Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen – Trabajo atrasado brutal

Brutal Backlog es una función semirregular en la que el equipo de JDR revisa algunos de los juegos no jugados en sus estantes (tanto digitales como físicos), sin tener en cuenta su edad o las limitaciones técnicas de su época. Solo los mejores títulos resistirán el escrutinio actual. 

Recuerdo haber visto Dragon’s Dogma cuando se lanzó y me atrajo su estilo de fantasía práctico. Eventualmente obtuvo ventas y críticas modestas, luego fue enterrado en su mayoría y solo quedaron unos pocos fanáticos fervorosos, lo que se sumó a su mística. Entrando lo más razonablemente ciego que pude, me dispuse a probar si Dark Arisen, su relanzamiento ampliado, se pasa por alto como siempre me pareció.

Una hora y media en:

Todo comienza con una apertura alargada, que recuerda mucho a Vagrant Story : ruinas medievales arenosas y ardientes que albergan batallas prolongadas, libradas por guerreros de moda que intercambian palabras arcaicas y elegantes.

Soy el Resucitado, una vez un pescador de la aldea de Cassardis cuyo corazón fue literalmente robado por el dragón Grigori y ahora soy la única persona capaz de derribarlo, con la ayuda de compañeros de IA designados mágicamente llamados ‘peones’. Durante la pantalla de creación de personajes, noté que la altura estándar era bastante alta para el campesino de antaño que supuestamente eres; resulta que esta estatura es suficiente para superar a la mayoría de sus conciudadanos y, en menor medida, a la gente de la capital, proporciones heroicas, por así decirlo. El creador es más adecuado para hacer figuras más grandes que la vida, no tanto las extrañas caricaturas que tiendo a hacer en juegos como estos, pero logré concebir a Erdna, un duende duro y valiente, como mi peón permanente. ‍ Dos horas en:

En el tiempo que se tarda en terminar cómodamente los propios beat ‘em ups de D&D de Capcom, es cuando comienza Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen . Inicialmente, te adormece hasta el tedio: en un momento estás matando pequeños conejos por tu cuenta, y luego, media hora después, te enfrentas a enormes monstruos míticos. Todavía eufórico por los encuentros que destrozan la monotonía, deambulo por una cueva lúgubre fuera de los caminos trillados y recibo mi primera muerte en cuestión de segundos. Esta experiencia sin ceremonias me enseñó dos cosas, que el manejo de la linterna es una habilidad esencial y que el juego es indiferente a dónde eliges ir, para bien o para mal. A diferencia de la vegetación constantemente azotada por el viento, el paso del tiempo es muy suave, es de noche antes de que me dé cuenta.

Cuatro horas en:

Una misión de escolta novedosa, que lleva a la capital una cabeza cortada de la hidra que inició la trama; comenzar al anochecer probablemente no era la mejor opción, pero hizo que el viaje fuera más emocionante. El tiro con arco es duro, especialmente contra las hordas de arpías, los primeros enemigos voladores y los terceros de la mitología griega. Llegué a Gran Soren, sede de Gransys, un ducado costero. Si bien las criaturas pueden ser la tarifa estándar de un juego de rol y la ropa de Cassardian podría ser una coincidencia, la mención de los mirmidones y la venta de mithridate es para mí prueba suficiente para señalar a Dragon’s Dogma como una amalgama imaginaria de la Grecia antigua y la medieval. Es una decisión muy bienvenida, pero me hizo preguntarme por qué la antigüedad está tan infrautilizada y comúnmente relegada a los juegos de estrategia, tal vez sea la gran influencia de Tolkien, tal vez provenga de las películas, ¿Cuáles tienen un sesgo de género similar? Tal vez me estoy desviando un poco del tema original…

Una oscuridad más realista en los juegos es algo que desearía que fuera mucho más común. 

‍ ‍ Ocho horas en:

El último par de horas se dedicaron principalmente a realizar misiones y morir a menudo, mientras lograba una comprensión constante de los múltiples sistemas de DD: DA . Saltar, buscar cofres a través de las almenas en ruinas fuera de Gran Soren me recordó a Central Hyrule en The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild , la disposición de la geografía, el flujo de su recorrido y uno o dos enemigos menores, todo sugiere posibles inspiraciones. por ese titulo.

Trece horas en:

Cuanto más lo juego, más me parece una interpretación moderna de los Blobbers de la década de 1980, que a su vez estaban mucho más cerca de los juegos de rol de lápiz y papel de lo que se había convertido el género en 2012. Como esos, se necesitan muchas agallas pero te deja entrar en más gloria también. Es una sensación especial cuando la puntuación normalmente bastante esporádica aumenta con lo que está en juego en una batalla y, después de varios minutos de lucha, recompensa tu triunfo con una fanfarria grandilocuente antes de desvanecerse en la charla posterior al enfrentamiento y los sonidos centelleantes de los suministros recolectados.

Descubrí que esta versión inicia al jugador con un Eternal Ferrystone en su alijo. Este artículo te permite viajar rápido, y aunque Capcom no cambió la descripción para que coincida con su distinción de los Ferrystones normales, asumo que lo implementaron porque, aunque sabroso, probablemente no valía la pena el trabajo que implicaba.

Fourteen Hours In:

This was almost hour thirteen again, went long without manually saving and didn’t feel like waiting around to die while on a lengthy escorting journey. I froze while getting back to the menu, uncomfortably confident that I’d just lost important progress. As it turns out, the option to restore the latest checkpoint is a bit misleading, as it takes you to where you last slept and you need to access the main menu to come back to the last save on the field, which is normally the most recent one. In their defence, it says so in the explanation for the checkpoint; in mine, inventory and menu navigation takes more inputs than necessary. it can get aggravating in critical situations, and in this case the hurry caused me to see it a fraction of a second too late. Talk of running from fights happens every once in a while and it should always be in the back of a player’s mind, in fact, in addition to worldbuilding, the pawn chatter acts as an organic hint system, and it saved me at least once from wasting more time on a specific unkillable adversary. 

Unlike what one might initially expect from its title, spotting a so-called wyrm in DD:DA is in truth an extraordinary occurrence, and for the very first time I happened upon a comparatively small one while roaming the land, although its ruthlessness and level advantage were a bit too evident for me to engage it, especially after the latest odyssey.

Confrontation is DD’s central tenet; fights are frequently long, arduous and dramatic

‍‍Twenty Hours In:

There’s plenty of freedom to go about however you choose. Even though that means you’ll learn some very tough lessons, they’ll at worst come at a deliberate pace. Some highlights from the latest expeditions:‍-Cleared a dungeon well before finding its respective quest, then had to haul back a bulky slate from my inventory.

-Soon after, I found my first Portcrystal, heavy items that act as mobile fast travel spots, which given the oddly shaped and largely unexplored territory, currently don’t feel that useful for a first time Arisen, although the concept is promising.

-Since it had been available for a while and I had grown about a dozen levels since, I visited Bitterblack Isle, the only Dark Arisen-exclusive area. Got promptly mauled to death by poisonous wolves in the very first room.

-Had my first ragequit, was slapped by a flailing cyclops near the end of an hour-long mission, fell to my death. Not unlike the previously mentioned old school RPGs, DD has a propensity to heavily punish most amounts of carelessness: another lesson learned.

Twenty-two and a Half Hours In:

Finally set aside some time to experiment with combining; while fairly complex, in the sense that you can turn a lot of items into a lot of other items, it takes very little tinkering to create potions, and the average player probably won’t need much more than that.

Twenty-seven Hours In:

Even though there aren’t as many unique locations as similar open world titles, every one important enough to get its own map marker feels distinct. That also got me thinking about how much of the level design is based around chokepoints, no doubt as a measure to save on resources (both in processing and development), but it also acts as a clever excuse to create very tense encounters and enable specific tactics not viable in broader spaces.

In one particularly tight spot, my merry band faced a creature that could very well have been the origin of BotW’s Igneo Talus, a climbable rock giant with sparkly weak points, which trigger a fiery full body explosion after a few too many blows. Soon after, we had a climactic ascent through a crumbling tower with ever diminishing solid ground, paired with an anticlimactic gryphon encounter. While the unexpected aid of a grateful acquaintance did cut the moment short,  it revealed to me that some quests can and will directly affect others. 

The game’s design philosophy is discreet; even the graphics take some time to be thoroughly appreciated

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Thirty-three Hours In:

Despite intending not to do it at the start of the game, I decided to change my vocation from Strider to Assassin and Erdna’s to Warrior from Fighter, since levels seem to grow linearly and vocation ranks are tied to player performance, so they tend to increase faster as time goes on. I had my second romp through the Catacombs (most dungeons are used in more than one quest, which unlock shortcuts and alternate paths with each excursion) and made my way through the very Lost Woods-like Witchwood. In between these adventures, I took some errands to try and prove the innocence of a fat cat from the capital. In truth, this and some other episodes have started giving me the impression I’m not being quite a champion of the people, though thankfully my yes-man nature was not enough to hinder justice.

Thirty-four Hours In:

Ever heard that nonsensical factoid about bending over to grab 100 bucks on the ground not being worth a billionaire’s time? It becomes actually true here, the game never stops spawning small bags that are worth just 100 gold even when you’re in the 7 digits and it only feels reasonable if you’re waiting for a round of healing after a skirmish. I know they didn’t need to do that because there’s a subtle rebalancing of enemies and other rewards to keep things engaging – possibly an oversight?

Thirty-six Hours In:

Oddly, it has gotten progressively more enjoyable in the last dozen hours and even a tad easier as time went on, I attribute this partly to my now decent understanding of most mechanics and mostly to DD’s biggest strength, the skillful blending of the (relatively) mundane and the marvellous. Chaos-dunking skeleton mages and witnessing their limbs break off into spinning tops seems like it’s going to amuse me for a good while still.

Despite getting better at combat and management, I’m still not confident enough for a “healerless” party, although mages without a focus on healing do feel more viable now.

Most loading screen tips are at once warm and ominous, like a villain’s ambiguous advice

‍‍Forty Hours In:

…and Grigori claims I’m still not strong enough, although my embarrassing performance against a cockatrice not too long before that seems to corroborate the dragon’s opinion.”Shall we jump? It might shorten our path, or our lives” is an apparently throwaway comment your pawns might make at the edge of a precipice, but it does become poignant if you, like I did, hear it for the first time after the characters have been through so many adversities.

And now I have access to what looks to be the final boss.

Forty-one Hours In:

I figured I should do a few more pending quests; there’s indication this will be another point of no return. And a tip to prospective heroes: have your lantern lit at all times, I realised it late, but you get oil with such ease that constantly turning it off and on isn’t worth it, and it will alleviate some of the more menial tasks that come with inventory management.

Forty-six Hours In:‍

After four tries and two hours from first entering the dungeon, the dragon is no more. The first half of the confrontation is all through QTEs and I illogically assumed the curatives scattered around weren’t going to be needed. I do appreciate how your comrades stoically land by your side from the top of the screen at the start of the second phase.

I did quickly get much better at dragon slaying, but there was an uncertainty about his actions that had me constantly adjusting my tactics. In fact, all through the game enemies seemed to do this to some extent, which coupled with nifty touches such as certain foes occasionally rolling on the ground to extinguish their fire lest their posse goes up in flames, gives many encounters a strong sense of dynamism.

Erdna, trusty as usual, bravely sacrificed herself for the cause, and I don’t think I’m going to respawn her after that, for role-playing’s sake.

Forty-seven Hours In:

‍The defeat of the “final” boss doesn’t actually end the game, another feature I believe is underused. I have to go back on my plan of keeping Erdna away, the battles have become too drawn out at this point in the game, a trio is not enough for a reasonable pace.

Its themes permeate the whole experience, it’s a shame they couldn’t be explored to their intended extent…

‍‍‍Forty-nine Hours and Forty-five Minutes In:

‍I’d been on this particular main quest for hours with very slow progress. With the exception of the grandiose conclusion to Grigori’s saga, the game’s production values and plot  appear to have gone through the floor (in more ways than one), it’s the least amount of fun I’ve had with the game.  There was some padding in other forms before, but this one is too brazen, so much so that I had to break my vow and look up what I could be doing instead, or at least what followed this part…

There isn’t much after the part I stopped, definitely not enough to justify having Gransys suddenly turn for the worse after the false final boss has been defeated. I am aware there’s an actual final boss, which they decided to keep despite scrapping a fair chunk of the content leading up to it, it’s just that I believe the adventure promised to me is already through. Ultimately, my annoyance comes from being right about my growing concerns over the “rest” of the content, which does put a dent on my overall experience even if I’m free to stop wherever I please.

Dragon’s Dogma is openly incomplete; in a way that’s so evident, it’s hard to believe given its pedigree. The clues are plentiful: a main quest that jumps from one major plot point to another with little breathing room or meat, several allusions to seemingly undiscovered places, people and creatures, important-looking but underused locations and most stunning of all, somehow no artist redrew the map so as to not dedicate the entire left half of its landmass exclusively to teasing players. Did the resources run out and this was their way of sticking it to the suits? I was better off not knowing how much content didn’t make it, although I do have to give credit to the developers for overlooking arguably secondary aspects in favour of keeping the remarkable gameplay mechanics unscathed. 

Final VerdictLong before I finished writing this article I knew this wasn’t quite like any other game, but even that’s a bit of an understatement, it astonishes me that such a bold, spartan AAA title like this exists and can be so enjoyable even in a plainly unfinished state, given how risk averse major developers have become since the late 2000s and how underwhelming Capcom’s output was at the time. Worst of all, it came out in a then recently formed post-Skyrim, post-Dark Souls world, which I’m sure earned it many warranted and unwarranted comparisons and most likely less recognition than it deserved (although Aonuma et al. are clearly big fans). Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is roughly 60% of a masterpiece, and you’ll have a blast as long as you enjoy some tough love and don’t mind being reminded of what could have been.