Dragon's Dogma Previews
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GameSpot UK:
More than just an online gimmick, pawns are "integral to the story", says Kobayashi-san. Pawns aren't actually human. Though they look and speak like normal people, have no will of their own--hence all the following you around and doing your bidding. We're told to expect the mysterious origins of the "pawn legion", as well as the reason the pawns will do only your bidding, to become clear over time. Dollars to donuts it's to do with the way your character's story begins: a dragon attacks his or her sleepy coastal village, plucks out and eats their heart, leaving him or her improbably alive and with a magic glowing chest scar. The first pawn we encountered, when he popped out of a sudden vortex in the sky, presented a similarly glowing scar on his hand.
So begins Dragon's Dogma, with your newly heartless player character jogging the narrow streets of the village, hitting up locals for quests (fetch this book, deliver this message). In our hands-off presentation of the game, we were skipped ahead, full party of pawns in tow, to a rumble with a stone golem in a rocky valley. Here Dragon's Dogma showed its colours as an action RPG, the player character, a magic archer, painting targeting reticules on the big stone beastie and firing away, with the main pawn, a warrior, in support. The two pawns, a mage and a second magic archer, brought up the rear, the mage chanting healing spells from a safe distance. When the golem was stunned, the whole party piled on, scaling the stone giant to hack at its glowing purple weak spots.
Joystiq:
Get this: You can accept quests in Dragon's Dogma -- both from town bulletin boards, and from non-player characters sporting exclamation marks over their heads. Novel, right? And if that's not enough, the NPCs go about living their lives, carrying out their daily tasks, and chattering amongst themselves, regardless of what you happen to be doing. By this point, the aforementioned customization spiel looked less and less like an isolated oddity; this was an intentionally padded demo, and it showed.
The Dragon's Dogma presentation then moved into combat territory, as Kobayashi's adventuring party engaged a lumbering golem. I unfortunately wasn't keeping close track of time, but what unfolded next was probably about 15 excruciating minutes of an adventuring party whacking on said golem. While Kobayashi later assured me that Capcom stretched the fight's alarming length for the purpose of demonstrating various game mechanics, that didn't do much to curb my unbridled apathy. The "innovative" mechanics in question included targeting glowing weak points, minding a finite stamina gauge, managing NPC teammates who respond to basic attack/defend commands, and using mounted crossbows to pepper enemies with arrows. It's like nothing we've ever seen before, right?
Strategy Informer:
The castle town we visit in the demo looks large from outside, but when you get inside it becomes clear just how big it is. There's a host of buildings, plenty of smaller roads and back alleyways and lots of NPCs walking around. Capcom explained that the NPCs in Dragon's Dogma work on their own individual 24 hour schedules and have basic lives they live out they won't just stand around and wait for you to talk to them. This, too, is intended to help build an open world. The development team set out to make the game feel like the world of that tiny castle town for instance continues to live on even after you leave the area thus giving the game more of a true '˜open world' feeling.
While the game looks a lot like an Action Adventure game, RPG elements are clearly present especially when the menu's opened. There's a world map styled to look like it's printed on old medieval-era paper and a full quest log. In the castle town the player picks up a quest and heads out towards the quest by using a fast travel system. The fast travel system requires use of an item, thus limiting how often you can do it. Like Elder Scrolls you can also only fast travel to locations you've already visited. After fast travelling from the town out to a field the player and her three pawns come under attack from a gigantic Gollum-like creature.
And The Pixel Review:
Cutscenes are beautifully rendered and your character will be featured in them along with your pawns.
Naturally the gameplay is what is going to be important in a game like this. The combat is highly stylized, as is expected from the DMC team but without the difficulty of the DMC games. That's what they told me anyway.
