GDC 2013: Dragon's Dogma Was Originally Twice as Large, Featured Hang Gliders

21
Lee Bradley

Director Hideaki Itsuno discussed the development of Dragon's Dogma at the Game Developers Conference today, outlining the struggles he had in creating the game.

Among the many subjects covered by Itsuno in the talk, titled Behind the Scenes of Dragon's Dogma, the director explained just how hard he found selling the game's concepts to Capcom, and some of the sacrifices he had to make to remain on budget.

Itsuno says that in 2008, when work on Dragon's Dogma began in earnest, “open-world hadn't reached the mainstream, especially in Japan.” Indeed, such was the Capcom's insularity that even Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was “almost unheard of” at the publisher.

The biggest problem Itsuno faced, however, was communicating the potential of Dragon's Dogma's Pawn system.

In Dragon's Dogma, each player has access to Pawns; AI-controlled players with customisable abilities. These Pawns can then be shared online between players, picking up knowledge, rewards and experience as they go.

However, Itsuno wasn't able to convince Capcom that it was a fun idea. Conceived at a time when social functionality wasn't common in games, the publisher just didn't understand Pawns' potential. Itsuno reckons that many of Capcom's bosses only properly understood Pawns once they played the retail version of the game.

Beyond this, Itsuno also outlined how Dragon's Dogma's world shrank during development. At one point it was twice as big as the final release, with a hang glider or kite used to travel to the more far flung regions. You were also able to travel to the moon, but the content was eventually cut thanks to budget restictions.

Dragon's Dogma released in May last year, selling over one million copies and earning wide praise from critics. An expansion, Dark Arisen is coming out next month.

Comments
21
  • Hang Gliders is a neat idea.
  • For its first outing it definitely did well. I found the game world to be substantial enough as it was for a new IP. Looking forward to a sequel and another 1000 points!
  • I hate it when higher ups clip a game's wings.
  • Hang gliders would have been awesome. If they manage to put everything they missed out, plus co-op into the sequel i will be speechless.
  • You should of put hang gliders.. then you could of traveled somewhere faster, without having to walk and backtrack.
  • Just goes to show that publishers have fuck all knowledge about games. Then again, the hang gliders could have been a massive fail. We'll never know.
  • sounds like some good ideas however maybe they will feature that second half of their amazing world in a sequel as dragons dogma is an awesome game we need more rpgs like this
  • Hang gliders sounds cool, but I kind of like having to travel on foot. Especially when their world gets so dangerous at night, makes it much more interesting in my opinion.
  • Havent played this yet but Im looking forward to picking up the expanded version when it gets cheap.
  • Love the game. Even through my 3rd playthrough I'm still finding things. It does really suck that Capcom's big-wigs didn't understand the game. Ironically the pawn system was the factor that made me interested in the game. Can't wait for the sequel.
  • They should of spent more time on enemy diversity instead of hang gliders, The game is pretty decent but it is a little disheartening to keep fighting slightly upgraded wolves and goblins.
  • Capcom doing omething to destroy one of their games? This is becoming a common trend in that company... They're getting as retarded as EA currently is... As for the game itself... The demo didn't impress me at all. Everyone told me the game was great, but when the demo is bland and boring... I just can't really agree. Granted, there are demos that are stupid and aren't representative of the game... But Dragon's Dogma had a demo that seemed to cover the core gameplay fairly well. It just wasn't that interesting or stunning to me. The "Open World" section it offered just wasn't that fun to me. There's no point having an "open world" if you're not given a multitude of things to do within it or to explore in it. If you don't reward the exploration of an open world, there's no sense in having it. It especially looked silly to even have it when the other portion of the demo was a linear path to a boss monster with no deviation or exploration or interesting visuals. Perhaps the full retail game is better. I'll never know. It certainly doesn't look like something I'd ever enjoy. To be honest, it reminded me a lot of Final Fantasy 13. That demo did... Which is to say... Just not that fun.
  • What is with all these people coming out and saying 'My game sucked' all of a sudden, that said I was more than satisfied with the game, double the size would have been epic, but there comes a point on their side where it i not really financially viable to do, sure GTA games are massive and have huge budgets but that is because they know for certain it will sell, while this was a new IP and one if I remember properly the devs were not actually expecting it to go down well.
  • @13 the demo really did not do the game justice at all that open world section with the griffon was essentially a random encounter that can happen while exploring, I cannot recommend this game to you enough, one of my favorite this gen.
  • I would love to get my hands on a copy. Played the demo and I was impressed with it. Certainly on my want list.
  • @13 As much as it annoys us gamers, sometimes a publisher has to reign in Developers. Sometimes the developers want to cram everything in and use all the ideas they have. The problem is budget issues. As much as people want to say its all about the money and publishers are greedy, it does nobody any good whatsoever to let a game run massively over budget to a point that it has no chance of ever recouping the costs back. This is nothing new, we have seen many many interviews form game designers talking about all the features they would have liked to put in a game, but realistically you have to stop somewhere.
  • More examples of why this game is a massive turd!
  • I wasn't that impressed with the demo either, but have a friend who loved the original so I'll probably be picking this up at some point. The pawn system is one of the best ideas I've heard of for an RPG in a while. According to IGN, April 23rd is the release date.
  • The higher-up in game companies are so out of touch with the reality of the market that it's unbeleivable. Dragon's Dogma had a lot of wasted potential that coud have allowed it to be infinitely better, especially in the RPG aspects of the game, which are very lacking. It's still a fun game, and the pawn system was inventive and I loved it. I just hope the proper sequel, if we get one, will expand the RPG areas of the game, because the action's already fine. Oh, and I hope the Warrior vocation isn't quite as crap in future titles...
  • Of course; Crapcom takes an even greater game and clips it down to size by half.
  • Twice as large?!? Hang gliders sounds cool and all, but Dragon's Dogma still had a hell-of-a-lot of walking! Only hardcore larpers would want a bigger world. Although, I would have been perfectly fine with more things within the world. Some places were just pointless to me.
  • You need to register before being able to post comments

Game navigation