Dragon?s Dogma & Skyrim ? Learning from Each Other

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Krantos

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So I picked up Dragon?s Dogma the other day. It?s a very good game all around. Not necessarily one for the ages, but definitely better than it could have been and well worth the $60 price tag.

As a long-time Elder Scrolls fan, it was impossible to avoid comparing it to Skyrim, however, and, to my very pleasant surprise, it actually held up pretty well. I wouldn?t say it?s as good as Skyrim, but it definitely gets a few things right that Bethesda could learn from. It must be said, though, there is one significant thing Capcom needs to learn from Skyrim for the (hopeful) sequel.

First off, the biggest thing TES could learn from Dragon?s Dogma is simple: Make Combat Satisfying. As much as I have loved the Elder Scroll series, combat has always been back-burner stuff. It?s there and it gets the job done, but it?s never been anything special. Skyrim, imo, has the best combat the series has seen thus far, but it still falls short of being much of a star. Dragon?s Dogma?s combat, on the other hand, is the primary reason to play the game. Which is good, since there isn?t much else to do in it, but that?s another story.

The reason DD?s combat is noteworthy is how satisfying it is. Whether it?s scaling a Cyclops to stab it in the eye, or dropping a hobgoblin that was about to pick on your mage, there is a sense of empowerment and satisfaction with almost every action. It?s fast, and engaging, and all those other buzzwords. The next TES game could gain a lot if it borrowed a few tricks from DD.

The other thing DD gets (mostly) right that Skyrim falters on is companions. Even though the setup is a little weird (emotionless, lifeless, pseudo-humans sworn to do my bidding? Er, OK), the Pawns in DD are some of the best implemented companions in a non-turn-based style game (no Dragon Age does not count since it?s essentially based on the turn-based structure). The fact that they are actually helpful, necessary even, and can even utilize different tactics based on the type of enemy you?re facing makes them incredibly noteworthy. Despite having no personality at all (and seriously needing to STFU ? Yes I know the Cyclops has but one eye. WHAT DO YOU THINK I?VE BEEN STABBING!?!?!?), they manage to be the most believable companions I?ve encountered. The companions in Skyrim simply don?t act human, at all. They immediately charge in your line of fire, blast you with spells, and generally cause more mayhem than good. I like the fact the game includes them, but would prefer them to be more believable.

That?s all well and good, but what about the thing I said Skyrim could teach DD? Well, if you?ve played both games much, you probably already know:

World Building.

Whatever faults TES has, the thing that keeps drawing me back is the world. Tamriel (the continent the Elder Scrolls series takes place on) feels like a real place. It has a rich history, a slew of different cultures, and feels generally fleshed out (ok, so the people who inhabit it tend to feel wooden, but come on, I?m trying to make a point here?). Spend some time reading the 300+ books in Skyrim and you get a feel for just how deep the creators went when making this thing. You feel like everything and everyone in the world has a place and a history.

That?s something that DD lacks.

Gransys is nice enough and open enough. It just feels sterile. I?d like to know more history so I can ground myself in that world. Give me some references here. Yes, you do learn some history from the story missions, but it?s plot specific history. It gives the feeling that only you and the important plot characters really exist. No one else really has any back story or relevance.

That?s what DD needs to work on for the sequel. Make me care about Gransys. Make me feel like it?s worth saving. Sure the combat is fun, but I need more context. Make me want to fight that Gryphon because it?s threatening a village of people I know rather than simply because it?s an awesome fight (it is a great fight, but that?s beside the point).

And make job quests more purposeful. Rather than making me kill X number of wolves. Spawn a beefed up one (Or an especially aggressive pack) and tell me it?s been harassing travelers on the road from Cardasiss and Gran Soren. As simple as Skyrim?s Radiant quests are, they at least give some context to what they are about.

Personally, I like both games a great deal. I think they both have something valuable to give, and would simply like their sequels to learn a few tricks from the other so they can be even better.
 
Dec 14, 2009
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Agreed.

The day a game comes along that has the best aspects of the Elder Scrolls and Dragon's Dogma, will be a game for the ages.
 

TrevHead

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To me ES has always been about First Person combat, whilst DD is a 3rd person that copies from Dark Souls.

How does Skyrim stack up against other 1st person melee titles like Zeno Clash and Mount and Blade?
 

Krantos

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Anthraxus said:
What's the point in building a nice world and having all this exploration if it just leads to crappy, unsatisfying combat anyway ? Kinda defeats the purpose.
Personal choice there.

I love exploration, so I can handle a lack luster combat system if there are interesting places/things/etc to discover and explore.

Whereas, if the combat is interesting but the world empty, I can't get into it (see Two Worlds II).
 

triggrhappy94

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The OP is alittle long and I am planning on reading more of it, but if there's anthing we should see more of in the industry it's devs learning (not copying) from each other.
 

Krantos

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Anthraxus said:
The combat in Two Worlds 2 is good ?
Lol, I said it was interesting. Not quite the same thing. It did let me use spears though, so it got a lot of credit for that.


Anthraxus said:
The only thing good about Skyrim's world is the scenery and landscapes. It sure as hell isn't the dungeons, people, monsters and things that fill it.
Personal taste. The fact that most people had a back story and personality made up for the fact that they looked and acted like stick figures.

As for the dungeons. I actually really liked them. They over used the "spin the pillars" puzzle, but the general layouts were nice, and (again with context) I liked that many had a story behind them. It made them feel like more than just holes with monsters in them.

Monsters I'm ambivalent on. They didn't bug me, but they didn't really excite me either. Like the combat, I figure they got the job done, nothing more.

A lot of people see combat as being the most important aspect to a game. It's generally what they think of when they talk gameplay. How the combat works and who your enemies are, therefore, become the most important aspects. While I think those things are important, I'm generally willing to forgive them being lack luster as long as the other elements make up for it.

Bear in mind, though, that only works if they are fair to middling. If they are downright broken (by which I mean "doesn't work", not "exploitable"), the game isn't likely to recover.
 

Baralak

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Anthraxus said:
Krantos said:
Anthraxus said:
What's the point in building a nice world and having all this exploration if it just leads to crappy, unsatisfying combat anyway ? Kinda defeats the purpose.
Personal choice there.

I love exploration, so I can handle a lack luster combat system if there are interesting places/things/etc to discover and explore.

Whereas, if the combat is interesting but the world empty, I can't get into it (see Two Worlds II).
The combat in Two Worlds 2 is good ? The only thing about Skyrim's world is the scenery and landscapes. It sure as hell isn't the dungeons, people, monsters and things that fill it.
Really? I loved the dungeons in Skyrim. They were nice and varied, although could have used a little bit of platforming. Stil, they were full of enemies that were nicely designed, and I loved going through them. Skyrim was the first Elder Scrolls game to suck me in, where Morrowind and Oblivion failed. Although I'm messing around in Morroblivion and having some fun.
 

LetalisK

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TrevHead said:
To me ES has always been about First Person combat, whilst DD is a 3rd person that copies from Dark Souls.

How does Skyrim stack up against other 1st person melee titles like Zeno Clash and Mount and Blade?
I don't think you could even compare Skyrim and Mount and Blade. Or Mount and Blade with much of anything, really. Mount and Blade is its own animal. A genetically mutated animal created when a mad scientist forced several different genres to fuck and spawn something that can't beat its parents at their own game, but through sheer determination and the fact that it has so many varied aspects makes it good in its own right.
 

AwkwardTurtle

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Although I'm not a huge fan of Skyrim myself, I will agree that the world did feel a bit sterile most of the time. Sure, they populated it with a seemingly obscene number of NPCs, but only a handful of NPCs are ever characterized at all.

Honestly, I did get attached to a few of the characters in Dragon's Dogma, BUT (and this is a big one) only after reading up on the backstories of some of the characters that is presented in the Dragon's Dogma Wiki.

A really good example of this is the character Quina. The way she is introduced in the game I was very much confused as to who she was and how she was related to me, the main character. At first I thought it was my was possibly my sister or family member since my main character seemed very determined to defend her and she was also the first one to come to the aid of the main character.

Then I woke up and talked to her. Since the game has some strange kind of old English dialect going for it, when talking to me she said something like "You seem tired, don't overexert yourself, cos". Then I was thinking to myself "Ohhh she's my cousin. Got it." Then everyone in town called me "cos" and I realized that that was just the term people called each other. I was left still being very confused about who the hell Quina was and my relationship to her.

Finally, I decided to look up Quina on the Dragon's Dogma wiki. I could copy paste it here, but you can look it up if you so desire. The gist of it is that Quina is actually a childhood friend of yours who has powers of healing magic that she has been training all these years because you (the main character) often got hurt defending her from bullies.

This kind of characterization is the thing that suddenly made me care about Quina as a character. The frustrating thing about it though is that none of this was implemented into the game. I found the backstory of Quina to be sweet. As a sidenote to this, it made me think that this game really could have been helped out by an old-school instruction manual that included a synopsis on various important characters.

Anyway, yeah the lack of detail given to players in-game about the characters around them really disappoints me when I see that there has some interesting backstory has been created for the characters. (At least the main ones.)

Also definitely agree with the way the pawns were done in this game. Although I can say that they can be excessively chatty at times, their ability to 'learn' and adapt to situations based on acquired knowledge is absolutely amazing. I personally liked the subtle emphasis on the relationship between the Arisen and the Main Pawn. I don't want to give out any spoilers, but I really liked the way that bits and pieces about this relationship can be revealed.

Also, I loved the ending to this game.

Just because I really liked Dragon's Dogma I'm just going to gush one of the little touches I loved in this game.

I loved the fact that in one quest where you have to defeat a goblin leader if you stay in the room to fight him then after a certain point he tries to run away by jumping out the window. Then you're left with a quick on the spot-decision. You can try to immediately run and jump out the window after him, but this may lead to certain death due to fall damage, or you can try to run down some stairs and try jumping from a shorter distance, but the leader might have already escaped at that point. Another option would be to stand there confused. xD You may or may not catch up to the goblin leader to finish the kill. I don't know if this has any story changes, but I thought it was cool. Also if you grab the goblin leader and throw him outside of the room before doing too much damage you can actually manage to just kill him on the spot without the fleeing cutscene triggering. I just found it to be a nice touch.

Another moment I found to be quite cool was that during the quest to investigate the Everfall, only one of the pawns I hired had quest knowledge about this particular quest. So, when I triggered the sequence that summoned a bunch of tentacles, this pawn knew that we should all run away, and told me to do the same. So, of course I ran like crazy. However, my main pawn and the other pawn I hired didn't have previous knowledge of this so they initially stayed and attempted to fight the never ending group of tentacles. They died before they had a chance to run and I just did not want to go back to try and revive them so I just kept running with the hired pawn that knew to run. Then as it showed a little cutscene of my escape I liked the fact that only myself and the one pawn were shown running out the door.

There are other moments like these where the little touches I noticed just made me smile. :D
 

Dr. Mongo

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Intriguing. I was wondering if I should buy DD, but now I am convinced to do so. I loved Skyrim with all its flaws and perks, but I played it to death. Something new would be nice - even if it is flawed in certain areas.
Let's be honest: there has been no RPG as of yet that hasn't had at least one point that was disappointing.
Perfection... now that would be something, but while I wait for that (I AM an idiot dreamer optimist) I'd like to play a few games.
 

Cobbs

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Skyrims Dogma anybody?
Get the modding community onto this immediately!
 

kyogen

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I like the spare, rather philosophic story in Dragon's Dogma. If Capcom wants to expand its in-game lore in a sequel, that might be all right, but I wouldn't want DD to end up like TES, which is drowning in lore that has little to do with how games in the franchise actually play. DD's story is actually built right into its mechanics in a really interesting way. Having a somewhat distant relationship to the in-game universe is also part of it, though why that is doesn't become clear until the endgame, and even then it depends on the player's choices. I love that.

I enjoy TES games for the sneaky kills and guild quests.

RPG developers might be wise to study each others' games, but they need to protect and promote their own ideas as well. I really don't want them to make their games indistinguishable.
 

Zio_IV

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Sep 17, 2011
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Even though I liked DD far better than Skyrim, I'm inclined to agree with you on all points. It's true that Gransys wasn't really given much in the way of background, at least certainly not in the way Tamriel has. DD was more about the Arisen (read: you) and his/her role in the coming days. Not to mention giving Gransys an extensive background might have subverted the absolute mind-blowing ending a tad. Still, a little more info on this land we're travelling couldn't have hurt, I agree.

There were a good number of "kill x amount of this enemy" quests, but fortunately, the quests that actually had substance were good and the fodder quests didn't take much time and never got in your way or expire at some point. You could just accept them and go about your normal business, and achieve them without thinking about them. This makes the fodder quests in DD a far sight better than in other games, but they're still exactly that: fodder. I'll agree that a little deviation with this sort of thing would go a long way, such as having elite mobs and such, so hopefully we'll see something like that in the future.

All in all, though, it really just comes down to what you as the player wanted from the game. Both Skyrim and DD are great, I just happened to enjoy DD a whole lot more. Doesn't make Skyrim bad, just not what I personally wanted out of an RPG. DD isn't perfect, oh no, but it has amazing potential. I can't wait to see what they do with it.

...I just hope they don't give us another Ur-Dragon mechanic. I swear, that is the only thing in DD that I (personally) thought was stupid and inconsistent. Aside from that, game was awesome.
 

Shuguard

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AwkwardTurtle said:
Also, I loved the ending to this game.
Which one? There's supposed to be at least four different endings.

Zio_IV said:
...I just hope they don't give us another Ur-Dragon mechanic. I swear, that is the only thing in DD that I (personally) thought was stupid and inconsistent. Aside from that, game was awesome.
It's kinda weird Capcom didn't do a good job with that one. Even though they are the makers/publishers of the monster hunter series. Overall it is a fun fight, but the part of the wings only ranged can really hit was lame. Unless you jump up and down trying to smack the wings which takes forever.
 

Zio_IV

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Shuguard said:
AwkwardTurtle said:
Also, I loved the ending to this game.
Which one? There's supposed to be at least four different endings.

Zio_IV said:
...I just hope they don't give us another Ur-Dragon mechanic. I swear, that is the only thing in DD that I (personally) thought was stupid and inconsistent. Aside from that, game was awesome.
It's kinda weird Capcom didn't do a good job with that one. Even though they are the makers/publishers of the monster hunter series. Overall it is a fun fight, but the part of the wings only ranged can really hit was lame. Unless you jump up and down trying to smack the wings which takes forever.
Well, what I meant by "stupid and inconsistent" wasn't about the actual fight itself. The Ur-Dragon is a strange fight, and yes, the wings are a little difficult, but the battle altogether was fine.

But when you are playing an entirely single-player experience, doing everything by yourself, by your own hand, it's jarring to be given a boss out of the blue that's influenced by the actions of all the other players in the server. It never crops up anywhere else, it's just the Ur-Dragon. It may have sounded good on paper, but it sapped all of the fun out of the fight for me. Not to mention that because of its healing mechanics, it becomes all too easy for people to grief other players by simply going into the fight, and being killed/ferrystone/leaving the area, causing the boss to heal itself. This creates a situation wherin your skills and abilities you've gained up till that point count for next-to-nothing. Suddenly, the outcome of the fight is largely taken out of your hands.

And before anyone tells me that there's multiplayer due to the pawn system, two points:

a). You're never required to venture forth with pawns, even your own. But more importantly...

b). There are no fundamental differences between player-made pawns, and those inherent to the game, like Rook. Being able to hire other people's pawns is simply choosing to bolster your single-player party. It doesn't create some quasi-multiplayer experience.

So yeah, for all the flaws in DD, small or glaring, the Ur-Dragon is the only thing I had issues with. It makes no sense to have it there.