Dragon’s Dogma Interview

Computer and Videogames is offering an interview with producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi on the upcoming action-RPG Dragon’s Dogma. Here’s a few snippets on what separates Dragon’s Dogma from most fantasy open-world titles, its international appeal, and a bizarre non-sequitur on the death of turn-based RPGs:

How do you feel it compares with things like Skyrim – what does it offer that they don’t?

We think one of the biggest things that separates Dragon’s Dogma from other games is the Capcom action element. We are very proud of our action games, and we think we have brought that into this action-RPG. As I said earlier, one of the things you can do is grab onto larger enemies. For example, if you grab onto a griffin, and the griffin flies off, as long as you’re still holding on, you can continue that battle in the air and bring it down that way. And you can do things like hold an enemy while your pawns attack them. You can grab enemies and throw them off cliffs. That action element, I think, separates Dragon’s Dogma from a lot of the other fantasy games.

It looks like a game with international appeal – was that conscious or will it sell well in Japan too?

Yes, a lot of consumers in Japan are excited about Dragon’s Dogma – in Famitsu, it’s the number one most requested game. But not a lot of Japanese developers make games like this, so that’s what a lot of Japanese gamers are excited about.

So would you say turn-based JRPGs are dead now?

That’s difficult to answer, as I don’t usually play turn-based RPGs, and I haven’t made any of them either. But in Japan today, they are still popular. However, we’re not really sure how the rest of the world is going to accept turn-based RPGs from now on. For us, we like to focus on the action aspect.

I’d wager that the problem isn’t so much how the world is going to accept turn-based RPGs from now on, but why it doesn’t accept them anymore, with few exceptions.