#dragon'sdogma

[olessan]

ma'am

(Dragon's Dogma 2: Get to Know the Sphinx - IGN First)

[emrakulsfanpage]

i like to imagine the arisen can sense pawns, like their natural connection through the rift is kind of like going under high voltage wire, you can feel it vaguely and you can probably get a good sense of direction for where they are and how they are doing, kind of my excuse for why the arisen can see their health bars and see their names on screen.

but the main pawn is special, they can feel their precise location, they know how they are feeling in an almost mind reading kind of way, not just like are they alive and healthy but like if they are sad or excited the Arisen can feel it too.

maybe Grigori is like that too, in the og game if you failed the seneschal after beating him you became him in the next link in the chain, maybe that's why he always knows where you are, and knows who your beloved is, cause he can feel who has the closest connection to you.

[emrakulsfanpage]

could you imagine every time your pawn needs your attention they reach out through the rift and your chest aches, it physically glows. whether you can see them or not it's a way they can touch you.

your chest gets hot when they do it, like having a hot towel put on your face at the barber, a gentle "I'm here" when they sense your fear or sadness, a "I'm okay" when you are separated.

and then drakes do it too, but it feels...wrong... like it's forceful and loud and it hurts, and they speak into your mind and it's so loud it makes your teeth buzz. they punch you in the chest (the stamina drain move they do) literally knocking the wind out of you and your pawns by force. it's violating. it's hateful and cruel.

When Grigori does it though, it's reverent, not intimate like your pawns, not violating like the drakes. it's warm but firm, like a handshake at a funeral, it's full of purpose and weight, he speaks to you clearly and only rarely speaks into your mind. when he does the stamina drain it's out of desperation. you are too strong, to fast for him to be able to defend himself and he has to slow you down. he feels guilty for cheap shotting you but if he doesn't this fight will be over to quickly.

[emrakulsfanpage]

i wish you could actually make your main pawn your beloved, like obvs raising their affinity is possible but there is no way you spend that much time, in that high stress of a situation with someone and not love them in a way that few people would understand, even if not romantically.

in my mind as the arisen you are so fundamentally different from other people. you don't have a heart beat, your body refuses to die to anything other than Grigori himself (in cannon the arisen can only die by the dragons hand and vice versa) you don't age properly, I like to imagine your flesh is strange, without a heart or heart beat I imagine it's firm like semi frozen beef but HOT like you are on fire inside. I like to imagine you look different too, your face isn't as expression. you don't need to sleep for days on end and when you do sleep your body stitches itself back together, heavy wounds that would normally be a life long debilitation literally vanish over a nap.

you are human right? you must be, you feel everything, you can love, you can hate, you are still yourself but your body is different now. it's more like them. The Pawns are uncanny, their faces and movements are like watching a doll come to life, they have a child like curiosity but a wit that catches things so incredibly fast that one moment they are durdling around and within the same day they are now a fierce combatant who strangely enough knows every trick to unlocking secret forces and finding hidden items cause they "saw it in the other world".

no one is like the Arisen and the Pawns, the two of you are so different that people can tell you are the Arisen only upon close inspection but once they truly look it's obvious. so you adventure with your pawns, fight monsters to their death, sleep by each other's side, swap tactics with other pawns and live life one dangerous harrowing encounter that you cannot die from even if you wanted to at a time.

I would become deeply attached to my main pawn. we are a pair, separation is not an option. Daimon from DD:DA is completely understandable. i would refuse the cycle to spend even a moment with someone who has stood by my side until the literal end of the world. someone who knows me more intimately than any human ever could.

[emrakulsfanpage]

imagine being a regular person and seeing the Arisen do fucking anything, like you watched this guy murder an ogre at the city Gates like it was nothing, walked up to a shop keep and buy out like half of their stock then took a power nap, woke up and left to murder a griffen, succeeded and then you find out he has actually been hunting down drakes and lesser dragons en mass to steal their blood?

this mf killed 20 drakes by literally waiting at their nesting grounds for days until one shows up and then just beats it to death and is like actively being targeted by the queen regent and he just like shops at the local grocery store with his 3 also semi immortal buddies and solves small time mysteries like he's fucking Encyclopedia Brown. he finds that weird loud beggar in town and thinks absolutely not and goes on a hunt, breaks into his home and finds our he's just a noble got got real weird about doing stuff and has been pretending and then blackmails him into taking his station back up?

fucking weird man

[emrakulsfanpage]

recently fought the Medusa in DD2, prepped to hell had all kinds of stuff to remove petrification and Yurp my main pawn just ate the petrification, just stood there and died to spite me, bitch I high-five you, sit in the hot spring with you, I have an alarm for when it's time to give you a haircut so I KNOW you have max affinity cause you're my partner, my rotten soldier, my sweet cheese, my good time boy and you don't even draw your sword? that's it in the next cycle I'm making you look funny as revengence

[olessan]

Disappointed that DD2 has no canonical male romance options? HELP FIX IT!

In Dragon's Dogma 2 you can choose almost any NPC to be your beloved/romance option, like in the first game. You can literally pick anyone, including random road guards, to shower gifts upon and raise their affinity.

However. Only two NPCs are canonical romances.

Ulrika and Wilhelmina, both human women, have unique romance quests and scenes that conclude intimately (without any platonic option). Those are the only NPCs in the entire game that have them.

No hate on the girls, they're among my arisen's best buds, but having them be the only two with fully fledged romance arcs in the entire game is a bit absurd.

Pre-release marketing highlighted Ulra, Wil, as well as Guard-Captain Brant, Prince Sven (who tbf seems pretty young), elven siblings Glyndwr and Doirieann, and Empress Nadinia of Battahl and her Guard-captain Menella (who I assumed were a couple). Any of those characters should also have had unique scenes like Wil and Ulra, but they don't. That effectively makes Ulra/Wil the canonical options.

None of the npcs care about the arisen's gender. The main issue is that there are no male options with equivalent romance quest. There's nothing but crumbs for the guy enjoyers, which is somehow a step back from the first game where there was at least Julian.

There are three dudes who would have been strong candidates according to their plot importance:

Brant is the arisen's first and most important ally in Vernworth,

Sven could have been DD2's Aelinore (young noble in need of help) and could've caused loads of plot drama,

and Glyndwr is your introduction to the elf culture through his curiosity.

Do they get unique quests beyond their initial ones? Nope.

Anyway, we can potentially influence some getting added officially instead of as mods:

Capcom has released a player feedback survey.

The survey has questions on what you like, dislike, and would like to see in future content updates. It runs until April 21 and may well influence the future additions to the game.

I laid it on thick about them adding more quests and romance quests, and also about a Bitterblack Isle-type expansion.The more people that bring it up these issues the better.

Go forth, arisen <3

[olessan]

"My challenge lieth before thee, Arisen. Wiltst thou answer it?"

Grigori from Dragon's Dogma 🐉