It was Hideaki Itsuno, the director of the first part, who came to show off in the literal sense of the term, by unzipping his jacket on the logo of this second episode. It is the only image of the game that we will have obtained at the end of this retrospective, which logically returned to the genesis of the project, in the company of the other key creatives of the franchise, including the artistic director Daigo Ikeno – it is to him that we owe these cyclops with elephant tusks, or these chimeras widely put forward during the promotion of the original game.
We learn that the desire to combine action and role-playing game mechanics has long been on the mind of Itsuno, himself a great fan of paper RPGs, but that the daily life of the arcade division and his natural talent at the bedside of games action has continually pushed back its ambitions to grand fantasy. It took until the turn of the 2000s, and two Devil May Cry overseen during the project (DMC 2) then from A to Z (DMC 3) for Capcom to fully explore this theme. In line with the Dungeons & Dragons beat’em up for inspiration fantasy Two projects were born, one being Monster Hunter, with the success that we know of, the other being Dragon’s Dogma.
An ambitious game whose basic concept was based on two strong ideas: the possibility of climbing on monsters, a feature that would automatically distinguish it from other games of the same genre, including within Capcom, but also an online component to connect a universe mainly oriented towards the solo offlinethe now famous pawn system.
We obviously do not know yet if this sequel will fully embrace online gaming, or if it will take over this principle of NPCs to pamper and borrow from other players in a connected universe. We also don’t know if the countries visited will again be inspired by Wales. But one thing is certain, “the team is working hard to create a game that we hope will be enjoyed“. And we want to believe it.