the last generation to watch the world die !!

The Dragon's Dogma 2 drama has been unyielding - whether it's outrage over misconceptions about its monetization strategy, anger at its "lazy developers only including one save file," or the Dragonsplague being a "game breaking mechanic" by players half-paying attention to tutorial prompts, every single thing I have heard about the game from The Discourse has been negative. Heated. Aghast that such a product would have the audacity to exist.

And yet playing the game I find it's more or less exactly what I expected - a poorly optimized but otherwise sprawling title that merges both Japanese and Western traditions of CRPGs with an engagingly deep combat system, lots of actual expressive space, a ton of work on its Pawn NPC system, and a lot of friction that pushes back against players in the best possible way. It's not without its flaws and frustrations (good lord, the framerate hit in Vernwroth. And if I have to hear about how my entire adventuring party is women one more time I'm gonna lose it). But, broadly speaking, I'm having a wonderful time with it. It's surprised and delighted me several times over the few hours I've explored its world.

Which is weird, right? The discourse is nothing but how much this game sucks, but it's all pretty thoroughly disconnected from whether the game is any good or not.

I've been spared a lot of direct exposure to this specific discourse as someone who's now pretty exclusively a hermit on here and while it doesn't terribly shock me that Dragon's Dogma 2 has been subjected to another round armchair developer takes, the thing that tends to most bum me out about these sorts of conversations with Japanese games specifically on western social media is that they're pretty much always a one-sided conversation. Even putting aside corporate culture/politics differences that tend to make a lot devs disinclined to directly chime in themselves, the language barrier alone means that very few of them are able to meaningfully participate in these conversations surrounding these games. What you get, then, are one-sided discussions that are approaching games like these with limited literacy (at least with Japanese games, but often media more widely) and coming to what I would typically say are, at best, misguided conclusions that are indeed prone to amplifying echo chambers.

I've said it before on Twitter and here and I'll say it again: Japanese open world games have a vastly different lineage informing their design choices than western ones and any superficial similarities to the latter should not be taken to mean they're chasing after the same design goals. Just about every open world game remotely of note these days from overseas gets officially localized and released here in Japan¹; Japanese devs absolutely pay attention to current releases and dissect the hell out of their inner workings. When their own contributions buck particular trends, more likely than not, they're doing so quite cognizantly in pursuit of different design objectives and aspirations. To assume otherwise as has so routinely been the case, even from other developers overseas like what we saw with western devs dogpiling on From for their decisions with Elden Ring's map, is deeply condescending. Amazing how when you dedicate five-plus years of your life to making one of these mammoth games, you try to do so with a little intentionality no matter which country you're making it!

There are many reasons why I think this is prone to happening to Japanese games especially; some of it's probably a holdover of derisiveness towards them when the industry was struggling in the early HD years and some of it's probably also rooted in the sort of orientalist infantilizing that remains rampant throughout much of western culture. But as someone who obviously dedicates his work and life to studying these things, it's so tiring to see these sorts of discussions take bad faith turns as rapidly and routinely as they do without any involvement from the people who know their games and their industry and their history best. DLC foibles aside—and I really do think publishers need to knock it off when it comes to not divulging that stuff until after reviews hit and the game is out—I know that history is probably going to vindicate this game specifically just fine. (I myself have my copy coming in later today!) It's just hard not to feel completely detached from so much of the discourse surrounding it and so, so many other games as someone who just has a fundamentally different relationship with them even before I got into localization. And the silence on the part of outlets who choose, time and time again, not to seek out experts who could shine a light on these sorts of things is particularly deafening and goes a long way to ensuring nothing all that productive comes out of these conversations.

1. I'm not joking, even stuff like the Saint's Row reboot comes out here and then crashes and burns like everywhere else. Nobody living here has to go to the specialty import stores to get their fix these days; they're as established among hardcore players here as anything else.

it's called "Let's Play Life"

it is a very long post that took multiple months to write. you can read it completely for free on my blog here: http://ellaguro.blogspot.com/2024/03/lets-play-life.html

here's a choice quote:

the internet has produced many things, but its driving force is cowardice. it's there in the collective failure to conceptualize how the things one does online manifest themselves in the larger world. it's there in the lionization of an almost spiritual level of intellectual laziness in the need to endlessly double down on whatever your personal brand becomes. it's there in the desire to tear down anyone who might attempt to shine a light on your own personal failures and limitations, in either your work or your larger perspective on the world. the internet is a refuge for the bad faith. it's a place to endlessly to celebrate your own fragility and inflexibility. it's a zone where we can magically reframe and hold up all our own failures of imagination as actually pretty fucking epic. to paraphrase something Matt Christman has often said: whatever happens, just say you've won. ultimately your own fantasy conception about what you're doing matters more than anything that might actually come out of it, especially if you've managed to successfully sell the importance of it to enough other people. we're all just performing elaborate shell games on each other in an attempt to feel better about ourselves.

if you enjoy it, please support me on patreon - i'm not in good financial shape right now. https://www.patreon.com/ellaguro

I read this post over a few days last week and it rules

this is the RPG version of Fucking Going For It imo