Dragon’s Dogma 2 has an intriguing, in-depth character creator. I’ve seen some great characters
Dragon’s Dogma 2 has an intriguing, in-depth character creator. I’ve seen some great characters and Pawns created – albeit far too many Targaryens – but I've also seen how incredibly limiting the tool can be. While you can customise your Arisen’s face down to the last freckle, you can morph yourself into anyone from Khal Drogo to Baron Harkonnen (I’ve seen both), there are just two species to choose from.
This isn’t a problem with the game, far from it. It’s just an interesting dynamic. Why, when there are so many unfathomable options for customising your face, are we limited to two species? I immediately thought back to Baldur’s Gate 3 , which had a similarly in-depth character creator, but allowed you to choose from 11 different species to represent yourself. Sure, four of these are variations on Human or Elf, and another three are for our short-statured counterparts, but that’s still a wide variety of options.
I was gutted that Grung weren’t an option in Baldur’s Gate 3, but they’re basically homebrewed in D&D so I don’t feel too hard done by.
We know that Capcom hasn’t been shy about limiting your options as a player in Dragon’s Dogma 2 . Fast travel, Dragonsplague , the list goes on. Not everything revolves around you. And the world isn’t intended to be sculpted by your every whim. That goes for your quests, your impact on the environment, and the species you can play as. And while some things, like fast travel, are clearly prohibitively expensive so that the developers can shepherd you into playing the way the game was intended, your character creation choices are limited only by the world they designed.
The only three sapient species I’ve met in Dragon’s Dogma 2 are humans, Beastren (that’s us lion bois), and a singular Elf. The game takes place in two regions, Vermund and Battahl, which are the homes of the two main species, the humans and the Beastren respectively. I’ve no idea where the elves are, why I’ve only met one, or what’s going on there. Can you tell I didn’t play the first game?
So this is a narrative decision. The Arisen, and therefore your playable character, can be human or Beastren. The two regions we explore are mostly occupied by humans and Beastren. Other than all the less-than-sapient species that we slaughter with abandon, of course. So why doesn’t this choice play into the narrative?
Humanity and Beastrenity(?) seem to live happily side by side. Apart from noting that I may be a furry if I have a party of all Beastren, nobody seems to treat me any differently than if I was a human. I read one flyer nailed to the wall in Vernworth that said Beastren were charged more for goods in the city than humans, but I have no way of testing if that’s true. I’m not exactly asking for the heavy-handed “knife-ear” slurs of anti-Elf bigotry, but a Beastren character should feel the friction between the two species more acutely.
The politics between the two species is tricky on a grand scale, but you don’t feel it on the ground. Capcom has missed an opportunity here, as limiting the playable species means you can easily script perfect dialogues between characters, you can work out exactly how the two interact in every instance without worrying about the knock-on effects on every other race.
Even if I feel that more could be done with the species in Dragon's Dogma 2, the decision to force players to choose between just two is intriguing. It's slightly abrasive, in that way that this game loves to be, and it draws me into the world more than any story about the Arisen.
