Since the surprise announcement of Dragon's Dogma 2 Dark Arisen at the June Nintendo Direct, CAPCOM has maintained a steady pace of news and updates. We've learned about the many new dungeons and the brand-new Relic hunting loop, for example. Now, in a series of interviews, the studio has shared even more as we inch closer to the October 9 launch of the expansion.
Speaking to Automaton, producer Naoto Oyama revealed that Dragon's Dogma 2 Dark Arisen will be quite sizable for a DLC:
The new story takes place in a new region called Norgan. We expect players to spend around 15 to 20 hours completing that scenario. In addition, twelve unique dungeons will be added to the base game. Each dungeon is designed to take roughly 30 minutes to an hour to clear. With twelve of them in total, we believe players will be able to enjoy more than 25 hours of additional content with this expansion.
The expansion has been in production for nearly two years, Oyama confirmed. As to what CAPCOM wants to achieve with it, here's what the producer told Eurogamer:
We are trying our best to win back trust from those players who felt disappointed in the launch of Dragon's Dogma 2. We've already seen positive responses to the title update that was just released in June with a variety of improvements and feature additions. Although, at the same time, some players are still cautious and they're saying, 'well, this performance update in August is going to be the real test of whether the game has got to where we want it to be'.
I'm really hopeful that once they see the performance improvements we've made in August and what we're doing to build towards the expansion release that players, hopefully, feel that the base Dragon's Dogma 2 game is in a good state so that they can jump back into the expansion.
Indeed, I have to admit I was among those disappointed by the base game. Don't get me wrong, it was a solid and fun fantasy action RPG, but it felt more like Dragon's Dogma 1.5 than a true sequel.
Whether Dragon's Dogma 2 Dark Arisen succeeds in elevating the whole game's experience in the same way the original Dark Arisen did remains to be seen. However, CAPCOM certainly piqued my interest, and I now look forward to exploring the new Norgan region this October.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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