Capcom Shares Details on How Pawns Have Improved in Dragon’s Dogma 2

Capcom has recently shared more details on the improved Pawn system of Dragon’s Dogma 2, a unique system of the franchise that allows players to acquire companions named Pawns that were created by other players, serving as your party members in battle.

In the original Dragon’s Dogma game, each player playing the game gets to create one Pawn and customize its class and abilities based on what the player needs, that Pawn is then added online for players to pick up and add to their party as every player can have up to three Pawns at any given time (one being your created Pawn). It’s a unique system that makes it mainly a single-player RPG experience but with some assistance to players due to the Pawn’s abilities and experience.

For Dragon’s Dogma 2, they go deeper into the Pawn system, keeping the core concept intact but improving it based on player feedback from the first game. In an interview courtesy of IGN, the game’s director Hideaki Itsuno starts by saying the first thing they improved in the system is to make sure Pawns don’t repeat the same dialogue over and over.

Itsuno further explains that they wanted to give more personality and character to each Pawn, and have an affinity to not only the player but also other NPCs in the game world, possibly triggering interesting interactions between different NPCs. NPCs have also been improved and relationships between NPCs can change to the point that you can experience different NPCs getting into a fight with each other over the player's character. An interesting example as it will be interesting to see how deep they scripted each character found in Dragon’s Dogma.

The developers also shared that they wanted Pawns and NPCs to be a reliable guide to the player, guiding them to possible paths and points of interest as they didn’t want to clutter the screen with more visual guides through the UI. This will be useful as the developers have crafted the sequel’s map to be four times the size of the original game.

Dragon’s Dogma remains unique in the realm of open world and RPG games thanks to its Pawn system, which allows players to work in tandem with these AI-controlled characters as they are scripted to give players opportunities in battle that could sway the fight. The simplest example of Pawn interactivity would be one Pawn holding down an enemy for the player to freely attack it.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is set to launch on March 22, 2024, on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

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