Dragon’s Dogma 2 Is Heavily Inspired By GTA V, Says Director

Dragon’s Dogma 2, Capcom’s upcoming open-world fantasy RPG, is looking like it’s gonna be something special. And while you might expect a game with swords, mages, dragons, and other high-fantasy concepts to be inspired by something like Dungeons and Dragons or Lord of the Rings, the game’s director cited a very surprising inspiration: Grand Theft Auto V.

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In a recent interview with GamesRadar, Dragon’s Dogma 2 director Hideaki Itsuno was asked about what personal inspiration he drew upon when developing the highly-anticipated RPG sequel. And according to him, Rockstar’s popular open-world crime sim, GTA V, was a “big inspiration.”

“GTA V was quite a big inspiration for me on the level of how it manages to combine multiple emergent gameplay systems into a satisfying experience that feels free to the player in terms of their freedom of what they can choose to do,” said Itsuno.

The director elaborated further, pointing out that GTA V features a lot of “flexibility” in how it lets players engage with various in-game events and actions. One example Itsuno provided is how you can be doing something—like outrunning the police or robbing a bank—and how that can spiral out of control and overlap with other events and areas in the surrounding world.

“The game manages that,” said Itsuno. “It doesn’t crash, it doesn’t kick you out of one thing and put you in the other, it just lets it all mash together in a way that is of course sometimes chaotic, but always feels like it’s intentional.”

According to Itsuno, he was impressed by that sort of “intentionality in emergent gameplay and open world design” when GTA V launched. The original Dragon’s Dogma was well known for its various systems, their interactions, and the freedom it offered players. And according to Itsuno, you can expect even more of that in the sequel thanks to GTA V inspiring him to push the emergent gameplay in the RPG even further.

“That kind of experience is something I’ve been aiming to provide in Dragon’s Dogma 2,” said Itsuno.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 launched on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on March 22.

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