] But I'm interested to hear about your other pawns as well. You know, Matt and Nick, what did you all kind of land on as far as your pawn creations? Yeah, I mean, so I love making the pawn.

[00:25:08] It's funny for as much as I wanted to make myself as the lead character, the pawn I just wanted to make a person. I don't know. I just wanted to pluck a person out of my mind and create them.

[00:25:17] So I made Georgia, she is a a spellcaster, sorcerer, mostly excreted. Greedily, I wanted to heal her at all times. All times needed. I made made my pawn. I made myself a warrior to begin with. And then as we talk, I went through quite a few

[00:25:32] evolutions of the classes actually that I played. But I made a sorcerer or whatever the I think just Cat-a-mage is the base class and she's great. Like I really love like so. They not only have different like body types,

[00:25:48] quality of hair, different kinds of hair, hair for different, you know, orientations and people of different origins. Right. Like it's not just thin, wafery, blonde, white hair for white people. Like it's every kind of hair you can think of. And that diversity was incredible as well.

[00:26:05] And so like trying to not whitewash my entire game, I made a personal color as my companion because the game actually, though, I will admit is one of the more diverse games I think I've seen in a while.

[00:26:16] Far as just people from different places, like even though it's a fantasy world, not everyone was white, which like off the bat was like, excellent. Love that. Don't want to see a white people. Nobody does. You get marks.

[00:26:28] But like I another reason I made a personal color for my companion is just I don't know any other game that's let me do that. So of course I want to do that. And I want to have, you know, and the voices are very diverse too.

[00:26:39] A lot of them are kind of silly pitch ups or like very basic stuff. But still like I just I made it a character that was a wholly original, that I kind of plucked out of my mind.

[00:26:47] And of her backstory mostly is that like she was just a mage who was struggling to get her powers to work right. She met the sovereign who were the true sovereign and like was instilled

[00:26:58] with the same courage that they were to like take back what's theirs and work hard and do the thing. And there's just it's there's a lot of fun voice lines. I know we'll probably talk about this. Most folks are annoyed by the pawns, but I don't know.

[00:27:10] I love the cheesy banter. I just think it's great. And so like to that end, what Will was saying, like you get to create a character that you pluck out of your brain if you want. And then they come to life.

[00:27:20] And yeah, so so my mage, Georgia, was my my my first pawn. What about you, Nick? Yeah, so it's really interesting. I'm curious as to how much head can you had coming on. I was doing a little bit of research as I was, you know,

[00:27:34] preparing for this episode or just, you know, playing this game and thinking about this game as I was playing it. And I and I remember hearing someone talk about how, you know, obviously, as I mentioned previously in the character creator engine,

[00:27:46] the NPC is that people are creating these IP characters. They're creating a Mega Man or not really Mega Man, but they're creating people that you would normally see in a high fantasy style setting. You'll see a Daenerys Targaryen or an Aragorn or you might see a Hobbit,

[00:28:00] somebody that's really shortened to me, but then they whip out their thieves, blades, whatever it may be. And that was an interesting way to for Capcom to maybe get around some of the IP proprietary payments that they would have to go through or the legal,

[00:28:13] you know, the legal, I guess, just not disputes, but just agreements. They'd have to undertake to try to get actual proprietary copyright characters in the game the same way that Fortnite does. But it's really interesting how you could create whoever you want.

[00:28:26] And all of a sudden you see Kratos walking down the road that you're traveling and then you could just recruit him. And maybe you had just so happened to created, you know, Thor in your world, you know, a larger person.

[00:28:36] And so there's a lot of headcanon that you can kind of, you know, engage as you're there. I didn't approach it that way, which is interesting. I am somewhat I like to pride myself as being somewhat of a creative person,

[00:28:48] but I didn't play Dragon Stoneman that way with being like, oh, you know, let's do this. I jumped in and I said, oh, you know, let's just make a canned preset character. She kind of looks like Shadowheart. So I'm going to make a Shadowheart for my main character.

[00:28:59] And then I just made this like really beefy bald headed dude that was going to make my warrior and his name is Jim. And he's just a basic and he likes to slam stuff with his giant coffin sword.

[00:29:12] So yeah, I had I had guts on my side just without the cool hair of the scars. So that's kind of what I was running with my with my pawn. Yeah, it was really funny.

[00:29:19] And I will say this, especially because Will referenced Jim a lot more than I thought he would. And I was like, because I was constantly talking about his pawn that I had recruited to my team or her name's Prim. And she was this incredible sorcerer for so long

[00:29:33] for the most of my play through. She was this, you know, level 30, level 50 sorcerer that would, you know, rain down meteor showers. And it was an incredible time doing that. But then as I was running through the world with Jim, Jim always had my back.

[00:29:46] The other two pawns that I had with me, Prim and Kima were always like, you know, why are you running so fast everywhere? Like I can't keep up. Like why do we have to do this? And Jim was like, we have to end.

[00:29:56] We should endeavor to just keep up with the sovereign. And he would say that over and over again. I was like, that's my homie right there. That's Jim. That's my guy, Jim. So yeah, I kind of grew a little bit attached to him over the course of time.

[00:30:07] And it was devastating when he would get down in the open world. So yeah, it's funny you mentioned that too with the guts as well as the different IP things, because they're the very original Dragon's Dogma game.

[00:30:17] You could get the like guts is kind of traditional armor that you would see. So it'd be cool to run around with that. And then they had to remove it for darkerism because it was like, oh wow. Yeah, they couldn't keep up with the rights for it.

[00:30:27] But it was really cool getting that the first time when I was first playing through it was like, oh, I recognize this. Like I'm not the biggest berserk fan. But I mean, at this point, if you're on the Internet,

[00:30:35] you kind of at least know what it looks like. So I was like, oh, this is so cool. And then you can have a warrior with a big sword. Oh my God, just like guts. And yeah, it was fun.

[00:30:43] So I don't think I saw anything too similar to that in two. And they're probably trying to make sure that they avoided the same issues that they had in the first game. But still, it is neat like you're saying there, Nick,

[00:30:54] where you can kind of get around those IP issues they would have had additionally by saying, hey, look, our character creators so robust, you can make whoever you want. Wink, wink. Because I had seen many Kratos like in the the Rift is where you go

[00:31:07] and you can a couple of different areas where you can get your your different pawns and you can kind of buy them or or get them for free if they're around your same level. And yeah, I've seen a Kratos. I've seen plenty of Shadow Hearts.

[00:31:17] I think I saw a couple of Daenerys Targaryens and I'm almost as I saw someone that did see it of Hobbit. I don't know if it was like Frodo and Mary, but yeah, they made a really short person that was a thief. Yes, Arisim, please hire me, sir.

[00:31:30] I recognize you. Get out of here. Yeah. I totally understand that. That's a yeah, that's so fun. And it's it's really interesting kind of jumping into that. We're going to delve a little bit and kind of clarify some of what we're

[00:31:41] talking about in the pawn section a little bit later here. But something I would like to gauge and kind of get an understanding with the both of you in terms of like what your expectations were for Dragon's Dogma 2, a lot of research.

[00:31:54] And obviously through playing in the game, I have about 70 hours between my PC as well as my PS5 play through, you know, total in Dragon's Dogma 2. The general consensus, though, for people who have been Dragon's Dogma fans from the jump is that this game isn't really a sequel

[00:32:11] as we understand sequels to be that this is really just a remaster or a remake, if you will, of the first game in terms of like, this is what Itzanot's vision of Dragon's Dogma was always supposed to be. And this is what he created.

[00:32:25] And the devs kind of acknowledge this because you don't get the real Dragon's Dogma 2 title card in the beginning of this game. It's something that happens towards the end after you go through and then there's a false ending, kind of a little bit of a spoiler alert.

[00:32:39] But there is there are two separate endings. And then after that, that that initial ending, you see the real Dragon's Dogma 2 title card. And then it shows up and you have additional content that you have to work through. So I was curious, you know, obviously,

[00:32:53] I don't intend on going back to Dragon's Dogma 1. Were you expecting this or were you expecting some type of direct sequel to the events that occurred in the first game? So I don't I don't know that I was expecting a direct sequel.

[00:33:06] I expected it to be kind of anthology like like a lot of other fantasy games. I would buck the remake part just because the story is completely different. Like there is this story, you're not the king in the first game.

[00:33:19] There's no royalty at all for you in the first game. Like you're some person from a village. Like there are similar themes, memory loss, the heart taking all of that. So like I think remake is the wrong word, but reimagining is a good word. Imagining, yeah.

[00:33:33] But as far as like gameplay and story, like I would argue that most people didn't go to the first Dragon's Dogma for its story, a story that I like. But you're going for the adventure, the the hardships,

[00:33:46] the fun in a similar way, you would reason you would play Elden Ring, a more modern game that's out as we speak. Like I think that ultimately this is definitely the kind of game they wanted to make. It's funny, I'm surprised you brought up that title screen spoiler.

[00:34:03] It's just like, I don't know, when that moment hit 30 hours into the game, I lost my damn mind. I thought it was the best thing. It was the ballsyest thing I think they could do because I had the similar

[00:34:13] thought and a lot of other folks, I remember Patrick Kleppich bringing up actually to mention him again when he was playing it. It's like, oh, just says Dragon's Dogma. That's interesting. Is this just a remake?

[00:34:24] And I think it's just more that they're making it clear that the story these games will always have different stories if they keep making them. But the story is not what matters. It's the adventure, the kind of narrative you create along the way,

[00:34:38] which I think is a very ballsy way to do it and has, I think pushed a lot of first timers off, you know, which makes a ton of sense. I think you have to know what you're getting yourself into.

[00:34:48] And like whenever I would recommend the first game to everyone, I'd say with caveats. And I think the second one is an even stronger caveat because they had the freedom to do even more of that like player antagonistic stuff

[00:34:59] that they wanted to do that I think makes the game what it is, but can, of course, push some players away. Yeah, absolutely. Will, how about yourself? Did you did you have expectations of continuing like the idea of the events, the final events of Dark Arisen, for example,

[00:35:17] being present in this game? Or did you kind of get from the jump that this is just going to be a reimagining or a fresh story in the Dragon's Dogma universe? Yeah, that was always my imagining was that it would be a fresh story

[00:35:27] in the Dragon's Dogma universe. I honestly, I wasn't thinking that they were going to do a completely different world. But even when I saw two was announced and they were talking about it,

[00:35:37] I also didn't have it in my head that it would still take place in that same world. For example, like I didn't expect to see Grand Soren again. I didn't expect to go back to my old, you know, like fishing village and do all that just because

[00:35:47] sure I kind of imagined off this world is bigger than maybe it's going to be in a whole different continent. And, you know, the arisen is the arisen is the arisen, right? You don't have to be a certain person.

[00:35:56] You just have to have a dragon show up at the wrong place at the wrong time or the right place at the right time in a steel your heart. And then boom, all of a sudden you're the chosen one, right? That's every JRPG RPGs kind of in general.

[00:36:08] Hey, guess what? You get to save the world. So I was like imagining that this was going to be just kind of the next thing. So I didn't have any expectations story wise, especially because of how everything

[00:36:18] ended at least in the initial Dragon's Dogma game, like fighting the Earth Dragon. And when you're going off and this is not spoilers for anybody who even hasn't played it because you don't know the words. This is probably all Greek, but when you run into the Seneshall

[00:36:30] and then you go into the endgame stuff and then you use the dragons, you know, the God's Baneblade and everything there. I'm like, you're not going to really be able to follow that up, in my opinion, from Dragon's Dogma one into a traditional sequel.

[00:36:43] So I wanted, effectively, what I got. I was like, hey, expand the classes, give me some more cool combat, some more cool moves, make the character creator more robust, which they did. And then just make sure that the world itself is like fun and explorable

[00:36:57] and there's plenty of things to do, which I felt like there was. So it effectively hit all the expectations that I was looking for, just like Matt was saying and me coming into it. I'm probably a little bit lower on the story than Matt was

[00:37:07] because I personally wouldn't say like the story was even like desit in Dragon's Dogma one, but I also didn't care at all. Like I was I was beyond caring for me. Things were happening and I was like, neat, let me go fight another giant monster.

[00:37:19] I want to go fight another Chimera. Like I want to go fight another ogre. Like I was just ready to kind of rock and roll through. And then the very back half of the game, things started clicking more for the story.

[00:37:29] I was like, oh, hold on a minute. I kind of like this. Like I like talking to, you know, this and finding out what's going on with the dragon and the overworld and the hereafter.

[00:37:38] And then what happens and why the cycle is the way that the cycle is. So that things click for me more at the end of Dragon's Dogma one. So I kind of expected the same for this one. I was like, I'm going to go through

[00:37:48] and just have a good time and the story will fall into place. And it effectively did for me. Yeah, I think it's one of those things where like I'm not going to sit here

[00:37:55] and compare this to the Souls games because first, I don't want them to come for me. And to you, you're not the same. They are very different. This game is definitely not as challenging as the Souls games, which I've played a few of it this time.

[00:38:05] I think where I will compare them is like, I would say 99% of the audience of the dark souls and bloodborne and all of those games don't come to those games for the story. They're like the narrative beats, but they come to them for the crunchy

[00:38:19] combat, the challenge and all of that. And I would say that's the one thing it hasn't common with both Dragon's Dogma one and two is I don't think the majority of the returning players were coming to this game for the story.

[00:38:31] We were accepting that there would be a story, but we were coming back for the classes, the combat, the world, the adventuring. Like and I think that's a strength of not ever like I love narrative games. Both of you know, I don't shut up about the Yakuza franchise.

[00:38:44] Like that's right. Like, but I think games that just focus on combat are just as valid, depending on how they do them. And like Dragon's Dogma 2 would be one of those games where it's like at the pinnacle for me of the kind of crunchy combat

[00:38:55] that I'm looking for when things just kind of click. That's what I'm talking about. Absolutely. And I would argue that, you know, the open world of this game, the sandbox nature is as important as the combat.

[00:39:06] And that's something that I think that we can easily jump into now for the listener's reference when you start off Dragon's Dogma. Obviously, as I previously mentioned in the story setup, you are plopped down into this land called Vermund, which is this lush green area.

[00:39:22] It looks very much like a rural English countryside, as you would imagine back in the day. Typical high fantasy Lord of the Rings, New Zealand nonsense. There's also an additional area called Batal, which is something that kind of to to Matt's point earlier

[00:39:37] that they were making that Batal is this Middle Eastern styled very much the city is built into the cavernous rock formations that have made in this area. The people are living there as you would imagine a lot of folks

[00:39:52] that, you know, in back of the day in Iran or Turkey might live. And so you're kind of you're given that sense that this is the Middle Eastern area and there's a lot of diverse audience that is there, reverse and PCs that you see in the game.

[00:40:05] There's also the kind of towards the end game as you proceed down further across the map and you unlock that fog of war more the Agamon volcanic islands, which I thought were really cool. Very interesting construction design

[00:40:19] and to jump in and talk about how I felt about the open world in this game because this is an open world action RPG as we have previously mentioned. I got a push and pull in the sense of how I was supposed to

[00:40:32] interact with this world or how the game or the developers really wanted me to engage with this open world. It can be quite beautiful. I think that there are some incredible sky boxes that you'll see in this game, some really, you know, at certain sections of the game,

[00:40:47] especially depending on what platform you're playing on, some really beautifully rendered, you know, vistas that are overlooking these lush green hills or these mountain tops that cascade down into a valley or a running creek. As you see, you know, as you see it there, you're standing with your

[00:41:02] friends and your ponds by your side. I will say that traversing across Vermont and as you later get onto checkpoint rest town and, you know, proceed towards Batal, getting to your destination can be quite a bonding experience, especially when you're, you know, kind of practicing that head

[00:41:20] cannon and you're going on in your, your pond gym or prim or, or Matt's pond are talking to you as you're proceeding through the various caves and caverns that you're exploring, your uncovering secrets.

[00:41:33] I felt like the fun of this game, like the core of the fun for me is fighting against the built in attrition that you experience as the player. You're constantly losing health. You're constantly diminishing resources. You don't really know where you're going and you don't know how far

[00:41:48] the next campfire is going to be, but you are sure enough going to kill those harpies and those wolves in between. And you're going to do it, you know, robustly and it's going to be cool and fun and flashy.

[00:41:59] And I thought that that was kind of that experience of traversing across the map when I jumped in there. That was really something that I quite enjoyed, you know, figuring out where your destination or how to get to your destination

[00:42:11] can be rewarding because of the challenges you face along the way, like a locked gate or a giant stone wall that won't let you through. And so you have to travel back in the middle of night. And I fought, you know, for the first 20 to 25 hours

[00:42:25] that this was really engaging experience. What did y'all think? Yeah, that's effectively the same way. And just like even the specifics at your game there with the gate, for example, one of the ways to get into like the overall Batal area

[00:42:37] is going through the checkpoint gate, which is just a story based thing. You eventually go through the story and you get through there. But there are two other ways to get into that same area. Both of them fraught with payroll because obviously there aren't people there

[00:42:49] just kind of defending a gate. So me just being the Skyrim-esque explorer that I am, whenever I play these big open world games, I get just far enough in the main story where they tell me to go somewhere

[00:42:59] that's far away and I'm like, cool, I'm going to go in the opposite direction. And I will spend the next 60 hours just exploring around not touching the main story and come back super over leveled, which is exactly what I did here.

[00:43:11] So I ended up in Batal like, you know, probably I still had those first side quests you were talking about, Nick, for the main story to do. Like, you know, effectively the fourth mission in the game overall.

[00:43:22] And I was well into end game territory, like running around in there, like I'm in over my head. Why are these goblins so strong? What is that? Oh, my God, I've never seen that before. It's going to kill me.

[00:43:34] So just running around doing all that was so fun. But just like you mentioned, the thing that really kept me going and pushing me with exploration is you go and you hit those campsites and you can camp overnight and kind of chitchat with your pawns there, too,

[00:43:46] which was always fun. But camping also brings you back to that full health versus when you're getting injured on the overworld and your maximum health slowly drops as well as your normal health. So you can only get to a certain point of healing

[00:43:59] until eventually you have to rest, either at an end or at a campsite or use something like an all heal elixir. So just going through, you know, I feel like this game and this is a little bit of an aside to my side.

[00:44:09] But nighttime in the first dragons, dogma was one of the scariest things that I've ever witnessed in my entire gaming career. Like it's probably up there with the nighttime for dying light, which a lot of people say, I'm like, oh, the zombies get red eyes

[00:44:23] and they go crazy like you don't want to be outside. In my opinion, dragons, dogma one when they hit nighttime, I'm booking it indoors like I am not staying out here. Ghosts, ghouls, zombies, all the creatures in my from what I recall

[00:44:36] get buffs to so like they get stronger as well during the night. So it was horrendous. Luckily for me, dragons, dogma two was a lot more fun to explore at night. I didn't feel nearly scared if you're playing it quote unquote right with the proper lighting and everything.

[00:44:49] It is still pitch black dark like you need to have your lantern on or somebody that has some kind of a light because it is just pure darkness outside. But it still wasn't as bad as D one. So I had the chance to kind of run around

[00:45:01] and explore still even during the night and if I can just push it a little bit more, I know we all have low health. I know I'm really beat up, but if I can just get over the hill

[00:45:10] and maybe there's a campsite and then we can camp for the night and cook up some deliciously pre recorded meat that looks fantastic. Fnv meat is so good. So like, yeah, before you go on the most out of pocket thing

[00:45:23] this entire game is so like the monster franchise has always had very good looking food, especially in the modern games like touted. But they're always animated like the cats are making it. It's cute and like it looks good, but it's clearly CG.

[00:45:35] For whatever reason, the only Fnv in this entire video game is the cooking of the meat when you make a meal or cooking of anything. Dry meat, whatever like any cooking you do at your campsite is Fnv. And honestly, it made me hungry every time.

[00:45:51] And they just they just really did such a good job. And it's just so it feels so out of pocket. Yet if you ask any dragons dogma fan, yeah, no, that sounds about right. Like doing weird out of pocket stuff is kind of part

[00:46:03] of the course with this very short franchise. But like it just was so funny to me. And like I remember there being speculation on friends with a few different game journalists. And like when that trailer first came out

[00:46:14] and they showed the Fnv cooking, everyone's like, wait, was that real meat? It looked really real. Is that CG like they could. And I think eventually one of the game, one of the people working on the games like a release

[00:46:26] an official statement that it was actual cooked meat. But it was just very funny to me that of the sticking points that came out of the early trailers, it was is that meat real was a question we had to ask about a video game.

[00:46:35] And it's just forever will make me laugh every time I think about it. I would love to have an interview with Itzene or the team that, you know, kind of, you know, like, and managed that whole process of getting the

[00:46:48] the black iron walk out there to throw the meat onto. It was just it was beautiful. Yes. Seeing those like those fat lines bubble up as it's like going over and especially with the rotten meat. I don't know if you can do it.

[00:47:01] If you all see the rotten meat. Oh, that was so funny. It's just like it doesn't look it doesn't look like the worst thing ever. It's just a little bit darker shade of like something that you're like, do I eat this or not? Probably not.

[00:47:12] That's not a good idea. Right. But yeah, no, it is so much like the effort they had to go through too, because there's different shots for each piece of meat, which are like four or five quality different quality, different size, like night and day.

[00:47:24] Yeah. So it would be like sometimes it's dark, sometimes it's, you know, light out and it's just it's so interesting. I just love it. Like you mentioned, the small things like that Dragons Dogma, if anything, it's it's the little things.

[00:47:34] They should have that as like the subtitle Dragon Dogma. It's the little things because honestly, that's what really drags me into the game. But now pushing through you get your meat. You wake up in the morning.

[00:47:44] Your your pawns get to go, oh, I'm getting refreshed after a night of sleeping. Let's go slay some monsters. First thing in like they're ready to get back out there. So that's just what pushes me forward with exploration is just the dialogue between your different pawns,

[00:47:58] getting just far enough to where you can hit yourself a campsite so you can recuperate and rest and get ready for the next day. Things like that just really allow the exploration to flow easily. And versus another game where you may get to a point where you're like,

[00:48:11] oh, now I got to go back to a save point or something like that. That game auto saves constantly. So it does for better or worse about say for better or for worse. Like you're locked in. You don't have to worry.

[00:48:20] Oh, no, you don't get to tell your your wife when you're in the middle of something. Oh, honey, I just got to get to a save point and I can stop. She looks over in the corner. She sees the ring ring span. She's like, turn it off.

[00:48:31] Turn it off. I know what's going on. Yeah, I saw the auto save. Stop lying to me. Yeah, I love I think one of the rare sections where we're the three of us are all going to agree at least.

[00:48:43] I think the open world is designed in a way that like the fun is the adventure. Right. That's the whole game's ethos. We're going to talk about some friction points in a moment that I think I will disagree that they're friction points with some caveats and explaining.

[00:48:57] But like overall this open world and how you move through it, like the I think the thing that I want to talk about here because you both pretty covered it pretty well is we talked about Batal. Batal is one of the first major tracks you have to make

[00:49:09] with no way points, no part like you have to walk from the city you're in to Batal. And Twitter for like the first week this game was out or the second week this game was out. Everyone had the same story of boy, that trek to Batal was harrowing.

[00:49:24] Oh man, I barely made it. And like what's really fun is like the game there are monsters and stuff you fight early on. But when you get to that whatever it is, 15 hour mark or 10 hour mark

[00:49:33] when you have to go to Batal, every big monster except for a few trolls and stuff that you could imagine you encounter on that path a griffin, a troll, ogre, whatever else. And it's harrowing like because there are only if you campfires

[00:49:48] if you get off the beaten path like staying on the path is like in the first game, the safest route less monsters, whatever. But if you try and make shortcuts or take some of the gondolas and stuff like you are itching for beating and you often get it.

[00:50:00] And it was just funny to me that in a lot of these kinds of games people have different stories, even Dark Souls Skyrim. Like you have everyone has their own personal stories, right? Whereas I felt like that's true of this game except this one run.

[00:50:14] This one run, everyone's like, oh boy, I almost didn't make it. But it was fun. Like and I love that about this game. I love that it wasn't easy for anyone. Nobody coasted through like even will you were saying like even though

[00:50:25] you took a different route and you sort of were coasting because you were high level, you got to that by the time you got to that area, you're still, wow, these enemies are really high level. What did I do? My ass now. Yeah. And I love that.

[00:50:35] I was just going to say, I think it has an inherent like wonder to it because in the fear of like, oh my God, I'm going to get my butt whooped. Yeah. No, it's 100% one of those things for me personally when I was making that run

[00:50:49] down there, it was beautiful. It was a change of environment. I was like, oh, this is so fresh. This I'm getting away from the green and gray landscape of Vermont. Let's go ahead and jump in here.

[00:50:59] And then as you go down, as you proceed down, it's fight after fight Griffin after Griffin, the road to Patal was the first time that I got ganged up on by two Griffins at the same time. And that was a fun experience for sure.

[00:51:11] And then obviously this is exactly where you have to lean into some of your strategy. And this is where Dragon's dogma starts kind of shining in terms of, okay, no, this is where you really have to be strategic in terms of how you're

[00:51:23] selecting your pawn classes, how you're positioning yourself, you know, what weapons that you're using or what strengths or abilities are you applying to your given character to go ahead and make sure that your mashups against the monsters that you're facing on these routes are

[00:51:37] going to be really fun. I thought that that was really cool. And then of course that's something that we have been talking about in terms of the combat. Yeah. And then of course, like Dragon's dogma has flashes of brilliance for me in

[00:51:51] terms of I'm going down this road. I'm trying to get to the capital of Batal. And along the way, there's this whole side quest of the sand vipers. If I'm not mistaken, there are this side quest of this thieves guild

[00:52:04] that's been hiding and raiding local villages of their stuff. But then there's this young man who seems to be like he wants to take care of the kids, but then he's caught up with this wrong crowd of

[00:52:14] these guilt and you have to run into this random cavern with a bunch of thieves and do it there. And there's like these people, obviously the the batal ease or you know, the batal military has been there trying to stamp out this local band of raiders and stuff.

[00:52:29] So you're joining up with them. There are flashes of that where I was like, wow, this is really cool. Contextually, this is cool. Like from a narrative standpoint, obviously it's not like overly serious, but you can still jump in there and appreciate the world for the lore

[00:52:43] that kind of is contained within. I think, you know, something that I started getting a little bit weary of, and this is where it started for me once I did get to the capital of Batal and kind of got a full picture, a little bit

[00:52:57] more of a full scope of the open world. Something that, you know, I thought that was a little bit disappointing to me, obviously, and we'll get into this later, but obviously the enemy variety is the first and foremost for me in

[00:53:09] terms of something that I think is a little bit of a bummer. I wanted to see more and it's not to say that they don't have a lot of different styles of enemies, just that you run into them most

[00:53:19] often when you're proceeding on the main road and you're going from checkpoint to checkpoint. It's going to be your goblins. It's going to be your harpies or your wolves or your ogres, whatever it may be.

[00:53:29] But it's a lot of the sameness and then the same kind of for me held true with the visual design of your environments. I felt like they blended together, whether it was on PC and I run like basically at this point, what's a medium build of 3070

[00:53:44] and you know whatever CPU I have Verizon 7 in there and like, you know, playing it on the PC. I had to do a lot of tweaking, a lot of customization to make it look crisp and, you know, funny enough, obviously William

[00:53:56] through his lies and deception, he convinced me to buy, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. He convinced me to buy the PS5 version of the game and the game actually runs better and it looks better on the PS5 than it does on the PC, at least from my experience.

[00:54:10] And I think that might be because of the optimization that they built in on the back end. But still even with that, I just felt like this was very Xbox 360 area visual direction in terms of how the world is

[00:54:22] designed and it kind of ended up being a little bit bland and unpalatable as I'm not as striking as I was expecting it to be or just least not as clean as I was expecting it to be in there.

[00:54:33] Did either of you run into that or feel that way? No, I couldn't disagree more. I stopped to take screenshots all the time on the PS5 version. Like when you first, we talked about this at the beginning

[00:54:44] of the game, when you jump off a cliff to land on a griffin and fly off before you do that, you stand with one of the ponds that escaped with you and just they show us the sunset and you see the glow over your character.

[00:54:54] It was like my cover photo on Twitter for ages. Like it's just gorgeous. And there are tons of scenes like that. There's a scene late at night when you're trying to sneak into the castle and you're wearing a masquerade outfit, you look like Zorro practically and like the

[00:55:07] lighting of just the torches. Like I don't think that your complaints are invalid. It is based off a world designed within the 360 environment that then they've now designed a new one. And the first game did have a lot of gray and green

[00:55:20] and brown, but I think this game really dials in the details. But you need to be playing the PS5 version. I think unfortunately PC optimization for console games are still different from game to game and often bad in most cases. I'm making a broad sweeping statement.

[00:55:35] Tons of games that come out for PC or with PC in mind do have great optimizations. But like I was talking about rebirth recently, like I loved Final Fantasy 7 rebirth. I have issues at the ending. I have issues with some of the game.

[00:55:46] But also for PS5 game, it looks rough. Like the optimization is just not there, especially if you choose performance over graphics. Whereas I felt like once I switched to performance on Dragon's Dogma 2, I had no stuttering, rarely issues, no loading. And the game always looked gorgeous.

[00:56:05] I don't know. I can agree that the areas are same. You mentioned the three main biomes and everything's consistent there. But I don't know. Every time I got to one of those biomes, looking up at the cliffs

[00:56:14] or seeing the gondolas and looking down on all the goblins, I don't know. I thought it looked great. I think if you're looking for something like Skyrim or Zelda, that's not this game. That's those games and we have a lot more of those games than this game.

[00:56:29] So I think having that kind of expectation is totally valid. Also, like it's not as pretty as Elastavus or Horizon or God of War because it's not that kind of game. But I think considering what they can do in the RE engine,

[00:56:39] I never really looked at this and went, oh, this doesn't look great. Like I never had that feeling. What about you? Well, yeah. And that was me just looking at the same way. So I can see what Nick was saying, maybe certain things like you really focus in

[00:56:50] or you get small, especially as everyone at this point knows the major cities has like horrendous pop in. Like people will just pop in like directly in front of you like ghosts. So like it is it is really off putting if you really care about things like that.

[00:57:03] Like I had to literally just kind of say I don't care about this because otherwise it's going to ruin your like overall city experience. But the big thing too is I'm not here for the city. I'm here to go out and crush people out in the open world.

[00:57:14] And the beautiful thing about the open world is we talked about the beginning there, too. The first thing after crashing off the Griffin and you see the guy and he's like, hey, follow me, you go around the corner and you immediately look out into like a beautiful fista.

[00:57:25] And I was like, cool screenshot. And that was just me like the rest of the game. I was like, screenshot, screenshot. They made it so that if you're coming around a corner over a cliffside, everything's always like perfectly framed up. Things look gorgeous out in the game.

[00:57:36] So and that too, you can look out super far away and you can see enemies. I love going over like a big cliffside area and looking down, you know, like hundreds of meters away and be like, oh,

[00:57:46] shit, there's a drink. OK, I got to go the other way around. So I love it's social weird juxtaposition of being in a city, having somebody pop up right in front of you like two inches,

[00:57:55] but then going out into the woods and being able to see a dragon like hundreds and hundreds of yards away. So that's where my main focus is as far as the things that like I love and why I think the environments overall are really good.

[00:58:08] Things are kind of same you too. But I felt like once I was running around a lot and I know Nick, that was like a sticking point with you with having to kind of go back and forth too much.

[00:58:16] But I think one of the upsides of doing that is that you get used to landmarks. So I found it very quickly in like Vermont and Batal later on where I'm not looking at my map.

[00:58:25] If I know I have to get to Batal and I am over here like in the wormsblood forest, I'm like, all right, cool. I go this way across this bridge. I see some harpy as I kill the harpies. I go up to the top area.

[00:58:37] Oh, I can see Batal from here. And then I can kind of run the rest away. So like I get used to the landmarks very quickly. If I have to do that kind of trekking back and forth, which they give you

[00:58:47] enough fairy stones in my opinion to not make it that bad. And if you need to buy them, they're like 10,000 gold, which initially you're going to be like, whoa, until you end the game with like 900,000 gold. And you're like, oh, wait, hold on, I could have bought more.

[00:59:00] But the trekking back and forth is a whole part of the game. Right? They want you to walk back and forth. And they want you to take those ox carts. They want you to get used to either fighting certain enemies or going

[00:59:10] through certain areas so that when the main story or a side mission asked you to go there, you're like, oh, neat. I know the way there. Or like I recognize this. I remember this. And that's what just made the environment so good to me is the

[00:59:22] repetition of going through kind of brought me into the world. Like I'm living in it versus I'm just going to like go through here one time. And then the next time I have to go through here, maybe I'll like teleport away somewhere. Yeah.

[00:59:33] Graphically, also I'd say the character. Like we talked about the character creator already, but I think when talking about the graphics and the look of the game, the expressiveness of the character of the character models is like.

[00:59:43] And some of the R engine has always done well, but like are on another level. Like when your character often looks confused or annoyed, which they do often at their circumstances, it's always so expressive and so great.

[00:59:55] And like, I really love that about the graphics too, is when it does get small person to person, it shines or like person to beast. Like when you first encounter certain monsters, that's where I think it shines too more than the kind of blandness of the larger areas.

[01:00:09] Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. RE engine truly shines when it comes to those character models and the rendering of the character model specifically. Almost all of the NPCs, especially if it's in like a pre-rendered cutscene

[01:00:20] or if you're jumping in or if you turn, you swing your camera around to look at your characters or your pawns in the background. Like it is beautiful and it is striking, especially depending on what armor

[01:00:29] loadouts that you have on or what sword you're running around with or staff which whichever class you're playing as it is. It's definitely there are 100% pretty moments. It's funny. There's a, there's a fun story between Will and I as I was playing.

[01:00:43] He was, he was over, we had just finished recording at some point and I was smack dab in the middle of my play through. And I had him like look at me playing the game a little bit to

[01:00:50] give some like pointers or tips or like, you know, I wanted him to show me something specific. But as I was playing the game, I had like switched up to my character class and I was a little unsure of it or something like that.

[01:01:00] And as I was traversing the territory, I would like run probably maybe 10 meters and then hit the like map button and look at the map and then run a little bit more and look at it, reference my mapping. I do that all the time.

[01:01:10] That's just something that I naturally do. And Will looked at me and was like, what the hell are you doing? Just follow the road. You see the road right there. What is the matter with you? It's like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The video games have just warped it.

[01:01:25] You're like, you say you play too much cyberpunk. You're like, where's the arrow pointing me where to go? Okay. Well, they do that. But the thing is, is that even if I know where I'm going, whether it's my dad house or my girl in my my partner's house,

[01:01:38] you know, I'm jumping in and I'm loading in that Google map so I can have my direction in there. And if I know if a traffic jam is coming, that's what I like. I like predictability. And Dragon's Dog is the antithesis to predictability. Funny enough, it's really interesting.

[01:01:53] You know, you both talked about fast travel and I think this is an interesting point, you know, especially with the fairy stones and the in the port crystals. Folks, why isn't there a port crystal in Batal? What is going on? What is what is the mindset here?

[01:02:08] You have one in Vermont. You have one in checkpoint restown. You have a third capital of the game with no port crystal. There's not what are they doing? There's not one in checkpoint restown. It's half. Is it half? Oh, you're right. You're right.

[01:02:20] It isn't half, which is a fishing village that's like not even relevant until you get to the post game. What is going on here? Capcom, what are we thinking? I, you know, I was being really snarky when I wrote the notes today

[01:02:33] or yesterday as I was going through the notes. But I've talked about, you know, obviously the Dragon's Dogma shills coming in and talk about how the game doesn't care about your feelings. You know, you're not supposed to be fast traveling anywhere.

[01:02:44] You're supposed to be trying out different classes and leveling up as you're running and scraping your face off across every single asset in this world, opening every single chest. And I'm like, I am turning 32 on Tuesday.

[01:02:57] I don't have enough time to be doing that in game, you know, regardless. But I just, I didn't necessarily enjoy the struggle with it. I struggle with it because I understand the direction point. I understand what it's and it was going for.

[01:03:12] They, their team was purposefully built this fast travel system with the fairy stones and the port crystals. So they made sure that you explored, that you wandered, that you opened chests, that you fought bosses, that you encountered something that you hadn't previously expected, that you experienced

[01:03:28] some of that joy and wonder of those new experiences. I think for me where it gets caught in the weeds is the fact that we have this old school classic RPG system of the ABBA checkpointing and quest chains.

[01:03:42] You have to go turn in your quest line so you can receive the money or receive the reward from whatever you're doing the checks, which means that you're running a cross map and all the way back to where you had picked up, you know,

[01:03:53] spoken to that NPC before. You can travel both ways, obviously, by foot or you can use a fairy stone. There are very few fairy stones in this game. You can find them, you can open them. What do you think, Matt?

[01:04:05] So first of all, you left out the ox carts, which you can take to most major places. The ox carts, the most unreliable transportation. They get fucking destroyed every single time you take them. What is going on? OK, go ahead.

[01:04:17] So they only get destroyed if you don't offend them, which is your lazy to defend your ox cart. That's on you. But what I'm sitting there, I'm sitting there and I'm in the ox cart. I'm climbing out of it in the ogre jumps on top.

[01:04:30] What are you talking about? I just left it. I want to murder this thing. I told you to doze off during our travel. Oh my god. So here's the thing. I your your friction is totally valid. I would never argue with someone that their frictions

[01:04:45] with the game aren't valid. However, the game is designed with this in mind. First of all, there is no fast travel point in Batalba by the time you get to Batalba, you have it one, if not two of your own personal crystals that you can

[01:04:57] drop and use it as a waypoint. And for me, having a game where I can choose my main focal point and always fast travel there instead of it always being the major city that maybe I'm not going to the major city all the time, which I wasn't always

[01:05:12] like those kinds of customizations are really important. But also you can use your damn feet. I think that the problem with most modern open world games and the reason I get bored by a lot of them is because of how how robust the fast travel is.

[01:05:26] Now, I loved Cyberpunk 2077. We've mentioned it a few times. I think for all of my issues with some of the transphobia and some other stuff, they've cleaned up that game really well, removed a lot of the problematic

[01:05:36] stuff and have made it a pretty great RPG that I fell in love with. However, by the time I got halfway through the game because I could fast travel everywhere, I did one because I was on a schedule,

[01:05:46] wanted to finish the game and move on to the next thing, play the DLC, whatever. That's on me. I'm very busy. Also as the senior citizen on the podcast, I don't want to. You're 30. I don't have time. I know I should shut up.

[01:05:59] But like it was the detriment. Same with The Witcher 3. I would have never gotten through The Witcher 3 without fast travel. Now let's be like I had to skip a ton of the side content just to finish Witcher 3 and I still haven't played the DLC.

[01:06:09] But like this game because of the crunchy combat and how much and we're going to get to the specifics of the combat in a minute because of how much I love that stuff, the point is to walk from place to place.

[01:06:20] The point is not to get the quest complete or to do the story thing. The point is to adventure in the world. And if they added a robust fast travel system like all these other modern open world games have, most players would lose that experience

[01:06:33] and never know they lost it. Does it make it less frustrating? No. But also the fairy stones, first of all, the first time I paid $10,000, $10,000 gold to rest at an inn and my eyes almost fell out of my head. I went, this is ridiculous.

[01:06:45] And then like Will said, by the end of the game, you're like, you know, a trillionaire as far as gold goes. So I'm not I wasn't worried about it anymore. But like the fairy stones are pretty easy to come by after the halfway point.

[01:06:56] Tons of vendors sell them. You find them everywhere at the late, late game, which we're not going to spoil at least not yet. There are fairy stones everywhere because you were expected to fast travel more

[01:07:05] in the post game, the end game stuff to do some of those important things on a time of the matter. And also most importantly, the reason you can't fast travel, there are tons, dozens and dozens of timed quests in this game.

[01:07:20] Quests that if you don't get to them in enough time, character dies, characters appears, there's a morgue in the game where you can use resurrection stones that you would use for yourself to res NPCs. If you could fast travel everywhere, things being timed

[01:07:32] would have no meaning because there would be no threat of failing. And I think that's a big part of the game. Having a conflict with it totally get them as much as I like to pick on you, Nick. It's a valid complaint.

[01:07:42] However, you're having a complaint with how the game was designed to work. Yeah, which I think is important to state. You don't have to like it. You can think it's bad, but it's important to state that this is

[01:07:51] the design ethos of the game and is required to play it the way the system was set up. 100 percent. And I would say that I would have less of a problem with it. Had they not put the fairy stones and the poor crystals in the micro transactions

[01:08:03] of this game, that just feels bad. Capcom got a lot of shit on Twitter for it when it first came out. And I genuinely think that like I understand that these first player you know, first person story centric games, especially with a developer

[01:08:17] publisher like Capcom Capcom, they need to make money. They need to capitalize on the the monetization that is built into these games as much as possible because they don't really have live service titles to my knowledge.

[01:08:30] You know, Exo Primal didn't pop off the way that they wanted to. So which great game. But like also is, you know, they're not making money fan hand over fist the way that, you know, 2K is the way that, you know, obviously some of these

[01:08:42] other larger games like Destiny, like they don't have a lot of their games are built to they sell well. Obviously the first player games sell well. And so I understand where they're going to be like there's probably going to be some marketing manager that's like, look, you have

[01:08:58] limited fast traveling this game. Let's help the players out and say put $5 down and we're going to give you a port crystal or, you know, 10 fairy stones, whatever the case may be. I just think that like in terms of the design ethos combined with

[01:09:11] where they're coming from in terms of like, we want this difficulty. We want you to be immersed in this world, allowing the player to buy the, the, the, you know, micro transactions to allow them to just, you know, teleport everywhere they want to in the game is completely

[01:09:25] contradictory. And it just, it just feels a little bit gross. I don't think they have a place in single player, you know, narrative games or single, single player ARPGs. I really don't think that Diablo really, you know, Diablo is a different

[01:09:37] conversation, but other games of the dragon, dragon's dogma, you know, genre, I don't think that really micro transactions have a place there. You're right. I mean, I think it was a poor choice by a marketing manager and I

[01:09:50] guarantee you the dev team did not want to do it. I'm sure it was a Capcom higher up thing. However, I will say someone who played 36 hours of this game and then some, I never bought a damn thing and I never struggled to get anywhere.

[01:10:01] So I think while the, I agree that the act of putting it in the game is absolutely gross, Nick, I could not agree more. I think it's a non factor because it does like it's for lazy people who want to cheat. Yeah.

[01:10:12] And I use the term cheat loosely because I'm a big advocate for accessibility, but like it's for lazy people who just want to buy the thing instead of finding it. And I think that they're banking on that and a lot of other free to

[01:10:24] play games also bank on that, wanting to cut the line a little bit or whatever. I if, if the game was impossible to do without it, I'd be more upset. But because I know many players who've gotten through the entire

[01:10:36] game without much issue, without having to spend a dollar on it. I think it's gross, but less gross because at least you don't need to do it. It's not a pay to get good kind of thing.

[01:10:47] Like if they were selling like skill points or level up items or whatever that would be, I think a wholly different story too. And much worse in Devil May Cry 5. You don't really hear about it because that's also a very fun game. So yeah.

[01:11:01] But I agree and I'm glad you brought that up because it is. It was a gross thing and I think it was definitely from the Capcom higher ups or suit or something. It seems very unlikely the game director or the head of the team had.

[01:11:11] This is a great idea. I just can't imagine based on their ethos. You're right. But it does contract contradicted as well and is worth mentioning for sure. Yeah, it's like I want the Code Veronica remake in the Resident Evil Zero remake just as much as anybody.

[01:11:24] But if we could figure out a way to do that without micro transactions, that'd be the best way to go. Something that I did want to bring up in terms of the something that's a head scratcher for me and something that was a little bit

[01:11:36] of a sticky pointer, just me beating my head against the wall in terms of Dragon's Dogma Open World is the fact that it is an action RPG at its core and it's centric, but so many facets of this game

[01:11:49] allow or kind of they lead me to believe that Dragon's Dogma is wanting to present like an Elder Scrolls. It wants to present like a Zelda like, especially when you have, you know, NPC side quests, when you have factions that are actually in this game, there are 100% factions.

[01:12:09] There's a thieves guild in this game. And there are there are open world elements in this game and open world systems that they set up that seem relatively unrealized. You know, for example, obviously we've talked for a while. Everybody, you know, who obviously is listening to this podcast

[01:12:26] probably has played Skyrim, probably has played the Witcher 3 Wild Hunt. Both of these games, the core of their experience is very similar to Dragon's Dogma to the extent of the wanderings and the discovery aspect of those games are incredibly important

[01:12:39] to the player experience in finding those untold secrets that are nestled within the pockets of that game that just give you that dopamine rush. They give you that sense of joy and discovery. In contrast, however, I feel like Skyrim's open world systems

[01:12:53] like Stealth, like their economy, like their sequential quest chains, you know, they're top of class. And then you look at the Witcher 3 Wild Hunt. I'm not 100% sure how you feel about that, Matt, but like when we went in my mind, when we talk about character writing,

[01:13:09] when we talk about lore building and world building, again, bestie class. And there are those are all things that exist in Dragon's Dogma, but they feel like that's something that like either Capcom ran out of money or they just decided that no, we don't have enough time.

[01:13:25] We're going to pivot strictly to the vocation pond class system. And we're not going to stand that up, you know, in terms of like, like for example, like the biggest thing for me is the stealth.

[01:13:35] Obviously, I know that you both said, hey, I'm not going to spend a lot of time in the capitals. I'm not going to spend 100, you know, a ton of hours running around talking to NPCs. I love doing stuff like that.

[01:13:46] But when I get like a quest to say, hey, go talk to the local, you know, just a car that has been locked up in the jail in the, you know, in the noble part of the city that you're in in Vermont.

[01:13:59] And I go in there and then they just let me walk in there and then I'm walking around and I think, oh, hey, I'm supposed to be in there because I'm supposed to talk to this guy for this thing.

[01:14:08] And I walk into a room full of guards and I open a chest and one stabs me from behind and then locks me up. I'm like, OK, so that's not real, obviously. And then I punch my way out of the jail and then I go back in

[01:14:19] and then I just kind of like walk around by casually just not going in the room with the guards. And there is another area where the guards are just like circling in the room.

[01:14:28] And I'm just like, OK, so I walk in the room and I walked to the jail cell and I just have this full blown conversation with them in the room. Like it just there are stealth elements of this game.

[01:14:37] They're asking they're asking you to stealth and it's not great. It's not it's not fantastic. And it doesn't actually feel like it the way that it would in a moral end or a skyrim and that's something that obviously that bothered me.

[01:14:50] There is another section that I would like to bring up in terms of like but all there are crazy stuff happening in this game. Lore wise, narrative wise, they're doing like dark dragon magical research on dead dragon corpses in Batal.

[01:15:05] There is a there is a location in Batal called the forbidden magic research center that and there's an NPC that tells you, hey, no matter what you do, you're not going to get past me. You can't come in there and you're not going to be allowed in there.

[01:15:19] And there is a moment where I literally walk right past them right into the magic research center. Nobody asks me for anything. No, there and maybe there's like lore and story context, but it just doesn't feel quite right the way that they kind of like

[01:15:34] stand up this world and then there are elements and facets that are just like it's just not there for this game. I mean, that didn't bother either of you. Well, the big thing for like those two specific ones that you mentioned is like the forbidden research area.

[01:15:48] I didn't try walking past the guard at the top that says you can't get in because I felt like she stopped me with like an automatic cutscene whenever I got there. So I was like, I'll go like the back way.

[01:15:57] But there is that back way and going in that back way. Yeah, it's like if you know the back way, you're expected, quote unquote, to be here so they don't really mess with you if you go in like that way, which is fine.

[01:16:06] It's similar to what you talked about there with the guards and there's not traditional stealth in this game because as you recognize, right, you like you can't crouch, you can't like kind of hide your way out of someone's eyesight. If you're in Verneworth, for example,

[01:16:20] or you need to get in somewhere where the guards are, there is hidden kind of like outside in this drain area, a full guards set of clothing that you can run into either during a side quest

[01:16:32] or I just ran into it randomly because I saw it up there. And I was like, ooh, a chest, shiny. So you get that in the game. And this is one of the things that for better or for worse,

[01:16:39] this is how dragons dogma even one is where it doesn't explicitly tell you things. So like it expects you to kind of like figure it out yourself or maybe even look at a guide, which I think is totally valid. Yes, absolutely.

[01:16:50] Was it a Hideki Miyazaki was like, hey, if you be Elden Ring with a guide, that's perfectly valid. So shout out to everybody out there who was talking trash. You know, the guide himself said that you can use a guide.

[01:17:00] So I'm using that for everything else going forward. But yeah, if you were to take that full set of guard armor, for example, and throw that on, you can walk around the entirety of the Royal Palace in no one bats an eye because like,

[01:17:11] oh, look, you're a guard, even if you're wielding the flaming great sort of truth plus five, they're just like, hey, you're wearing guard armor. So obviously you want to let so clearly you're a guard, right? You must be a guard. So it's small things like that.

[01:17:24] Once again, Dragon's Dogma, the little things. It's the kind of stuff that it's like it looks initially like, hey, this is busted like this is broken and maybe on the outside that does look like that until you're like, oh, if I play around

[01:17:35] with these systems more, if I interact with this kind of world in a way that it's asking versus how I traditionally know, you know, I'm not doing Sam Fisher stealth. I'm doing Assassin's Creed one stealth where I'm looking

[01:17:46] like the people versus trying to like crouch around the corner and hide and do things. And that's a lot of what this game asks you to do when it comes to either the stealth segments or things that are timed.

[01:17:58] Another thing just to mention with these guild, I think I see what you're going for. And that's probably us with the video game brain of if there's a guild or a group I'm expected to join because I'm the chosen one

[01:18:08] and I can be a part of that whole thing. But at no point they were like, come be one of us. They weren't really trying to do that. The one guy is the maester and the maesters will teach you certain skills. So he's there.

[01:18:17] It's like, hey, you did a really good job here. I'm going to teach you the thief master skill, but they're not like, cool. Now you're one of us and let's go do some side question. Because at the end of the day, you're still going

[01:18:27] through your quote unquote timed thing of being the sovereign, right? You don't have time to play around with these guys because you have to go prove yourself as the king, the true king, etc., etc. Yeah, I mean, I'm with Will on this.

[01:18:39] I think what Will described, I was going to talk about, I did that exact thing. I found the guard armor just hunting around wandering around and when I put it in, I went, I wonder if this works because I also went into that tower to talk to that

[01:18:51] prisoner, found a few guards and they went, hey, you're not supposed to be here and then attacked me and I got thrown in jail. And I was like, nope, resetting. It was one of the few times that I got to it before the auto safe kicked in.

[01:19:00] But then I wandered around and I found the guard uniform went, oh, maybe this will work. And I walked past first guard, nothing happens, worst pass second guard, nothing happens. Like, aha. And so like, and yes, it doesn't tell you.

[01:19:10] And yes, we come from a world where our side quests and our quest journals should tell us all the details. But I like that it doesn't like. So for example, we'll talk about a more with the ponds,

[01:19:20] but a lot of the quests also may not have a way point, but a pawn who can venture with other heroes out in the world might have done that quest and they go, oh, I know where to go. Follow me and you can follow them.

[01:19:31] So instead of following a way point, you're following your companion and then making your way to quest that way. I think that the games you cite like Skyrim and Witcher 3, which I am both a fan of. The first of all, the narrative in Witcher 3

[01:19:44] is non comparable because that's one of the best video game narratives and Geralt is one of my favorite video game characters. Like it's just but the side quests in that are crafted to be tied into the story in a very different way. Right.

[01:19:57] You know, the A to B, B to A kind of system. The this open world is not designed with that ethos in mind. They want you to go to A to B to C to D

[01:20:06] maybe to Z then all the way to F and then back to A. Like they don't expect you to go in straight lines back and forth. And if you do, it's going to be harrowing as you've described. I think ultimately for better or worse,

[01:20:19] like Will has framed it as well. You have to meet the game where it lives. And if you don't want to do that, you're going to encounter the friction because it's designed with that in mind. The first game was the identical way. 100 percent.

[01:20:30] And I think that that might have been where my approach to a dragon is talking about who might have been just like incorrect from the outset because like my idea jumping in this game was like, I'm going to Golden Path this. I'm going to beat this in 25 hours.

[01:20:43] Incorrect. That is not something that you can do in Dragon Star with two. And I made my peace with it eventually when I realized that this was not happening the way I was. And there were some magical things that happened, like obviously discovering the Elven village

[01:20:56] in the Elven capital and then giving you new armor and new weapons. And obviously the whole thieves guild side quest that was there. I even enjoyed some of the side quests of going to Batal and like buying a house in Batal and realizing that, OK, yeah,

[01:21:11] I can I can save here. I can rest here. I can, you know, replenish my resources and learning how to craft the upgrade armor. There was a lot of like joint discovery, even breaking out of the jail and then realizing

[01:21:22] there was a route that I could go down towards the back entrance to go back down into the slums or the fact that the slums have a hidden research library. There are a ton of cool secrets in this game. It's just that my focus was like, OK,

[01:21:35] I want to get through this. I want to absorb some of this as fast as possible. And they weren't giving me enough of what I'm approaching it as the gamer is who's so just narratively driven in a lot of the you know, the experiences that I play.

[01:21:48] They weren't giving me as much as like the lower contextualization or the world building that I was asking to stand up so many of the systems or so many of the areas or NPCs that they were providing me that they were offering me to kind of

[01:22:02] engage with an experience in the game. But nonetheless, I do think that like both perspectives are 100 percent valid. And I like I'm more than happy that you all both like that you both enjoyed your time with it in terms of like experience

[01:22:16] the world that the way that you did. I just think that like some of it just fell short in my mind because of some of those aspects. But yeah, let's go ahead and take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk

[01:22:28] about the combat ponds and vocation systems for Dragon's Dogma 2.

[01:23:06] And welcome back, everybody. We're jumping back in with our review after that quick music break to look at the combat, the ponds and vocation system that are present within Dragon's Dogma 2. Clearly, I think some of the most excellent parts of the design elements

[01:23:22] that are present within this game, the combat is as we've said before, as we said up to the point in this episode, easily the highlight in the draw card for Dragon's Dogma. It's flashy, it's crunchy, it's got immense variety in like player agency

[01:23:39] when thinking about how to tackle mob enemies and even open world bosses. Learning your various enemy movesets as well as being really purposeful with your positioning is the key to success in the combat and learning, you know, obviously the weaknesses of the various enemies that you're approaching.

[01:23:56] You know, I think the visual design of the fighting is exactly what got me into Dragon's Dogma 2 from the outset. Watching the marketing build up for this game on Twitter or on YouTube, whatever it may be, seeing them fighting the harpies

[01:24:08] and dragging them down with the pull chain or slicing the ankles of the ogre so they would fall across the ravine and then create an ogre bridge. Some of the coolest stuff that I had ever imagined, being in an action RPG like this,

[01:24:22] I was like, it was sold from the outset. I was like, I'm jumping into this game, this is really, really cool. What did you all think of the combat? Where were you at with it for Dragon's Dogma 2? Well, let's go ahead and jump first.

[01:24:35] Well, let's say, as I mentioned before, it's a plus one from Dragon's Dogma, which is exactly what I was looking for. Like they already had the flashiness in D1. There were so many cool moves, even something as simple as a sword and board warrior.

[01:24:47] Right, if you think fighting, sorry, not fighting games, action games, et cetera, you're starting class, your basic guard is gonna be somebody with a sword and a shield. So not very exciting, right? And Dragon's Dogma 1 turned that on its head.

[01:25:00] It gave you some of the coolest moves in the game, in my opinion, to the fighter. Things like the blink strike, like where you can hop back as well. There's the, I can't remember if it's called the, it's not the compass slash,

[01:25:09] because that's the one where you do like the half moon. But there's a dodge and attack move where you dodge backwards and then you do a slashing move forwards. And if you time it properly to counterattack an enemy, it does more damage and it looks even cooler.

[01:25:20] So small things like that. And even, I think the warrior 2, they have a move where they can grab a teammate and throw them up towards an enemy, utilizing that grappling technique. So stuff that you're doing that's not even just focused in combat is still really, really cool looking.

[01:25:35] One thing they added for Dragon's Dogma 2, which I think a lot of people sleep on, but I just love doing whatever I play through my fighter vocation was, there's a move where it lowers the amount of damage that you take from fall damage by using your shores.

[01:25:47] Sorry, your shield is kind of like a buffer. So you hop off a cliff and then your character like uses their shield and like lands on it. And it looks so cool every time. I was just hopping off cliffs left and right. I felt like a lemming.

[01:25:57] I was just like, wee! Just like an enemy next to an enemy to start blank striking and attacking them. So no, the combat was a completely a plus one. And the good thing about it too is that they give you a plethora of moves.

[01:26:11] Like there's tons and tons, but you only get your four face buttons to use for attacks. So this game once again really asks you, hey, you're leveling up, try out something new, right? If you've been using the Skyward Slash the whole time as a warrior,

[01:26:25] try the like the Nall Slash now, which allows you to like really just get into the giblets for these larger enemies and like knock them over easier. Or you can do the Gale Slash where you can continue to chain together giant swing strikes and like smash enemies up,

[01:26:41] things like that. And it asks you because you have 20 different moves per vocation to choose from, not even talking about the Warfare which allows you to make all of them into one character effectively. But you got 20 things to choose from. You got four face buttons, mix and match,

[01:26:56] have fun, do variety. That's one thing that we've talked about kind of offline, Nick too where we mentioned the enemy variety isn't really all the way there for the smaller enemies you're coming across. And I think the thing that shook that up for me

[01:27:08] was that if I would go to a main area or somewhere where I could change stuff I would switch out my moves. So I'm still fighting Goblins but I'm using different moves against said Goblins so I get to kind of get more variety out of that.

[01:27:20] Let's see what the Gale Strike looks like. Let's see what the Compass Slash looks like. Let's see what happens when I do the Giant Ice Blizzard instead of the Giant Ice Wall that I was doing beforehand. So I get to see different moves over and over

[01:27:32] and over versus fighting the same enemies with the same four moves for 10 hours. Yeah, I mean, I agree with a lot of what you both are saying. I think the combat is what makes this game what it is. The Crunch, I like Crunch Combat.

[01:27:44] It's why I bounced off of the original Dark Souls so hard and eventually it wasn't until I went back to Dark Souls 3 and really wrapped my head around it that I was able to enjoy it is because that combat is so crunchy. It's some of my favorite combat

[01:27:57] but the game is so hard that I bounced off it. And like this, there's kind of more of a nice middle ground but also like Will was saying, the vocations, you can't talk about the combat without the vocations and the class system in this game is so malleable.

[01:28:08] I mean, we haven't even talked about the passives. The passives that you get per class you can keep on no matter what class you pick. The main face button attacks you can only use for the class you have selected

[01:28:18] but all of the passes can be mixed and matched and you earn them all everything. Like you earn at a good clip and this game, a lot of other fantasy games I feel like in class based games they want you to pick a class and stick with it.

[01:28:30] If it's a D&D based game like Baldur's Gate 3 you pick a class and then you kind of build off of it but you're still that base class, monk, fighter, whatever. This game, they say F it, whatever you want. Just pick, I know Will is a madman

[01:28:43] and maxed out literally every vocation which some of us have other things to do but like we were talking about the trailers, Nick, you mentioned how the trailers got you hyped. I saw the trailer and teaser for the Mystic Spearhand which is a new class in this game

[01:28:58] and went I wanna go to there, that, I want that. Whatever that is, I want it. It's basically a double blade of the lightsaber Jedi in the world of Dragon's Dogma 2 and I love that class. It was the class that I finished the game with

[01:29:12] but like the early classes of fighter, archer, thief made you are meant to experiment around and the best thing about this game too is your levels don't affect your class. They allow you to unlock more stuff but the only thing you need that's required

[01:29:28] to change classes is gear. If you have the gear to be that class you can swap back and forth. I often swapped between fighter and warrior because some of the armor was different, some of the weapons were different

[01:29:39] but it was fun to like go from sword and shield to two-hander. I looked like I walked out of a gay club when I picked the default warriors outfit with like the fur chest and the chains. That's right, that's right. Like it was the best

[01:29:51] but like especially considering talking about making my guy like a brick shithouse and just all this chest hair showing outside this leather garment I was wearing it was the best but like then later on when you dabble in Mystic Spear hand and they have a magic archer

[01:30:04] and trickster which are the big ones for this like even if you don't have them the end game for sorcerer and warrior and for even the base classes have some really great stuff and so you won't encourage to change it up but if you stick with one class

[01:30:17] there's a lot to do and a lot of fun stuff to encounter. I think that the combat, you create special moments in a lot of other games, combat is, there are like headshots and fallout or like in Skyrim you have like those sniper shots

[01:30:33] or those cool like battings or your ways you kill the dragons or whatever. In this a lot of that is making your own fun Mystic Spear hand had this move where you pull an enemy into a force field and then wind up your spear

[01:30:44] like a baseball bat and just send them flying and every time that happened it was hysterical they often bounced off a mountain or went over the sunset like it was great and so I made my own fun but like, you know there are also cool scripted moments

[01:30:58] like when you kill big monsters and you like lunge into their head and they collapse and stuff it's just I really love how intricate the combat is here and it's absolutely what kept me coming back even if I was irritated with a certain mission

[01:31:11] or had died twice to the same griffin that keeps flying away halfway through the battle like there were other stuff that like really pulled me in and the frustrations like I always liked to knock for a long time like difficult game players even though I'm a Metroid fan

[01:31:27] and like the Metroid games are really hard and like in my brain it's just like that's just these games like it's not like I have lied to myself for a long time that I don't like difficult games I think the difference is

[01:31:38] the game has to be rewarding enough to endure the difficulty and I felt like in early Souls games and some other really hard games that I played in the past or shooters the reward to conflict and difficulty wasn't comparable whereas in this it was just the right amount

[01:31:53] of frustration that fueled me like all right, I might get that jackass next time I'm gonna stab that griffin to death kind of a thing. Yeah, and you know I love that aspect of what you're talking about something that I realized pretty deep into the game

[01:32:07] I played the majority of my initial play through as just the Archer class I was sold on the Archer when I saw obviously all of its movesets and it's loadouts and obviously when I unlocked the Archer maester ability of course you know the

[01:32:20] I think it's Heavens word blaster something like that where you shoot massive bolts or knockout enemies it's just so much fun but experimentation is so key towards understanding the action combat in this game and understanding the systems that they're presenting with you

[01:32:36] I if I had known that jumping into the sorcerer vocation and acquiring the levitation ability I think it's so interesting and then obviously everything that you do as a warrior whatever it may be whatever vocation that you may choose it is so interesting in terms of

[01:32:53] gaining that ability and then jumping in there I think one thing that was a sticking point for me obviously was the overall economy Will has talked to said multiple points throughout this game is obviously if you're playing it to the extent that he has

[01:33:06] or if you're unlocking the map you're delving in case for secrets you're completing side quest you're gonna get a lot of money one way or another and I found that I found that I was acquiring a lot of money probably to the point of mid game

[01:33:19] but whenever I would try to experiment with a different class I was spending all of my money on new weapons and new armor at the local place because I really didn't use any gods for this game I used it for certain instances like trying to figure out

[01:33:33] what the hell is this stalker doing in Vernworth like how do I disable them oh you have to jump in body type of them the same way you accidentally do to your pawns in the open world anyway that's a you know obviously a side note

[01:33:44] but something that I felt was a little bit of kind of like an adversarial notion in this game is that like yes they kind of encourage you to experiment because you get rewarded through the passive abilities of trying out different classes obviously thieves can jump off of walls

[01:34:02] archers kind of have the ability to traverse environments a little bit better than other classes and these are things that you carry with you as you proceed through the game but everything that you buy in the store is kind of expensive especially if you're like strictly going

[01:34:17] to the capital locations in terms of the you know whether it's going to be the blacksmith or the armor seller that you're seeing in Vernworth or Batal and will made the point to me as I was playing this game he's like just look up a guide

[01:34:34] just find the chests that have the armor that you're looking for just find the side quests that are going to give you the you know magic spearhand dual wielding spear that's going to make your magic spearhand build OP and I'm like that's cool

[01:34:47] I wish the game would do that for me I wish that the experience in the game would like they would provide me with a little bit more of a hint of hey if you're trying to do this go over here this is the area where you might want

[01:34:58] to try to explore just kind of I struggle with the fact is that yes I've been spoiled in so many open world experiences of being spoon fed in a lot of instances of like yes you're going to go to this checkpoint marker you're going to unlock this area

[01:35:12] you're going to be able to fast travel back here and if you want to upgrade you're going to come back to this vendor give them the money blah blah blah oh you completed a side quest here's 50,000 currency for whatever you're doing like okay I get it

[01:35:25] and that's the antithesis to what dragonstalk does to anything you know they really kind of lean into making you earn your play through the that you have to really earn your experience and then something that I respect but also something that I kind of

[01:35:37] I definitely myself in my play through struggle with because the itemization wasn't fantastic in the discovery systems just weren't in place for me to truly enjoy it I love the fact that you said that the magic spear hand was your favorite class mat

[01:35:52] I tried it at the end and I bought in but all like the upgraded magic spear hand armor and like whatever weapon that you could get from the vendor there and I got my shit rocked I got my head kicked in by like hobgoblins

[01:36:06] and harpies that were in the general area when I was going to try it out because I just I think part of that is something that we can get into now well is that I didn't optimize my party for a magic spear hand build and that is so

[01:36:20] so important for folks kind of to contest contextualization there are multiple different vocations in this game the early game you start off with you can choose whatever you want you can be a fighter archer thief mage the advanced vocations where you eventually show up to vernworth

[01:36:35] there's a side quest they give you to say hey go get an arch staff and go get a great sword and there and at that point you become a warrior or sorcerer same thing good is true for your pawn and then the end game

[01:36:48] as you proceed kind of towards the end of the tall as well as you go into the volcanic islands you can choose being a spear hand a magic archer a trickster which I thought was a really interesting class or a warfare which as will said

[01:37:01] was a combination of everything you can select multiple different weapons you can have multiple you can design your load out for your super moves however you want yeah um how did you feel about that in terms of the design elements of your pawn system specifically

[01:37:18] for the pawn system or the vocations well I mean both and how they kind of like tied together yeah because I thought the vocations I think they spread them out pretty well especially considering even the ones that are like the end game quote unquote it's like the mystics

[01:37:30] spear hand trickster etc as long as you know where to go you can unlock them really early so for example the main story will have you unlock the trickster eventually because you have to talk to this character to advance the story but I got there

[01:37:43] 30 hours earlier than normal so you did it super early completely early super unnecessarily got the shit beat out of me by harpies because I was not ready to fight them early like the gore harpies that were gore harpies yeah the area just as a as a hint

[01:37:57] it's not really spoiler because it's a an extra area has nothing to do with the story but I went through a place that took me through uh hobgoblins and I think there were some Saurians and then there was a Golem and then there were gore harpies

[01:38:13] on the outside of a cliff face that would pick up my pawns and throw them into the brine and then when I finally got to the open quote unquote area I thought it was safe and then a griffon landed so that's how I got into Batal

[01:38:24] and it was hellish it was complete hell got to that being said made my way in there got to the main area yada yada yada went all the way through found the trickster this is all without a guy by the way I just kind of came across it

[01:38:36] came across the trickster I was like oh neat there's a ladder over here too went upstairs and she's like oh you actually found me here's my my special vocation same thing I did the same thing yeah so when you get that it gives you the maester move

[01:38:49] which allows you to summon a giant awesome smoke dragon just for anyone out there who's listening the trickster does no damage so although that sounds really cool it really just scares people and it makes it so that they run away from you which is necessary

[01:39:02] because otherwise you yourself do no damage let's do very fun in the fact that you can find a lot of these end game vocations by just exploring and kind of being outside the way versus having to be railroaded through the story I thought was great too

[01:39:16] because another one like the mystic spear hand for example did either of you go back to Melv and run into the mystic spear hand or did you end up BFC so I love that we have both right we have man that did and we have Nick that didn't

[01:39:29] if you go back to Melv like maybe still pretty early into the story even before you get to Batal from what I recall a dragon attacks and then you get the chance to unlock the mystic spear hand that way or later on the story

[01:39:42] the game asks you to go to a certain tower and then you run into the mystic spear hand guy that way and you could also get it then so it's just great that the game allows you to get these different vocations and things in different areas

[01:39:55] I personally love what they have so far with the ponds but I do wish like some other people that you can kind of make your ponds a little bit more of these specialty classes way back in dragons dogma one my go to class

[01:40:09] and I'm trying to remember the name off the top head it was the mystic do you remember met with the big like shield and I don't yeah I know who you're talking about the mace but it was it was the mystic something so that was

[01:40:23] not my favorite class it was awesome it was super broken you could just spam magic and then like smack the magic orbs and it would cause crazy crazy damage the mystic knight game I think it was a mystic knight I'm pretty sure it was

[01:40:35] had like a big old shield and a big hammer big mace yeah so yeah that was awesome and I was like oh if it was just me in my pond also doing this we would be completely busted which is exactly why they don't let you do it right

[01:40:48] right playing dragons dogma two I was like oh I would love to have Prim you know be a trickster who could then take all of the the damage because the trickster is the best tank in the game my opinion like they draw aggro like no other

[01:41:00] and then I could do some of the stuff I think because of how advanced some of these vocations are I understand why the pawns don't really get access because they wouldn't be able to do it to the fullest of their ability but still very fun

[01:41:12] and I enjoy all the vocations I have here I don't think we're ever going to get DLC for this game per se I was like to get like a dark arisen expansion me in the first game didn't really have DLC they had the dark arisen later on

[01:41:25] but yeah it wasn't like anything kind of in between exactly so maybe we might get a expansion slash release later on but if we do get something like that I would love for them to add in like the mystic night or maybe even like a newer class

[01:41:38] another vocation would be something awesome to check out there yeah yeah I mean I love the vocations I love the diversity of them again though once I got the mystic spare hand all bets were off that's all I did but I also re restructured my entire party

[01:41:53] talk about the pawn system a bit like so there were like capcom sponsored ponds from famous people and some questionable streamers who probably shouldn't have been involved in the game but agreed either way they did that and then also people created their own like my friend justiva telly

[01:42:10] who wrote game informers review of the game and who's a good friend of mine created sepharoth too sequel to Sephiroth and that long silver hair, a giant sword. And I brought him I brought him everywhere with me. He was my my buddy along with my brain and like

[01:42:23] then I changed up my fourth my third pawn my fourth party member every so often but like I'm always had a healer, a tank, my mystic spear hand and then either another mage, an archer. I tried to like vary it up and that made the

[01:42:38] mystic spear hand shine because I never like I could take some damage but here's the difference also you switched to mystic spear hand but you were an archer beforehand. I played the majority of the game as a fighter and then a warrior so

[01:42:50] all of the defensive passives like damage resistance, you know all of that stuff I had that so I was able to take yeah and so I was able to take more hits and things like that because in the first dragons dogma I played a

[01:43:05] warrior straight through on to the end. I love their version of the warrior I just thought it was a blast. Wrecking people with giant massive swords you know who talked about berserk before like I basically built guts in the first game

[01:43:18] with the armor and just wrecked house but in this I wanted to try something different and the agility of the mystic spear hand while still doing good damage was just my favorite and I love the pawn system. I think it's a

[01:43:30] brilliant way to do party combat without like having to play multiplayer. It's the illusion of multiplayer right between other things and look I like MMOs I like multiplayer games and I like playing them but I ain't got time for them.

[01:43:44] My schedule is all over the place and so being able to play with my friends by bringing their pawn with me and then their pawn taking stuff back to them like that was my favorite being able to look at my friends list and see who made

[01:43:55] what pawn and could bring them with me. I would then like like I brought a friend of mine my friend Michael Kill who's a rapper and producer like he had made a pawn and I brought his pawn with me and then after adventuring for

[01:44:07] a while I sent him back and then shot him a text like hey I'm into with your pawn this was really fun nice like I love doing that kind of stuff and this system really allows for that. We hinted at it before I love the awful

[01:44:19] party banter I love arts we are so like you're running around with a bunch of children and like I can get why people would be annoyed but that might totally understand but it never bothered me there's a ladder over I

[01:44:31] see a chest over yonder master I don't know how we'll get to but if we do it'd be great like I knew where every ladder and chest was in every city.

[01:44:39] I was sick of it I was sick of it oh my goodness y'all like it was it was it was our 30 in this game where it was like oh that's a chest over yonder master oh we must endeavor to keep up with the arisen like hearing those

[01:44:54] NPC barks like the six canned pre-recorded ones that they have and I was like did they give the writers in the voice actors two days to put this together what is going on why what this could like it could have been so

[01:45:08] diverse they could have had so much that was baked into the system and obviously you know I understand making video games is hard and you got to choose where you're gonna you know put your assets and everything too but

[01:45:18] I'm just like this could have just work used a little bit more work it was something that you know I was talking about it's the pawn system I love it by the way like I am not down the process but I think similarly to the

[01:45:30] combat the pawn system is probably one of the most brilliant ideas throughout the game that you had mentioned it previously but you know for the listener in terms of clarification and something that will had mentioned

[01:45:40] you can go into something that's called the rift in dragon stock one which is this magical area that only the sovereign nor the arisen has access to and they go in and you can go and you can look amongst

[01:45:52] you know countless different pawns that are pre-built you know warriors mages sorcerers fighters whatever it may be whichever one that you want you can choose and depending on their level or how much higher level they are

[01:46:05] they're gonna cost a currency called RC which is going to be more or less you know what you get about pick up throughout the game I didn't spend a single RC my entire playthrough no I ran with Kima imprint my whole time

[01:46:17] for the free for free 99 I did not that's one of the beauties of playing on the PlayStation 5 everybody was playing there so I was able to jump in and like grab those those pawns that were pre-recorded or obviously

[01:46:30] something you can get from your friends and you don't have to pay for so that was that was really fun but yeah I just think that it was like it was one of those situations that obviously the pawns for me and this is

[01:46:41] something that I think is very much worth noting into that affected my playthrough that obviously you know will and I had talked about this previously is the fact that I played this game with grossly over level pawns

[01:46:54] that pummeled enemies for me throughout this game and that helped my playthrough I was giddy with joy with the first time that Prim called down the in the meteor shower and just completely decimated Cyclops the

[01:47:07] first time I was fighting it was like this is incredible this is all I wanted but again kind of feeding back into what we were talking about with experimentation I realized that it was very important to you know to be

[01:47:18] able to speak knowledge about this game that I needed to try different classes I needed to try different pre you know loadouts and sets in here and I did my best I tried obviously the archer I tried a sorcerer class I did a

[01:47:30] little bit of warrior stuff I changed my I kept Jim my primary pawn he started off as a fighter he transitioned to warrior I never really changed Jim but I did I did play around with with a couple of other

[01:47:45] friends pawns that were in there and there was a really cool moment something that we didn't really bring up in the open world but there's a section where you meet the Sphinx which is a really important character to the dragon's dogma like lore overall as well as

[01:47:58] just a really interesting NPC side quest that you can engage with and the Sphinx gives you a ton of riddles and it asks you to complete different actions and quests and there is a quest that

[01:48:08] the Sphinx gives you where it's like okay I need you to go find it's something about the Sphinx's parents I need you to go find my parent and again Capcom doesn't really give you an indicator which

[01:48:20] is supposed to do but you figure out eventually hey I need to go in the rift and look in some of the pre-built if I'm not mistaken well is it the Capcom like sponsored it can be anybody

[01:48:30] so there are a couple of Capcom ones like that but anyone could give their pawn the moniker of Sphinx mother or Sphinx yeah yeah Sphinx father yeah all father whatever it may be and as long as it had that in the title you're able to complete that

[01:48:43] quest change for the Sphinx and unlock that chest that's associated with it and there's a few ones there's another one that annoyed the absolute hell out of me and it was go back and find the first seeker stone there are these items that

[01:48:57] you pick up in game that give you really good rewards when you go turn them in at the guild locations where you can change classes or upgrade your different loadouts and they're called seekers tokens and you have to go and find the first one

[01:49:09] I couldn't remember where I found my first one I went on like a 10 hour chase from the very beginning of the game and melv down towards the area couldn't find it always remember your first Nicholas I know always remember your first I knew exactly

[01:49:22] it's funny when it happened and they were like oh find your first secret token because I remember once again going off into the middle of nowhere exploring be like oh this is neat in finding I was like oh this is really cool I'm glad

[01:49:31] I had this and I had that area like etched in my memory so they were like oh go find your first one I was like I know exactly where that is like I ran I like ran way back to like you

[01:49:40] said melv and it was right above melv there's an area you go underneath to get to a fire area like a campfire but right above it there's a little goblin camp and then inside a nest in that goblin camp is the secret token and I just

[01:49:55] remembered it like clear as day because I was like oh this place is so cool this is really neat yeah and that that feeds back into kind of like the open world systems and the things that they do when you're out in the wilderness

[01:50:05] game they're really cool you'll see a little outcropping in the middle of this valley with the tree that's coming out of it and you see the tree glowing a little bit you go and collect a I can't remember it's like a light beetle

[01:50:17] that allows you to increase your stamina your carry weight and there's really cool moments where you can take a cool street screenshots like that but there's there's a ton of that that's baked into the game something in relation to the ponds that I was very

[01:50:32] very curious in terms of both of your experience was that there is a system that is built in this game that I have heard many people talk about I've heard journalists talk about it in reviews for this game but there I can't

[01:50:43] remember the formal names for them but there is an infection that occurs right every week it's called the dragons play yeah yes this brand new system for dragons dogma to the dragons plague and what happens is essentially towards the end game of this

[01:50:58] experience you are tasked with going to fight dragons and collect worm stint worm crystals and you know obviously you have to turn them in to create the gods bane blade and you at a certain point depending on what happens if I'm not mistaken there are

[01:51:13] certain actions that dragons can do where they can pick up a character they pick up your pawn or pick up your player character and they'll you know you know hurt it kill it maybe blow a little nox breath on it whatever it

[01:51:24] may be and if your pawn isn't like experiences this with the dragon they can pick up this infection that causes them to have red eyes and be disobedient like you there are telltale signs of this happening if you're just running

[01:51:40] around a lot of the times you're not really looking super close at your ponds you're just running from location location and they're following you in your wake bitching about it the entire time and then all of a sudden like if you tell your pawn there

[01:51:52] there's a system in place in the game where you can say go pick up consumables that are in the open world or go unlock a chest whatever i mean or help there will be times where a pawn says no I'm not going to do

[01:52:04] that I'm gonna go or they just don't listen to you at all and that and then in order what will happen is it something that's interesting that I never experienced in this game I fought about eight to ten drakes never had this

[01:52:16] happen to any of any of my pawns but if you go to a town and they're infected with the dragon's plague like and it's pretty late into the infection they'll just murder everybody in the town we'll just wipe out NPCs which means quest lines are completely ended you

[01:52:32] don't you can't get those vendors back they're not going to show up in the post game nothing there they are dead dead unless you go to the morgue and use the wakestone to revive them did did either of you experience this though I didn't because I was paying

[01:52:44] attention I had at least three other ponds none of them were prim but three other ponds that had dragons plague I think two of them were the cap compounds and it spreads easier if they're heavily used which makes sense right that means they have more instances

[01:52:59] of like coming across people so there's a couple things there you mentioned like with the red eyes so that's the telltale and they actually like buff that red eyes more later on to make them more prevalent because really okay mining but yeah

[01:53:10] red eyes there they will ignore you when you go to do tasks additionally they have a couple of added lines of dialogue just out in the open world where they'll say I feel this power growing within my breast or they're just like I I have a surge of

[01:53:23] energy and I was always like uh-oh that's bad it's funny because things that happen later on in like the post game and game track as far as like their overall look and how things are going on with the dragons plague but yeah at

[01:53:35] that point you chuck them into a lake or you dismiss them whatever you want to do because if you go to a major city and you sleep that's like what triggers it if you go to an inn and sleep or go to your bed and sleep

[01:53:46] then that's when you get a cut scene of said infected pawn like freaking out and then killing the whole town which you have to use either like the eternal wakestone which is a kind of aoe wakestone which resists everybody that's in that nearby area

[01:53:59] but the good thing about it is I think people that are too too important they respawn after a couple of days but for the most part like the people that are in town that are dead like you said nick they will go to the morgue after a while

[01:54:10] and they'll just be dead dead and you have to either use a wakestone or just be comfortable with them being gone out of your world yeah I as far as I can tell in the 36 hours I put into this game I didn't experience the dragon's plague once

[01:54:24] as far as I can tell it's possible that they were like early infection time and like really weren't acting out yet but I never really experienced it also when I played this game pretty much at release I mean it came out like

[01:54:38] so I full disclosure got a review code from Capcom and I am very grateful for that and thank you Capcom for the review code and so I had it a little early so I played it right before Pax East and then like I got it like two days

[01:54:52] before and then I was like well I guess I can't play this game for like a week but once I got home like it's all I played and I finished it within I think the next week or a couple weeks or whatever it was

[01:55:01] and so I think I might have wrapped it up before like the largest audience was playing it and so yeah I never experienced the dragon's plague but I love it I think it's a brilliant idea it didn't stop my pawns for worrying about it because they

[01:55:14] constantly were anxious about it having happening to them telling me about it and honestly someone with immense amounts of anxiety I can relate COVID was not a good time for me and my spouse my spouse is high risk and like so the that paranoia I completely understand

[01:55:31] and was well captured in this game but um but I love the idea of it I think it's brilliant and again it goes back to that being kind of antagonistic to the player in a way but to making things more interesting and more exciting

[01:55:43] and making you have to pay attention like I don't know anyone who's lost an entire town of dragons plague who is like oh I just never knew they either didn't they either on purpose well nothing they did on purpose but either they they it's not that like

[01:55:56] oh I didn't know that could that could happen in the game it was oh I didn't know my pawn had it or yeah I knew I just want to see what would happen like there was no one who was like oh I didn't know that was

[01:56:05] in the game it was pretty well vocalized and advertised and so I think it's just a cool mechanic and an interesting thing that you have to be on the lookout for yeah there was a lot of fun I love the pawn stuff something interesting about me is

[01:56:18] I didn't discover the Elf town until well into the into the end game and so I never had to talk to the elves till the end of the game however that's when I had to hunt so this is another thing about the pawns is so

[01:56:31] you can only be human or beestran you cannot be elven so you cannot speak elvish however pawns can be elves or speak elvish and so you can some like the other things you're talking about with the sphinx also some pawns it'll say that

[01:56:43] whether they speak elvish or not and you bring them with you and they translate for you which I think is incredible I love that such a little detail that in other games you either don't know the language or you do or you learn it miraculously I like that

[01:56:57] you just you need to do a translator I think that's such a great idea for a fantasy game yeah yeah it's really really cool textures that they add into it whether it's you know the dragon's plague or you know obviously the the translation that occurs there and finding

[01:57:10] those different areas speaking of things that we didn't know about this game did you know that there was romancing in dragon's dogma too yes that's insane to me that you can romance a character did either of you proceed to like try to go down that route

[01:57:23] so I didn't how it works it's interesting how it works you can earn effect so you can romance characters you can also just become affectionate with characters by talking to them often and it affects who's in the cut scenes towards the end of the game with the dragon

[01:57:35] the person I was closest with was the the first in owner that you meet because I was always talking to him checking with him and so like I you know he offered me discounts I would bring him stuff I did quests for him

[01:57:46] as we ended up being one of my highest like companions outside of the ponds but I didn't romance anybody there were some characters that I was interested in trying to romance but I never followed it through to the end but that it that does that relationship system

[01:57:59] which is kind of obscured as all things are in this game yes um uh affects who's in those final cut scenes with the dragon which I thought was really fascinating and I didn't really know until the end but I didn't care I thought it was kind of cool

[01:58:11] that this inkeeper that I just chatted up every time I saw ended up being in this final cut scene is like a valuable person I care about I thought was pretty neat yeah so fun you mentioned that too because that's everyone happened to them in dragon's dogma one

[01:58:23] it's if you talk to the black Smith enough because obviously you're buying weapons and you're upgrading weapons and you're doing things every time you talk to a NPC in dragon's dogma one like their infinity grows because oh look you're talking to me obviously you like me

[01:58:34] so hundreds and hundreds of people was like oh the dragon had my beloved in his hand and he opened his claw and it was the black Smith from the grand soren which is just great so I love that you had something very similar happened there too

[01:58:47] in dragon's dogma too mine ended up being a person that I purposely like every time I came across this lady soldier in town I gave her a bundle of flowers so we eventually you know became very close and every time she saw me she'd be like oh I'm

[01:59:01] so happy to see you it's like oh you didn't tell me you're showing up I would have worn something nicer even though she was always wearing full armor full guard gear so she ended up being my most beloved at the end of the game

[01:59:13] but yeah to nick what you were saying and just like Matt mentioned you can get a like which is like level one talking to people normally if you give people gifts you can get like level two affection and that's when you see those

[01:59:23] rosy cheeks whenever they talk to you you may have had a couple of characters here or there that blushed whenever you spoke to them or if you're around the normal town they'll like chase you around I had somebody in vermond literally just follow me around town

[01:59:36] whenever I was doing things because she liked me so much and then there are additionally two different characters that you can romance with like a cut seed one's orica who's a character that you come across multiple times throughout the main story and some side missions

[01:59:50] and another one is willa mina who you come across at least with one main story and then otherwise you have to do her side missions to advance that romance scene and not a more explicit they're probably like mass effect level where it's like let's go to bed

[02:00:04] and then they lay down the bed together and then you wake up the next morning and it's like oh that was so nice how great was that and that's like the extent of it but those are the two romance scenes and the two romanceable characters that you get

[02:00:15] gotcha so it's not balters gate three full just you know going to town on each other and in the middle of cut scene gotcha okay that's fair enough I had a note here kind of talking about my complaints we're the enemy variety

[02:00:29] but we kind of discuss that already and we kind of we jumped in there at length and I think it's going to be something that you're either going to look the other way you're going to turn to blind eye too or you're going to be relatively unhappy with

[02:00:41] but you know just for listeners again to you know for my point I mean there is a lot of cool enemies in this game you have to look for them like the example as I was saying like there are cool moments and especially to Matt's earlier point

[02:00:56] there are moments that you as the player are kind of create it's all about that sandbox level RPG style playing you're creating these cool moments whether you're playing as the archer and shoving an explosive arrow into the top of a Cyclops eye and then jumping off

[02:01:10] as the explosion happens at the distance there's cool epic moments similar to as we were talking about Hell Divers too you just kind of have to make the most of how it exists in the game you know another great example of that is the fact that like

[02:01:22] I was exploring the game I was running around the main route and I was like you know what the way that I found the Sphinx was I'm just going to go off in this random direction I see a side road I'm going to go down the side road

[02:01:33] side road led me to the ancient battlefield lo and behold what's happening here there is a troll and a dragon fighting each other all coolest thing I could have imagined and they're brawling there and this guy there's this NPC character like oh I need to unlock this area

[02:01:48] so I go with him as I'm watching the troll and then I'm encountering harpies and wolves all the way up to this dungeon is keep and I find items of stuff in there and then deeper in the keep there's another secret access area

[02:02:01] that leads you up into the mountain pass where the Sphinx is located and it's just so many cool moments that are like that that you find in this open world system that I think is like again part of that difficult area there's another if I'm not mistaken

[02:02:14] that is another secret access point is that and also to speak to the enemy behavior I've on top of this keep as I was playing the game I was like you know I'm pissed off there are these giant ballista I haven't been able to shoot

[02:02:29] a griffin with these yet I want to murder a griffin I want to murder something with these ballista so what do I do? I climb all the way to the top of this you know this keep up there and I jump on that and I maneuver the ballista

[02:02:41] you get your pawns to help push it along which is the cool little just you know a little side side note that as as you're trying to maneuver the thing to position it's the little things Dracus I'm talking with you the little things

[02:02:54] and then I aim it at the dragon who had already murdered the Cyclops by that point and it was just chilling there and I shot it from probably a mile away I hit it it does like this much damage I'm like well nothing will happen

[02:03:08] all of a sudden I see a pillar of light come from the heavens and strike me down and I'm flying off the side of this keep all of a sudden the dragon is in my face like there are so many cool moments like this

[02:03:20] that are similar to it it was like I did not expect this to happen this is like very similar to like you know an Elden Ring or a Dark Souls moment where it's like you shoot a character far away you're like there's no way they can get me

[02:03:31] and then suddenly they teleport behind you it's just like that I'm curious I want to know from both of y'all what are like your favorite those kind of like world boss mini boss characters for the both of you so like I mean the big one for me was

[02:03:44] I don't remember what area it was but I was exploring at night a little advisedly and I found a cavern where I knew I think I was going next I knew there was a treasure there or something I was trying to find

[02:03:55] that I'd looked up in a walkthrough like of where to go but not what was in it and I wandered into this cavern and as I enter one of my pawns go oh I know this cavern I believe I heard rumored there's a chimera here lo and behold

[02:04:09] my lantern illuminates the one of the faces of the chimeras as I enter the room and then I jump off this like little ledge and now I'm in this massive cave with a chimera and I'm fighting it to the death and like I was low on

[02:04:21] I'm not low on health but like my health is depleted and like I didn't have everything I needed and still did the best to make my way through and there was an awesome battle that I ended up winning and then getting I don't remember if it was armor

[02:04:32] or a weapon but I'd gone there for something specific and then getting the reward and I love that and I don't know that I experienced another chimera which weren't super common in the first game after that and I love that even though there are tons of bosses

[02:04:46] and enemies that are reused there are still a handful that aren't reused that you only see on occasion and that you get to have these kind of knockdown drag out fights with Yeah, 100% it's something similar to what I was describing earlier Will was just hanging out with me

[02:05:00] and I was playing this game and all of a sudden I'm in this dungeonous keep underneath the water miles away from any town and all of a sudden these skeletons start you know reviving as I'm fighting them and then suddenly I find myself

[02:05:11] in a fight with a Lich King or something like so something like that is so cool I would say though in terms of like the variety the diaspora of many bosses that you can face I still think that the drakes and the lesser dragons were my personal favorite

[02:05:27] to fight as you get to the end game because that's the point where you have a fully realized skill set a fully realized load out and then you start kind of having that crystallized understanding of yes, this is where I need to go

[02:05:38] this is what I need to do and I just love that idea they're rearing up on your their back legs and you jump on their midsection to climb up to the chest it's just start stabbing their chest and finding their weak point that way I just

[02:05:50] that was a personal highlight to me so I gotta be up there with a duel of hand it was the one monster that I look for the most throughout the game like the headless horseman and there's one side mission that you can do that is timed

[02:06:02] and if you don't do it a character just passes away but you go out there you enter just the misty marshes which the game for the most part really doesn't make you go there ever so if you ever go there it's kind of of your own exploration will

[02:06:13] but you get in there you fight this thing depending on when you get it you are grossly underleveled like you are literally fighting to survive which is exactly what I was doing me and Prem and the other pawns were just like

[02:06:26] the smidge in the tiniest bit of health at the end it eventually disappeared during daybreak and then we saved the guy's life and the whole time throughout the rest of the game I was looking to fight them looking up stuff people were saying

[02:06:37] oh if you go to a bridge right before daybreak they show up and you can fight them that way never found one until I got to like the end game end game and when I did oh boy they are like the toughest enemies

[02:06:48] even when I was really overleveled and I was beating the hell out of most other enemies I'd fight a chimera I'd fight a griffin even like the drakes themselves were fairly easy to handle at that point but doula hands were so aggressive

[02:07:02] and they were always in your face and they had a scream move that would completely drain all of your stamina and unlike the drakes that did something similar they would teleport next to you and do it immediately like the the doula hands were awesome

[02:07:13] like I wish I could see them more during the main story because of how cool they are yeah 100% let's go ahead and take a moment to just have another quick music break to listen to the excellent score of dragon stogma 2 and then now we're going to transition

[02:07:29] into the story conclusion of this game as well as spoilers so if this is your hard point if you haven't beat dragon stogma 2 this is your bounce out point and then come back in after you beat the game but we will see you next time

[02:08:17] okay so we're in here now and we're jumping in with the narrative conclusion of dragon stogma 2 as well as spoilers for the end game content that exists within this dragon stogma 2 so essentially what happens is you find batal there's this whole side quest where you have to create

[02:08:34] if I'm not mistaken I've referenced it previously but it's called the godsbane blade is that what it's referred to as and essentially you have to get worm crystals to create it and this is something that allows you to unlock different area and you get through batal

[02:08:48] and there's a moment where you're fighting you're trying to fight this NPC called phasus he's doing dark magic he's trying to control the dragon he's doing freaky deaky stuff and then the talos unlocks the talos is like this massive suit of armor I didn't get any

[02:09:07] like lower contextualization as why the hell this thing existed in the game other than the fact that it exists when the end times are near but anyway you essentially track down the essentially the antagonist character that they have built in this game the one who is

[02:09:22] you know doing the mecanations who has created the false sovereign everything and you find you find them and they're trying to summon a fel dragon that they can manipulate and control so they can control the time loop that exists in this world well

[02:09:37] the dragon's not having any of that he comes in and absolutely obliterates this like kind of disgusting looking fel dragon that faces summons he completely just murders phases and then now the focus is on the conversation that is occurring between yourself in the dragon

[02:09:55] the dragon gives you a choice he summons the one that you love and it's like do you want to save this person or do you want to kill me something you have to kind of decide one way or another you kind of jump over

[02:10:09] and then you decide to strike the dragon down I'm not even now please correct me if I'm glossing over any important story moments here you have a couple of options when that dragon says dragon says walk away now and you can become the sovereign and then you know

[02:10:22] you can live your life to the fullest which right just want to see what it looks like so you walk away and then you have like a small part of people that go yay you did it you're the king now like it's very like you know

[02:10:35] you shouldn't have done it like it's it's very clearly the bad ending so you can do that and then the game allows you to immediately reload your save once you get back to the main screen to then fight the dragon truly which is you know

[02:10:46] with the whole end game of the point that's that's the to get to the dragon and actually do the deed kind of like you did in the first game right yeah and essentially what you do is you choose to engage the dragon to kill the dragon

[02:11:00] the dragon has like an honest conversation with you about your role in this world he kind of gives you the full story breakdown of listen I am the dragon you're the arisen it is always supposed to be this way the reason why we're doing this

[02:11:14] is because we're supposed to keep order and balance into the world and we're supposed to protect this world from you know the watcher as well as the unmoored world we've referenced him at the earlier of the game there is a forced ghost that is following you

[02:11:27] throughout the primary events of this game that's kind of leading you towards the direction that you need to go helping you where needed pushing you in the direction they want you to be in and the idea is that the watcher is something that created

[02:11:40] what is the name of the red like tentacles that are in the water the brine right like the watcher if I'm not mistaken is the one who created the brine you can't go in the water because they're hiding something down there they are actually down there you go

[02:11:55] the dragon flies you to a wall of volcano with a full exposition dump while you're on his back breaks it down for you fully playable by the way yeah exactly fully playable this is a never ending cycle to keep the world balanced and you know by you

[02:12:10] killing the dragon you're repeating the cycle you're engaging in this kind of that it's an interesting combination conversation in terms of determinism there's a little bit of philosophy that's baked into the narrative however into the weeds and however late game that it you know comes at you

[02:12:25] it is a little bit interesting I found I was annoyed by the fact of how interested I was at everything the dragon was saying to me at the end of the game I was like this is it this is the end and this is when you could have

[02:12:36] told me this like an hour 30 of this experience but nonetheless that's dragon stagma for you you go there you kill dragon and then all of a sudden you're like oh yeah like similar to the other thing that will said you know I did it I did that

[02:12:50] I murdered the dragon you won the fight against him and you're you know you're the sovereign again and then you just see the watcher that's there he's kind of looking at you weird you're not really sure what's going on and then you go up

[02:13:01] and you talk to the watcher and he's like oh are you not yet satisfied with the with your with your role as the sovereign and the eventually and I can't remember the events that get you back to it but you end up back on the dragon's back

[02:13:14] yeah if you can just talk to the watcher twice see it's like you mentioned he's like oh are you not satisfied like like what's going on here you got everything you need this is exactly what you did you fulfilled your charge that's one thing they'll say forever

[02:13:24] this is your charge this is your charge this is your charge and then you talk to the watcher again yep and then you go and they say oh really you feel like there's something else you could have done different that you want to give it another go

[02:13:34] for example like okay let's take you back and then they can effectively time pour you back to when you're on the dragon's back and then that's when you can pick it up to either fight the dragon again or or alternatively you can stab yourself for the gods

[02:13:49] the gods being blade and what this does is this is a contradictory to the world that has been set up in dragon's dogma at large the idea of dragon's dogma is that you were supposed to preserve this sacred time loop and by rebelling against the watcher

[02:14:04] by stabbing yourself by not fulfilling your duty as the arisen to smite to the dragon you are choosing to go against this preordained plan and what happens is this really really pisses off the watcher and he's like you know what if you want chaos

[02:14:19] I'm gonna fucking give you chaos and then he summons massive amounts of storms and hurricanes he the goal of the watcher at this point is he brings he ushers forth to the unmoored world into the land of vermond and in the entire continent that you're on

[02:14:35] and this idea is that this is going to decimate everything this is going to wipe out and obliterate all life on the planet and this is essentially end game plus content it's not new game plus this is still your current run but the unmoored world happens

[02:14:51] and the idea of this is that you have 12 rests once you're given full operational control of your player character and you have 12 rest to essentially traverse throughout the entire kingdom find every NPC that you can do side quests to evacuate the NPCs to if I'm not mistaken

[02:15:10] you evacuate them to the seafloor shrine is that correct right to protect them for when everything ends that they can survive and live through it exactly and throughout the map you have new port crystals that occur in this game this kind of gives you a little bit more

[02:15:25] because it realizes you've done all this hard work up front hey let's give you a little bit more options to teleport throughout the world literally almost every enemy drops a fairy stone when you kill one every single one yeah yeah so you can go back and forth

[02:15:37] and do whatever you want essentially once you're at the unmoored world point and there are pillars there are beings of light in almost every primary instance whether it's in the elven capital whether it's in vermoreth if I'm not mistaken vermoreth has one of the hardest

[02:15:52] bosses that come down and summon out of the pillars of light yeah and so you can conclude then they're essentially like the main quest line of the unmoored world section of the true endgame section of dragon stagma too something that I think is honestly fascinating something that

[02:16:07] is as I've looked deeper into the combat gameplay and look deeper into kind of the difficulty spike that occurs here I kind of want to check it out y'all I'm a little bit sold on this idea that's where the two come in from dragon's dogma too exactly

[02:16:22] and you finally get that title card so did both of you play through this endgame content yes and so here's the thing I teased earlier that a good good friend of the show Jesse well I'll assume good friend of this show good friend of my shows at least

[02:16:34] Jesse Vitelli he's been a previous guest on fun and games warned me about this he didn't spoil anything but there's a thing you're going to need to do with the dragon you should make sure you do it if you want to see the true ending

[02:16:43] and so I didn't even fight him I as soon as I got on his back I was like oh let's end it all like I'm taking myself out let's see what happens and I did that because I knew it was a thing I needed to do

[02:16:54] I didn't know why so when when you do that and you die and then you know everything happens the world goes to shit it shows the unmoored world and then it splashes the screen with dragon's dogma too I cheered like I was in a rock concert stadium

[02:17:07] I lost my mind I was like let's go pretty much because I was like this is the ballastest thing you could do is make me wait till the final 10 hours six hours whatever it was to actually see the title screen and actually understand why this is a sequel

[02:17:23] because it's breaking the cycle that existed in the first game and you can't really break right and then from there it was all it was all you know bonus like I love the like people call it post game this is part of the game

[02:17:36] this is not post game you do not get a satisfying resolution if you do not do this stuff this is the stuff that makes the game the legend that it is and made it my game of the year because everything in the unmoored world as you are revisiting

[02:17:50] the places you've been before that are in shambles teaming up with people who were your antagonists earlier trying to get to the bottom of what's going on and every choice you make every time you go to bed which you have to to eventually gain your strength back

[02:18:02] you are sacrificing someone and I got to save almost everybody but like I said I did not even make it to the elves in the main game but I got a port crystal to them in the post game to try and save them

[02:18:12] so I finally went to that area in this you also fight the most dragons there are a variety of different dragons that you fight here that are at each pillar of light that weaken the weaken the like the brine the brine that is what happens

[02:18:27] like the brine went from the sea and it went to the air and that's where all the redness is so like you can still run out to like the edge and you start getting the same thing was if you ever ran into the water during the main games

[02:18:37] like the brine starts to grab you out of the smoke and it's just it's some of the coolest choices game design storytelling like I know Nick that you are frustrated that you got this punch of narrative at the very end but as someone who knew what dragons dogmo

[02:18:52] too was knew how dragons dogmo went because the ending of that game is kind of a similar punch in the face when they destroy the main town and you're like oh shoot now what do I do I knew I was going to get something like this

[02:19:05] and that I then got to see it's essentially the watcher showing you the true world like you don't want to do this cycle and this is what the world will become this is the world that you get to live in and you still get to break the cycle

[02:19:15] and be the hero it's just it was some of the coolest stuff and also something we haven't mentioned is when you wake after essentially killing yourself to end the cycle you are resurrected by by the watcher or by the powers of being the arisen

[02:19:29] when you come back to life your pawn is gone and there's a separate quest line to find your pawn and knowing that Nick may want to play this I don't even know if I want to spoil the story stuff with your pawn

[02:19:41] because the final battle with the dragon oh my goodness and all of the stuff that you find out about your pawn and what they really mean for the world why the pawns are what they are is some of the most brilliant show don't tell stuff

[02:19:54] that I think I've ever seen it's just so masterfully done and I have said on many in many places already that I think this is one of the best open world games ever made is it going to be everyone's favorite absolutely not

[02:20:10] but is it exactly what I wanted like we talked about expectations earlier and I'll elaborate on this in our final thoughts but my expectations were met and exceeded this is exactly what I wanted from a sequel to dragon's dogma and while the whole game gets me there

[02:20:27] the unmoored world is the lock like that makes it that thing like if we'd just got the base game I would have been satisfied but the fact that there was a trick there was a reveal there was a sleight of hand at the end

[02:20:40] made this exactly what I wanted and the unmoored world is just so well done because now you're traversing through an even more desolate world trying to pick up the pieces of this world that kind of has always been under the surface so you can still save everybody

[02:20:55] and again choices you make there's a whole side quest I missed because I didn't save everyone in butal fast enough I saved oh no yeah and so I got most of the townsfolk from butal but there was like a quest line with the wizard from there

[02:21:08] that I didn't get to do because he just got blown up and so like that's also awesome that you have to make those choices you have a limited time to say and you can't you can save everyone it's you have to be pitch perfect

[02:21:20] but the game is basically designed so you can't save everyone and the heavy choices you've had to make before you still have to make here I just I love the whole the whole thing is kind of my one of my favorite

[02:21:33] that moment is my favorite moment in gaming this year is that reveal the title screen and then learning that pretty much everything for the last 25 hours was a lie a fun lie but a lie and now this is what the world is really like

[02:21:45] without the origin and without the cycle yeah 100% and please feel free to don't don't spare me in terms of spoilers I looked up so much post-game content but like Will could you kind of like break down like what the pawn system actually means

[02:22:00] or like what occurred during that final fight the true final fight with the dragon well there's two main things with the pawn that happened at the end that I thought were awesome and you know since you asked for it I'm gonna share here you know so so no

[02:22:13] the main thing is one you go find your pawn which is really really cool you get that interaction back and then they mentioned it multiple times when you're like oh when I was with Lord Phasus I could still feel you arisen as like your heartbeat

[02:22:25] and my heartbeat we're beating is one and that's a throwaway line if you don't care but if you've been paying attention you've been having these really fun adventures and you've gotten connected to your pawn hopefully you kind of take that to heart no literally so you go through

[02:22:38] eventually one of the quests asked you to assist Lord Phasus with something going on with Talos now Talos you fought earlier on in the game depending on where you stop them you would go to that area and then the Talos machine itself may be kind of beaten up

[02:22:50] may not be beaten up I beat it quick enough because I was the broken magic archer so they had all limbs intact and they were like right where they had to stop the first time you get there and your pawn gets like pulled into Talos's eye socket

[02:23:04] and effectively takes over Talos like a mech and then that's when one of the dragons comes down and you see see see got me back in you got me back in immediately typical rim dragons dogma and I'm in so then Talos starts brawling with multiple dragons

[02:23:22] and it is just it's awesome it's an awesome scene to behold even me telling you this I feel like you're still gonna enjoy looking at it because visually it's a feast like it's incredible so you just really sit there and watch

[02:23:32] you know Talos kind of brawl it out with the dragon that's one that's the one part that was really cool with your pawn right the second part at the very end also kind of depends now it sounds like Matt from what you spoke about

[02:23:42] you had a very high affinity with your pawn which means you spoke to them every day you you know protected them when they went down hopefully they didn't actually get KO'd KO too much where you had to pull them back from the rift

[02:23:54] you maybe even went to the hot springs with them things like that yeah I did all the same thing as well which gives you that additional bit of kind of lore in that bit of interaction with your pawn at the very end of the game

[02:24:04] when you go to the very last dragon's bane spot and you have the final final dragon emerge that you need to beat to fully break the cycle to where your pawn we talked about the dragon's plague before starts to get like red eyes

[02:24:19] and gets all like kind of murky and then they eventually like not explode fully but they get covered in this big black shroud which makes them like a miniature dragon which then drags you up into the sky where the other dragon flying away

[02:24:33] and it's almost looking like it's trying to escape you to maybe like wait for the unmoored world to kind of destroy but you get up there you crawl in the back of the dragon all fully playable while the cutscenes or you know the

[02:24:45] the cinematics are kind of playing out there's also the end game credits are kind of playing over you so like you're like oh this is the end end like we're actually there you're crawling through avoiding some of the dragon fire

[02:24:57] crawling your way at the back of the dragon and then your pawn shows back up and its dragon form smashes the eye of the big dragon which stuns it allow and allowing you to get kind of get close enough you will flip over

[02:25:08] you see the big beating dragon heart and then your pawn flies to hold on your pawn flies down and like looks up at you and it's like oh master the joy I feel from like how much you've given me you've allowed me to be not just a pawn

[02:25:25] but like my own person like I thank you so much before you know ending the cycle fully and truly that's I think that's what man was going to get there too but that's what oof and it's just you that's personal you're dragon the pawn the whole system

[02:25:41] it comes to an end and your a pawn essentially sacrifices themselves to give you the opening moment to take out the dragon and end all of it and it's for a character that you have to talk to every day that's there when you wake up

[02:25:54] telling you about the adventures they've had without you wandering off into the rift it just it rewards you so much but you have you have to put in the work you're and you don't it's not look I love the mass effect in dragon age games

[02:26:05] and I love that conversations lead to affinity in those games but it's pretty mindless as far as like you have to pick the right choices but you don't have to shoot like the game railroads you to interact with those characters on some level not completely in this game

[02:26:18] you could not talk to anybody and just do your thing except to some of the vendors and that's the game but if you talk to your pawn all the time if you talk to certain people all the time if you interact with these characters

[02:26:30] you fill in the world like a person in real life having to interact and build a world around you and I just love that it pays off in this way with this huge moment and like there's no final boss battle like will said you're playing through this section

[02:26:42] it's all gameplay but there's no fight you're just like trying to hang on to the dragon you're trying to get to the final death blow and then they give it to you because the game is about this narrative arc and not the combat in this moment

[02:26:54] and while narrative is light throughout the game if you are looking for it like you know a lot of other games that are narrative light you are rewarded at the end with this and I loved it it locked it in as my game of the year

[02:27:04] when that moment happened I was already there when I saw the title screen and then when it resolved this way I went this is exactly what I wanted not only from this game but from any game like this right and I imagine that it makes it

[02:27:18] doubling more impactful the idea that you started this game creating from the depths of your mind this is the character that I wanted I wanted to make this person and be my pawn and they're with you every step of the way

[02:27:30] they're supporting you every step of the way regardless of whatever pawns that are in your party so I can imagine that that's I mean it's a major selling point I hate that we had to wait so long to get to it

[02:27:40] but nonetheless I think that it's really important that you actually experience this and then you jump into the game it is so the ending the title card sequence the brine is consuming the fellow dragon is that right or the when it crashes down

[02:27:54] before you go into the unmoored world after that so like at the very end in like after the very very end and when you're fighting when you're fighting the dragon because when you're not in the dragon I mean the brine's just like out in the world

[02:28:06] it's like that smoke it's that fog that start to kind of envelop the rest of the world so the brine doesn't have anything to do once you've gotten to that point and you've beat the dragon it's like you destroy the dragon

[02:28:18] you effectively destroy the brine at that point too because the watcher themselves says like oh with this you slain me and I was like you know you've kind of broken that cycle which means you've broken that hold that the watcher has and they effectively disappear as well

[02:28:31] so the person that we haven't really talked about because they're not too too important until you really get to this point but the crazed old man in Harve who also happens to be another arisen there are multiple arisen that are in this world

[02:28:42] who just didn't beat the dragon for one or another reason and they kind of just do their own thing at that point but he gets on a sailboat and goes out into the ocean for places unknown so the brine is no longer there

[02:28:55] you know you've broken that cycle you freed everyone from being trapped on this kind of island-ish area and at that point you know freedom is effectively what you've given the people of Batal and and and vermond and the volcanic region yeah that's incredible

[02:29:13] so that is the ending of dragon's dogma 2 action-packed ending something nevertheless that I should say is that for folks who are trying to work through this game something that is un-missable content that you really need to engage with to have the full breadth of understanding

[02:29:29] and how to play this game and how to you know kind of get that full picture don't get fooled by the false ending like I did at first but that has been it for today let's go ahead and jump into final thoughts

[02:29:40] something that for the listeners who have come with us to the very end in this review that you want to leave them with I will not have the final word on this game because I am obviously in the minority so I'll go first this time around

[02:29:53] jumping into dragon's dogma 2 and playing this game for the first you know like 30 to 50 hours it really was the most 7 out of 10 game that I have really engaged with in quite some time it just wasn't getting giving me what I want after time and time again

[02:30:07] and I was just experiencing such friction points I think that there is an omnipresent obtuse-ness that is baked into the design ethos of this game that's something that you're either going to love or you're going to hate I think for people who really

[02:30:21] you know want to enjoy this game for the action combat and the gameplay in some of the rewards and the mystery and obviously a little bit of the difficulty that's baked into it that might not necessarily be on the Dark Souls level but nevertheless

[02:30:36] something that's going to be more challenging than something like a Starfield or even a Zelda for that matter although Tears of the Kingdom can be challenging if you allow it to be something this is going to be the game for you for the folks who are wanting

[02:30:50] a narrative-centric player first experience that's going to hold your hand throughout this encounter with fun and interesting characters that are going to kind of lead you towards rewarding it although dragon's dogma does give you some of that towards the tail end of this game

[02:31:06] dragon's dogma 2 in my opinion is going to be a pass but if you are that first person who wants that action RPG experience who wants to curate your own journey in vermond go ahead and jump into dragon's dogma 2 william how about yourself

[02:31:21] where would you say for your final thoughts are for this game well I feel like a ultimately when it comes to dragon's dogma 2 we talked about those expectations originally and it definitely met those expectations if like mentioned before exceeded them as well in many ways

[02:31:36] the combat was a step up which was awesome because I loved the first combat so I was very impressed there I felt like visually of course because it was generations removed it was a step up but just the different vistas in the areas that I got to see

[02:31:48] whenever I went to a new biome I loved it I loved getting used to trekking across the areas and finding those landmarks or being able to say okay here's an ox cart that can take me from A to Z here's a gurney you know the kind of

[02:32:03] things that could take me from A to Z as well across Batal and fighting enemies while I'm doing so so it's not just me you know falling asleep at the wheel literally but it's like okay you got to watch out for harpies and things

[02:32:12] the game in my opinion constantly kept you engaged whether it asked you to go across the map because somebody said oh I'm elderly and I need assistance going from Batal to to vermond I'm like why are you going down these halls covered in ogres in apes

[02:32:28] but sure I'll help you I guess but being able to do things like that just have fun with it and then the game especially when you get to that endgame with the unmoored world or you know just rewarded you so much

[02:32:41] from the things that I was already doing just interacting with my pawn having camps and just literally having fun I felt like when I was running around with prim that was my buddy right you talked about that with jim too I was like me and prim

[02:32:52] we're like this no matter who's there it's always me and her and we're handling business I have so many fun clips of me like setting up a monster with a lightning strike or something that stunned them and then her with the gigantic hammer

[02:33:03] just bonking them over the head or having her talk to another pawn in the pawn talking about how things were all like kind of shadowy and scary and then prim saying who cares like we got this we've had this many times that we have this now

[02:33:17] like what's the issue so just allowing her personality through the game to just really kind of like seep into me and just be like oh this is so cool made that ending part punch so so hard so when it comes to people

[02:33:30] that I would recommend this game to the things are clear if you like RPGs I feel like you would like this if you like fun action I feel like you would really enjoy this game if this is something to where you want to go through

[02:33:42] and just really explore I've talked about this kind of offline before but no game in my opinion gives me the sense of exploration that this game gives me unless I've played like back in the day like Skyrim I remember playing Skyrim and going out and wanting to go

[02:33:55] hit caves for the sake of hitting caves like I have no idea what's there I just want to explore and this gave me that same feeling I look out and I see caves and I see crags and other monsters and I want to go out just to explore

[02:34:06] just to experience it so I mean ultimately I can say most people I feel like would enjoy this I would always tell somebody I'm like hey this is not your traditional RPG this is not your traditional action game this is kind of like a merge

[02:34:20] of all three four etc and hopefully you enjoy it but ultimately I think this is something that you really have to try to see because no one can fully explain it without you kind of experience it yourself so I obviously mirror a lot of what Will said

[02:34:35] but for me this is the best open world game I have ever played and what I mean by that is it's the open world experience I want so the perfect video game does not exist we can argue that some games get pretty damn close

[02:34:48] but what will I say is this is the perfect Matt game this is exactly what I wanted it met and exceeded expectations and what's really fascinating about it is this game there was 12 years between the two games and in that 12 years

[02:35:03] we've made huge strides in open world design for convenience for ease of access for accessibility all things which are important but this game chose to ignore 12 years of game design basically and make the sequel it wanted to be based on the first game and some modern changes

[02:35:23] there are some accessibility options in here that are helpful but for the most part it is meant to be player agnostic at the least so you can figure it out yourself and I think it does it more masterfully than I think any other game of its kind

[02:35:38] I did an episode of fun and games with Jesse Vitale who I mentioned earlier my co-host Jeff and my friend Aissa Green River talking about signposting and video games and this was the centerpiece of it because Jeff and I both got codes

[02:35:51] and we wanted to use it as a jumping off point to talk about when is signposting good? When is it bad? When is it too much? When is it not enough? And I think that this game has the perfect amount of signposting

[02:36:01] for the kind of game I want to play and look I mentioned Yakuza again I'll mention it one more time we know him as superfan love that pink dot love to know exactly where I'm going makes getting through those games super fast, super easy and I love it

[02:36:13] but also that game litters the world with sub stories that you wander into and hilarity happens and so having that focus is the point because then you can find the sub stories on your way on the path they litter them there this game

[02:36:28] it takes you through the world by allowing your pawns to know where to go because they've been with the event a different adventurer or you know there's a highlighted area of a map but you still have to fine tune what you're looking for self-discovery I just think that

[02:36:41] it's one of the coolest worlds I've ever gotten to an existent and it's all of the systems that came together that made that happen and then the plot the end game and all of the cool stuff that it does that we spoiled the hell out of

[02:36:53] that I don't want to ruin here is just the cherry on top if I didn't have that I still would have loved this game but like like I really want to go back to Dark Arisen now because I don't know if I did all the DLC

[02:37:03] I think I did but like I want to re-experience it see if it throws the same kind of curveball it's like in most modern remedy games there's always this one batshit wild moment that you're like this is in this video game Alan Wake too had it

[02:37:15] control had it and every time it's a blast because Sam Lake and his team it's not just Sam Lake as much as I love that man designed it to be that way they want your jaw to drop they want it to be at a left field

[02:37:27] and it always lands because the sincerity of which it's created and I think that's something that's in a lot of my favorite games including this one Dragon Age or not Dragon Age got Dragon Age on the brain Dragon's Dogma and Dragon's Dogma 2 are designed with intent

[02:37:42] and with sincerity to generate those moments if you bristle against them in the ways Nick did totally makes sense that you would bounce off this game none of your arguments are invalid or absolutely out of left field because you are not only trained by the experiences

[02:37:59] we've been getting out of these kind of open world games for years the assassins create a vacation of everything which was a series I used to love and now is like oh my god there's 30 waypoints on this map I think I'm just going to turn the game off

[02:38:11] but like this decided to buck all of that and give us an experience that was more true to the Xbox 360 ass games of that era that were more obtuse that didn't hold your hand and I think it's what makes it so strong

[02:38:23] but will absolutely turn off other players but if you are the kind of person who plays RPGs who is willing to learn and engage in an experience and give it a fair shot I think there's a lot to love and I think it's safe to say

[02:38:36] that even though you didn't love this game Nick there are still stuff that you recognize as important impressive and really exciting and I think that's truly the effect of this game is that even if you can't get with the entire structure of how it was made

[02:38:50] and how it holds your hand or doesn't there's stuff to love and recommend because it does those things well and I think ultimately it's why I don't know if it's a 10 out of 10 number ratings are really hard but it's my game of the year for 2024

[02:39:04] as if we speak when we are recording today on June 23rd that could change because there's a bunch of cool ass stuff coming out the rest of this year but for now it did not only did like I said not only did do exactly what I wanted

[02:39:17] but it absolutely blew my expectations out of the water and so that makes it an easy choice for my game of the year halfway through the year will that change probably I usually look last year Hi-Fi Rush was my game of the year

[02:39:29] all the way through the middle of it and then I got to Alan Wake 2 at the end of the year went nope sorry I love you Hi-Fi Rush but your number two because Alan Wake absolutely blew me away and so like that's how it goes

[02:39:38] but I really do I think the reason I want to process such like I understand wow now a person who I've known for years and loved dearly because I feel what he felt with the first game that I got a vibe of

[02:39:50] but I really feel with it sequel because I feel like this is what they wanted to do with the first game but hit limitations and this is the true realization of that which is why it's called Dragon's Dogma until you get to that second title card

[02:40:02] I think it's why like they really make you earn why is this a sequel and I just hope they do this forever I want a three act game where you go Dragon's Dogma Dragon's Dogma 2 Dragon's Dogma 3 let's do it like I'm in like it's a franchise

[02:40:15] that over 12 years only has two games and who with long death cycles knows if we'll get a third but I love this game and I'm so glad we have it and even if I don't get a third one I can definitely see myself

[02:40:25] going back to this one for sure 100% I think that the gaming world is that much richer for having a Dragon's Dogma 2 and I hope that fans of this franchise and fans of this game completely like exactly as you said get their sequel and get more additions

[02:40:40] to this genre or this style of game because it is important to have out there but for tonight that is going to be it I want to thank all of our listeners who've joined us so far for our review of Dragon's Dogma 2 if you've enjoyed our content

[02:40:55] and you want to support us further please feel free to leave us a rating on your podcasting platform of choice whether that's Spotify, Apple Podcasts or even good pods we love interacting with our audience so make sure to hit us up out there so Matt

[02:41:07] I wanted to jump into you and give you the opportunity to expand on the podcast that we have for the Reignite Podcast as well as the Fun and Game Podcast could you share for listeners what that is all about? Absolutely so the Fun and Games Podcast

[02:41:22] which you've both done side quests for is a broadly a video game topic podcast where every episode Jeff and I will cover a different topic in the gaming world whether it's retrospectives on consoles interviews with incredible developers or composers specific genres of games specific franchises of games

[02:41:39] we run the gamut talk about different game design choices types of games all sorts of stuff it's this little of like positivity in gaming space may come as a shock to both of you but the internet tends to be pretty negative when it comes to video games broadly

[02:41:52] I know and so we try and take a positive spin whilst still acknowledging the terrible stuff like all the Velaeoffs and everything else going on in the games world while also uplifting lots of indie games and other things that we're really passionate about

[02:42:06] Jeff and I toss around topics back and forth often just because we're like hey this would be fun to talk about and it's really made for an engaging and delightful show where we've had tons of guests the sub series within that feed is called SideQuests

[02:42:16] which both of you have done episodes for which is this idea of again talking back to that negativity I got so bogged down and buried and tired by all of the ripping into games based on a screenshot not knowing the game not even being out

[02:42:30] and saying it sucks and so I wanted to give people an opportunity unabashedly to celebrate the games they love with no judgment just as a monologue and to become not only a beloved series by a lot of our peers but a thing that makes me proud

[02:42:43] I'm proud of all the work I do but being able to share these voices because not everyone on that show is a podcaster I get voice memos from folks who have never recorded a podcast in their life but get to share a game they love

[02:42:53] and why they love it and it's been a blast to do that I hope that you all both come back time and time again Nikkyou done the Yakuza Like a Dragon God the naming convention in that franchise is going to goddamn kill me

[02:43:06] and then will of course you did as your as Rath a game that is the biggest hole in my catalog a game that I've seen for years that I really need to play Oh you gotta check it out they gotta put it on a system

[02:43:14] that I can play it on oh no really but I'll say it's funny too because Nik actually has to play that game now with R I do did you hate it so I'll let's say both y'all could be both fans after hopefully get a chance to play it

[02:43:28] it'd be awesome it's on Game Pass oh is it on Game Pass oh maybe it is I'll have to pick it up there but um but yeah and so it's been fun to have folks do episodes on that stuff I have one in the works for Dragon's Dogma 2

[02:43:39] that I've yet to record what I plan to do and so it's just a way for folks to unabashedly share why they love a thing and maybe that love is infectious a friend of mine early on doing an episode on Fortnite got me to finally try Fortnite

[02:43:51] after they saying it with zero experience and you know what now I really love Fortnite I don't play it as often as I'd like but I really enjoy playing the game so like that's kind of the purpose of that and then so this doesn't go on another 30 minutes

[02:44:02] Reignite really briefly started as a Mass Effect podcast where we're going to play through the original trilogy as if me and my co-host Frankie Bradley Lestrange were Shepard and made Shepard based on us and made choices based on how we would make choices in those situations

[02:44:16] and the discussing them and how our relationships developed how we fell in love with certain characters it allowed us to express explore our queerness our lives how we've been affected by certain things our lives traumas and other things ended up being a really big success

[02:44:28] we'd love doing it so I had never played Andromeda I missed it when it came out so I played it for the first time along with Frankie who I had played it before in the same format that's the first four seasons and then

[02:44:39] season five was Dragon Age Origins we spun off into the Dragon Age franchise which is very fortuitous to us as we are currently playing through Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age the Vale Guard the dumbest name for a video game is coming very soon

[02:44:53] and I actually love the Dragon Age franchise I am excited that folks are going to get to play Vale Guard I'm excited to play it as well but it's fun to now have something that's been kind of on hiatus for a while be active in the lexicon again

[02:45:06] and our podcast being current as a result of it we're currently making our way through Dragon Age 2 we're having a blast and again main character designed after us making choices as we would choose them to the best of our abilities in that world and it's fostered incredible conversations

[02:45:20] we've had wonderful guests and I really love doing that show and then briefly I'm also the editor for the Game and Former show if you love Game and Former if you've been reading it all these years they have a flagship podcast

[02:45:31] hosted by Alex Van Aken, Kyle Hilliard and Marcus Stewart and I get to edit the audio version of that every week and that's been a real blast kind of a dream come true considering I grew up reading the damn magazine in the 90s

[02:45:41] and now I am a part of making the podcast happen and so that's been a lot of fun and I think that's everything if you want more from me I'm at DJR-Stormageddon on Twitter I refuse to call it X and just DJ Stormageddon with no underscore

[02:45:53] on Blue Sky I'm also on Instagram if you go to DJStormageddon.com you can find all the stuff that I do at Patreon for Fun and Games which is the best way to support indie podcasts and yeah thank you both for allowing me to be on the show

[02:46:06] this is a blast I love listening to the show all the time it was great meeting you in person this year I hope we get to collaborate more I know we have a possible handheld handoff idea that we talked about

[02:46:17] both of us playing a game for the first time and talking about it but like honestly this was a pleasure it's a joy to talk to both of you I hope you'll do more side quests and I'll hope I get to come back sometime for sure

[02:46:26] it was a blast having you on and look forward to the future for sure absolutely this has been so much fun to have you on the show Matt so very much looking forward to cross collaboration in the future

[02:46:36] and I will also make sure that we have all the links in the episode description below for all of Matt's shows there Will if someone wanted to reach out to you and let you know that Prim will rise again for the third installment for the Dragon dogma franchise

[02:46:52] where can they find you oh I would be so happy but they would be able to find me on Twitter that would be at real king zozo tie that is R E A L K I N G Z O S O T A I

[02:47:04] and with that everyone please keep gaming take it easy and we'll see you next Friday night deuces bye