My favorite open world games of the last decade have something in common: A real interest in what it means to be outside , and in finding a particular perspective on artistic depictions of the wilderness.
This is the juice right here, something I have felt deeply for years, so it’s nice to see it written about directly and clearly. I don’t care about “activities” in my open world games. I want to feel like I’m somewhere.
I’m reminded of the Light No Fire announcement–I’m buzzing over an actual attempt at planet-scale environment and all the commentary online is “sounds cool but you know it’s gonna be empty”. People need to let wonder back into their hearts. Feel the digital rain on your digital skin.
Yeah the thing that really sold me on knowing this would be good is the prerelease info that they’re making fast travel and camping out in the wilderness harder. That tells me a lot of things but a big one is that they have the confidence in their world to make it interesting to traverse.
“I won’t scatter your sorrow to the heartless sea…nya”
It’s install o’clock! (I won’t be playing it right now, just in a few hours, but it’s out on PC.)
dragon’s dogma TWO folks
A couple things I saw in the first hour-ish
- Already some intriguing plot stuff especially if you have context from DD1
- Extremely funny to have Rook be drowning and getting murdered by the Brine and just shouting “it’s cool bro! i’m good!! see you later dude!!!”
- I found a gold beetle that permanently increased my carry weight
- Muscle memory from other games keeps causing me to pull my weapons out in the camp and make everybody freak the fuck out
- gatherables are way harder to see (at least for me) so a pawn that actively goes to pick up items has a lot more utility now imo
God it’s so fucking good. I love how the kinda mid “attack something in midair” fighter skill became “leap like 5 feet up and dunk on a harpy”.
Game is good in all the ways I expected it to be as well as ways I didn’t. I’ve been legitimately impressed with the quests and story so far, especially once you hit the main city.
And the world…so big…so sunny…so many caves…it’s great.
If folks want to add me on Steam, my friend code is 50480492.
That said, I do like how the pawn quests give you incentive to switch up the party more often and get some early wakestones and such. It was a little too convenient to just stick with friend pawns the entire time in DD1.
Was getting my ass beat by a griffin, fought it for 10 minutes straight until it was pitch black outside and it was at half health, only visible when it landed next to me or charged up its lightning strike
A fucking ghost or spectre or something swoops in and kills the griffin, my pawns say it’s attracted to light, so I turn off my lantern and bail
we are so back
game runs like absolute ass in town no matter how much i lower my settings. this computer is two years old. i guess they’re looking into it but yeesh
fun otherwise
I’m living my best life out here as an up and coming bandit king
Not running into any noticeable performance issues on ps5. My brain might just be cooked! But I’m having a great time. I’m surprised how quickly I could get into the swing of things.
Like, I was trying to get from Merve to Vernworth, but a Minotaur was along the path and my party couldn’t handle it. So I waited for an oxcart instead. The ox art was raided by an Ogre and goblins, and while fighting the ogre with the oxcart guards, a griffin came down and crushed the ox cart! Plus ox! I had to hit its wings with fire daggers to scare it away before rallying to push the ogre off a Cliff into a River.
Fuck me this dogma has some dragon to it.
I took a cart out to the checkpoint because I hadn’t been there and had a legitimate “oh shit I didn’t know the map was this big” moment.
I picked it up, and after about three-ish hours, I think I kinda like it. Just reached the capital.
It hasn’t fully activated my neurons yet, otherwise I’d be playing more instead of writing here, but I’m definitely enjoying it so far. In a way, it feels like what I wish Witcher 3 had been more like?
I fought a minotaur that was kicking my ass but there was a roving band of geriatric mercenaries (shout outs to Shirtless Zweihander Granny) who stepped in and helped me kill it
the density of exploration in this game is so much better than the OG it’s kind of unreal. that was my biggest issue with DD.
that tracks tbh, it captures that old-school, medieval fantasy very well
Yeah the minotaurs don’t play. I beat the one I encountered but I had a few near-misses along the way.
I met one whilst trying to get back to town in the middle of the night, all battered nd bruised… surprised I pulled through. Very exciting!