Why Did Capcom Leave Co-Op Multiplayer Out Of Dragon’s Dogma 2?

As a big fan of Dragon’s Dogma, I have been waiting for a decade to play the next entry in the series, Dragon’s Dogma 2. My love for the game led me to buy it twice on Xbox 360 (including the Dark Arisen expansion), PS3, and then the remastered versions on PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. It was a bit of an obsession.

The Pawn system is the game’s most innovative aspect, allowing players to summon two Hired AI-controlled companions to fight alongside them. You could customize your Pawn in a variety of ways, from its appearance and name to its class, behavior, and equipment. Their personalities, inclinations, and dialogues are meant to give them a lifelike quality, learning and adapting from their experiences. Pawns share their knowledge with both you and other Pawns, including insight into monster weaknesses.

In the introductory level, you control a sword and shield main character with an additional sword and shield wielder. A mage soon follows with buffs, heals, and elemental attacks. There’s also an archer who can keep her distance with a bow or run in with a few slices from her daggers.

“Fire! Lend thy kiss! The mage shouts as fire engulfs your sword and shield. The other shield bearer takes the lead at times, warning that the terrain up ahead is infested with goblins. The archer tells you that “Fire works well!” with them.

I enter the final part of this level, and an angry Chimera appears. The shield bearer uses Shield Summons against the Chimera, luring its attacks to him. The enemy has three parts: a goat’s head, a lion’s body, and a serpent’s tail. The mage Pawn casts Silence on the goat so it can’t cast spells. The archer unleashes a few arrows at the serpent, and then climbs on the creature’s backend to hack away at it. I leap in to attack it from the side where there’s an opening. Once the serpent’s tail is lopped off, the chimera is vulnerable from the back. This gives you and the shield bearer and archer the chance to hop on it and go to town. After the beat down, a heavenly choir performs, indicating that your quest has been fulfilled.

Playing with my friends’ Pawns was one of the most exciting parts of the game. Our Pawns were based on the looks and personalities of our RPG personas: My best friend’s Pawn was short, with a high-pitched voice to emulate the Lalafell he plays in Final Fantasy 14. Before jumping into combat, his Pawn would assess the situation, telling us to be wary of the Snow Harpies in the region who could carry us to our deaths, and wielded a bow and daggers. My Pawn wore shining armor and protected my party with a shield and sword. My other friend’s Pawn was a two-handed warrior who destroyed foes with slow, heavy attacks and went into each battle fearlessly. Even though we weren’t playing together, at least some of the spirit of camaraderie remained.

The Pawn system seemed like the perfect setup for multiplayer support in future games. And guess what? Capcom then released Dragon’s Dogma Online in [2015], a multiplayer game that kept the Pawn system and allowed you to team up with friends. Unfortunately, it never came westward, which was devastating to me. Surely surely Dragon’s Dogma 2 would make the leap to full multiplayer support, right? But then, I read about Dragon’s Dogma 2, and my hopes were crushed. They said it would be a single-player game only.

I sighed when hearing DD’s designer Kento Kinoshita say “Dragon’s Dogma 2 will be a single player game, but with Pawns at your side, it will feel like co-op.” His early mention of this within the game’s promotional materials seems off to me. Clearly, he recognizes the importance of this particular feature, but to try to claim that AI companions (and let’s be clear, ones that don’t have that much to say to you) can in any way replace a proper co-op experience is clearly absurd. The recent information released to the public did not address this further.

The lack of co-op is all the more bizarre given that Capcom has the co-op behemoth Monster Hunter under their wing. Capcom have evidence right there in their gaming catalog about how a co-op mode (even one with mediocre implementation like Monster Hunter) can lift a game to new heights, yet in Dragon’s Dogma 2—which is so reliant on real-time party-based play—they somehow decided it’d be best to omit it. I can’t think of another game crying out for co-op as much as this.

Read Also: Final Fantasy 16’s Clive-Centric Story Was a Bold Move

Taking turns or even jointly climbing up a cyclop’s leg to reach his eye and blind him would be fun with friends. Finding other ways to interact with the boss would be fun too. Since my friend made a smaller character, I could’ve springboarded him off a shield the way my pawn once did to me in DD.

If DD’s original final confrontation is any guide, Dragon’s Dogma 2 will have an intense ending conflict. I can’t help but feel deflated knowing I won’t be able to have that experience with my friends. The final battle with Grigori is an epic encounter in the Everfall, an underground chamber. You confront the powerful dragon in fierce aerial combat, avoiding its devastating breath attacks. Targeting Grigori’s weak points, such as its heart, is crucial. The battle intensifies as Grigori summons minions, testing your resolve. In the climactic final stage, you mount the dragon, attacking its weak spots while enduring its attempts to dislodge you.

The best my friends and I will be able to do is either talk to each other while we play our games separately, or stop our own playthrough and watch each other play.

This is a clearly missed opportunity, especially given Capcom’s recent sales and stock price achievements. Many of their top-selling games have a multiplayer component, namely the Monster Hunter franchise. Perhaps Capcom doesn’t want Monster Hunter and Dragon’s Dogma to compete against each other. With the multiplayer component removed, DD2 will only compete with single player RPGs.

Taking this into account, it would make sense for Capcom to focus on the Pawn system. This was the original game’s biggest selling point, making it stand out among other competitive single player RPGs of the era, such as Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

Despite this disappointment, Dragon’s Dogma 2 can still be a significant improvement over its predecessor. The pawns in the original game didn’t seem very lifelike, frequently repeating the same lines and strategies throughout the 50+ hour journey. As a gamer who loves RPGs, I had to use headcanon to create a deeper connection between my Arisen and their Pawns. Walking between regions was filled with empty dialogue, paling in comparison to that found in Dragon Age and other single-player party-based RPGs. After playing the game multiple times, it became apparent that no matter how much you trained your Pawn, they all fell into similar AI archetypes. If we can’t have friends in our party, then we need dynamic, well-written replacements that feel like actual companions.

To come anywhere close to simulating a proper co-op experience, as Mr. Kinoshita claims it will, Dragon’s Dogma seriously needs to improve on Pawn interactions and dialogue options (because hearing “Fire works well!” over and over from my Pawn and my chosen followers wasn’t enough to satiate my desire to have my friends at my side). So far, the developers haven’t given any indications that major improvements to the Pawn system have been made just yet. Kinoshita only mentions that Pawns have “more precise decisions” than the previous game and that you can “high five” your Pawn after taking down an enemy, but that’s not enough.

Hopefully, we will learn more about how Pawns have improved as Dragon’s Dogma 2’s release date approaches, and the developers will take advantage of the opportunity to flesh Pawns out more as NPCs. I’m willing to sacrifice playing alongside my friends if I can feel a decent connection between me and my chosen Pawns.

Next: Dragon’s Dogma 2 Could Be The Perfect Elden Ring Monster Hunter Mashup