Highlights

  • The game's challenging mechanics, like managing resources and dealing with Dragonsplague, add to its unique charm.
  • Dragonsplague, though underdeveloped, has the potential to reshape gameplay if expanded upon to create more dramatic narratives.
  • Increasing the number of dragon spawns would be one way to do this, having them interrupt boss fights and other moments.

While the excitement surrounding its launch period has died down, Dragon’s Dogma 2 has and will continue to give players adventures to remember. Boasting a huge pseudo-open world packed wall-to-wall with enemies, treasure, and quests, there’s no shortage of experiences to discover in Capcom’s latest fantasy epic. Dragon’s Dogma 2 couldn’t address every complaint directed at its predecessor, but it has managed to deliver the organically unfolding happenings, detailed system interactions, and impressive combat of DD1 to a new audience, and hopefully, its own Dark Arisen expansion is on the way to plug some of its holes.

That’s not to say every bump in the road is a problematic one. Dragon’s Dogma 2’s coarse treatment of the player is part of its charm, putting the onus on them to manage their resources and determine the best course of action in every situation. Even Dragon’s Dogma 2’s fast travel system is mostly set up by the player, for better and for worse. This friction adds to the game’s enabling of every player to forge their own dramatic narratives over the course of gameplay, but there’s one friction-laden feature that DD2 may not have made dramatic enough.

Dragons Dogma 2 Secret Weapon
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Dragon's Dogma 2's Friction May Be Its Secret Weapon

Dragon's Dogma 2 has plenty of controversial features, but they may be the very characteristics that make it such a standout experience.

How Dragonsplague Affects Dragon's Dogma 2

At some point, Dragon's Dogma 2 players will most likely have a run-in with Dragonsplague. This disease only affects Pawns, and will cause them to act unusually independent when it sets in. Increasingly red eyes, headaches, and heightened strength are hallmarks of a Dragonsplague infection, although some Pawns seem to be asymptomatic for a time, and the infection can leave one Pawn and enter another while resting. It’s typically introduced when a Drake grabs a Pawn, but Pawns with Dragonsplague will also appear in DD2's Rift. All of that sounds ominous, but even the automatic warning about Dragonsplague when it first comes into play isn't enough to fully prepare first-timers for its consequences.

Dragonsplague Has Become Part of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s Legacy

Every time players rest with an infected Pawn, there's a chance they will awaken to that Pawn having murdered every NPC within a wide radius and vanished. This is one of the craziest secrets Dragon's Dogma 2 has lying in wait, and is so extreme that it has swayed some opinions toward loving or hating the game. Post-launch research has uncovered plenty of fail-safes to ensure that Dragonsplague cannot ruin save files, but that’s a small comfort to Arisen who just learned about it the hard way. Dragonsplague has become an icon of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s cathartically unforgiving nature, but it's a much less developed feature than that status would imply.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 Could Do Much More With Dragonsplague

The most obvious missed potential for Dragonsplague is right there in its name. Supposedly, the disease turns pawns into more of Dragon's Dogma 2’s Drakes or Lesser Dragons, but there's no correlation between having multiple Pawns fall to it and an increase in dragon attacks. Apart from the initial off-screen massacre having the same unmitigated outcome, the lore and gameplay implications of Dragonsplague are kept separate to each other's detriment. Fortunately, spawning an equivalent to Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen's Cursed Dragon after an outbreak would solve that handily, and that's just the start.

Ensuring Dragonsplague Reshapes Dragon's Dogma 2 Playthroughs

Libraries of voice lines based on a Pawn’s prior personality and knowledge would help these Pawn-dragons fit in with Dragon's Dogma 2 setting, as well as unnerve players when they realize what's happening. Dragonsplague would feel even more devastating if the resulting dragons had a disproportionately high spawn rate next to settlements the player is visiting, guaranteeing that some NPCs would be caught in the ensuing crossfire. Other unique properties, like said dragons interrupting fights against Dragon's Dogma 2’s other large boss monsters, or having the player’s Dragonsplague statistics referenced by the final boss, would give Dragon's Dogma 2's Dragonsplague the teeth it deserves.