Best grab your walking boots, as Dragon’s Dogma Online is going to be big.
In an interview with Famitsu magazine, the team behind Capcom’s upcoming free-to-play online role-playing sequel revealed that the game world will eventually grow to three times the size of the original single-player game. They also explained that Capcom nearly went with a subscription model for Dragon’s Dogma Online, before deciding to go free-to-play and open it up to more people, reports Siliconera.
Dragon’s Dogma Online is heading to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PC in Japan later this year. It’s one of a number of free-to-play console titles perfect for an Asian gaming market more used to microtransactions, particularly in PC and mobile games. While Capcom currently has no plans to bring Dragon’s Dogma Online to the West, it could help with Sony’s push into new console territories, such as China.
Dragon’s Dogma director Kento Kinoshita is also taking the helm on Dragon’s Dogma Online, with Minae Matsukawa acting as producer. Matsukawa previously produced the Nintendo DS hit Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and its sequel, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. Hiroyuki Kobayashi, the producer of the original game, is the executive producer on this project.
The team explained that Dragon’s Dogma Online will retain the essence of a proper Dragon’s Dogma game, but it contains a completely new story with no connections to other episodes. While the game world will originally be the same size as Dragon’s Dogma — which already felt pretty darn big, especially when you got lost at night — it will grow up to three times larger through expansions.
Players will put together a party of four in a game lobby — with either human companions or A.I. characters — before heading out into the world and taking on huge monsters. A sensible balance of characters will be essential for success.