Reasons Why AI In Dragon's Dogma 2 Will Be Important

Highlights

The Trickster vocation relies on pawns for physical damage, requiring players to focus on distracting enemies.
Pawn support is crucial in boss encounters, as players alone may struggle to overcome powerful enemies.
Players may need to rely on pawns as Sorcerers or Mages to defeat enemies that require magic, necessitating AI improvements.

Capcom's Dragon's Dogma 2 promises a fantastic experience based on recent trailers and gameplay showcases. While it comes as a surprise to many newcomers, fans familiar with the first Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen entry will have anticipated an expanded open world with many improvements. The base game and DLC the first time around provided a fantastic and underrated RPG experience, with Bitterblack Isle doubling down on what the initial campaign had to offer.

Dragon's Dogma 2: 5 Ways The Trickster Vocation Will Change Combat

The new vocation Capcom has showcased in new previews promises an innovative and unique combat experience.

While the developers did a great job, some aspects and behaviors within AI from other NPCs to pawns would break immersion or spoil certain encounters. With the sequel on the horizon, there are a variety of changes and improvements to pawns and AI that are vital to the game's success, especially with the new additions to vocations.

1 Trickster Vocation/Support Class

Players Cannot Deal Physical Damage With New Vocation

With Capcom unveiling the brand new Trickster vocation, which stands as a support class, players will need to rely on their pawns to deal physical damage to opponents. The idea behind this new class is to trick enemies into harming one another or being affected by hallucinations from player skills. A class as such stands more in line with a Mage vocation, but using this will mean players need to keep their distance and focus on distracting enemies.

Considering this, the behavior of pawns must be effective to be able to overcome foes. If pawns do not commit to powerful attacks, or fail to target enemy weak spots, it would make the use of the Trickster vocation much more difficult. Based on what has been revealed so far, it appears as though pawns will operate appropriately when the stakes are high.

2 Boss Encounters

Pawn Support Is Crucial When Encountering Bosses

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen's DLC location, Bitterblack Isle, contains some of the game's most ferocious and powerful enemies, some of which are not considered bosses. Examples of this lie within the likes of the Eliminators, who can instantly put an end to players' attempts to reach the final boss Daimon. Death, who is on a constant lookout for players and their parties, has the capability of putting everyone to sleep and executing them in one shot.

5 Changes Dragon's Dogma 2's Pawn System Needs

With fans anticipating more details on Capcom's next title, hopes for an overhauled pawn system are widespread.

This happens quite often in Dark Arisen, as pawns do not move away from Death's sleeping spell in time, leaving players alone to deal with the situation. There is no doubt that developers at Capcom will be looking to make bosses in the base game of Dragon's Dogma 2 more difficult, so it could be highly beneficial if pawns could act accordingly to each scenario and assist players where it matters most.

3 Different Enemy Types

Bitterblack Isle Features Enemies That Must Be Defeated Using Magic

Since a large majority of enemies within the first game's base campaign could be defeated using any vocation, the DLC featured a drastic change. Most of the difficult enemies within Bitterblack Isle would require some form of magic to be taken down, meaning basic vocations such as Warrior or Fighter would come down to players putting in more work for victory. While those vocations can still be used in the game's DLC, it would mean they would need to rely on their pawns as Sorcerers or Mages.

If Dragon's Dogma 2 is set to operate in the same manner but with the base game this time around, AI would need bigger improvements to cater to players' chosen vocation. This could be done through a feature such as listing favorite spells or skills for pawns to use during combat so that players have more control over which attacks take priority in the heat of the moment.

4 Sorcerer/Mage Keeping Distance

Spell Casting In Dark Arisen Is Slow But Powerful

If players decide to use vocations other than a Mage or a Sorcerer, this would more than likely lead to pawns being given those vocations instead. These two vocations alone are incredibly crucial to players overcoming the odds in battle throughout the experience, as one focuses on healing the party, while the other provides enchantments for players' weapons.

Dragon's Dogma 2: 8 Things The Sequel Should Not Change From The Original Game

The original Dragon's Dogma had a lot for players to love. Here's hoping that the sequel will keep everything that made it great.

While this is the case, it means enemies will often target these pawns to eliminate the threat at once. Since spell casting in Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen was slow but very effective, the same may be the case in the sequel, which leaves the hopes of AI being able to take further steps away from danger to fulfill their attack or healing spell.

5 More Effective Commands

Commands Can Be The Major Difference In Battle

In the same vein as Capcom improving upon AI behavior and commands in the successful Resident Evil 4 Remake, fans will be hoping the same will apply to Dragon's Dogma 2. This is one of the most important aspects of any game, especially an RPG that includes a group of allies working together.

Standing as one of this game's fundamental components, either new commands entirely or quick responses to original commands will be pivotal to each encounter. Whether players want to disengage from difficult combat sequences or target specific areas on monsters, an improvement in this area would be the best way to go about it.