(*2*)Talking to IGN as a part of our IGN First this month on Dragon’s Dogma 2, Itsuno defined a few of his pondering round creating the Dragon’s Dogma 2 world. He says he initially solely supposed it to be 1.5 to 2 occasions the measurement of the first recreation’s world, however it ended up being roughly quadruple the measurement. “That is what’s inflicting us to battle proper now,” Itsuno explains.
(*2*)”I do not wish to go too far and make individuals assume I am exaggerating, however we have positioned gadgets on the map and discovered methods to information the participant’s eye in order that there are no moments once they really feel bored,” he says. “That is one thing that different motion video games typically do as effectively, and one in all the fundamental components in such video games is the capacity to see your vacation spot whereas being not sure of how one can get there, transferring from scene to scene. We have been capable of capable of give a whole lot of consideration to this sort of mapmaking at the grey- and white-box levels, earlier than we actually sat right down to make them.”
(*2*)Itsuno goes on to elucidate that in the first recreation, the staff did not have as many instruments at their disposal with which to fill a big map, however that wasn’t the case for the sequel. As a result of this course of was a lot simpler the second time round, the map turned bigger and extra full. They have been additionally capable of create “blinders” in lots of spots so that each single fascinating landmark wasn’t at all times instantly seen, and gamers would not get bored too rapidly with all of them.
(*2*)Moreover, Itsuno needed so as to add an actual feeling of hazard to the map. He explains how he and his staff did a whole lot of location scouting, together with climbing a lot of mountains and visiting tall landmarks like Osaka Fortress and Abeno Harukas skyscraper. He needed the staff to grasp the feeling of hazard that comes from being in very excessive locations, and have the ability to convey that feeling to gamers merely by means of environmental cues and design versus, say, in-game warning messages.
(*2*)And he additionally needed the feeling of climbing a mountain to be extra sensible than simply dragging a personality up a slope.
(*2*)”After we climbed mountains, there have been occasions when the closest technique to the summit was a straight line there, however no person takes these routes,” Itsuno says. “Everybody takes paths that circle round the mountain, so we would discuss why they did that as a substitute of utilizing another route, and the reply is that it appears so powerful. It is not that you just wish to go however cannot, it is that you do not even take into account taking that route to start with. That is why there’s a lot of completely different paths to the prime, and all of us take completely different routes to the summit. No person thinks of that as a scarcity of selection, proper? That is the sort of factor we talked about, saying that as a substitute of making a map that permits you to go wherever you need, putting areas that gamers will not wish to go to on it would allow us to resolve the place we wish to give attention to whereas not making the map really feel any much less free, as a result of customers will keep away from these different locations, similar to the mountain we have been climbing.”
(*2*)We have now tons extra new details about Dragon’s Dogma 2 from our month-long IGN First on the recreation, together with a function on how pawns are being improved, all about the character creator, and an in depth take a look at the new Trickster vocation. Dragon’s Dogma 2 debuts on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC on March 22, 2024.
(*2*)Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Bought a narrative tip? Ship it to rvalentine@ign.com.