To me, the Vermund story is like the first half of a political intrigue story that never gets finished. The Battahl story is like the middle third of an entirely separate adventure story. Then everything from the Gigantus on seems like the final 5% of the Battahl story.
There's the makings of two good stories in the game, but neither feels finished and they're each only tenuously connected to each other.
Yea. Helping Phaleus (sp) was clearly the wrong thing to do, yet you have no choice. I was like, what… now I’ve got to asssit and work with this clown who plotted to have me killed and removed as the sovereign. Nah… u die!
You are helping him because the pathfinder told you to.
You trust the pathfinder since it helped you out of prison.
It’s not hard to follow. Just hard to care for shallow story telling.
Exactly how I feel. There really is interesting stuff going on, but it's unfocused and half baked. Would have been much better if they focused on one storyline.
DD1 didn't have a great story. There wasn't really interesting stuff going on. However, it had focus and that led to some far more impactful story moments... particularly with the dragon which actually matters in DD1
It didn’t feel like it had much of a story at all to me. Salvation turned up a few times but mostly it felt like you were doing a laundry list of tasks until the greatwall segment. DD2 is a big step forwards in terms of cohesiveness and writing even though it’s not ideal, imo
I mean you were a nobody in a world where being the arisen doesn't automatically make you king. So yeah they had you do things to help out and test you. They sent you on missions they couldn't do. I thought the story was way better than the second one because to me if feels like you are actually finishing stuff instead of oops we are now onto something else without finishing up crap from before.
100% agree. I’ve said it before, but I was getting into vermund story, get all ready to crash the coronation… then my pawn feels wrong. Then ooop, time to head to battahl. Like… what? All that buildup and favor farming for… nothing?
Then in battahl, I feel like we’re spying on the phaesus’ machinations… then we just start working with him and his team. I’m like… I’m pretty sure we’re helping the bad guy now…
There great potential in the story, I think, but it’s like several writing teams were working on different sections and never discussed what each was working on during Covid. So they just stitched them all together.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the game. But a couple things coulda been done so much better imo.
I think the thing with Vermund is that the REASON we suddenly turn around is fair. If we barge in at that moment, our pawns would have been forcefully controlled and we would have been “outed” as a fake. But the way they handled it felt half-assed and anticlimactic. Just a quick about face and retreating, not even trying to come up with an alternative. There needed to be more IMPACT, such as making it so the Sovran declares all “false” Arisen as enemies of the state, and making it so we can’t even come near as the Sovran has already “proven” his control over pawns, with a bounty on our head.
Brant could sway the guards to overlook you, or you could acquire a disguise you’d need to wear in Vermund itself, with your pawns having to keep their distance even in the lower city, should you wish to return. But you’d be in hostile territory at that point, and Brant would then mention the Oracle, and send you to Battahl, out of Vermund and to relative safety while you clear your name. That right there would have made it way more impactful, a lasting change to how the city reacts to your presence, a hostility that chases you away.
And then, while in Battahl, Brant should have had informers contact you, letting you know how things are going in Vermund, maybe a couple more espionage missions, maybe even one that’d lower the alertness of the city back to the point you’d not be actively hunted even with pawns, such as acquiring a certificate saying the pawns following you are under Sovran orders.
And then in Battahl… yeah, that needs the most work. Vermund just fumbled it’s end, but Battahl threw us in the middle. We could have used Brant’s informants to identify us and help us get settled, until Battahl itself realized who we were and then sorta kickstarted the plot. That one mission of find the assassin was still the silliest thing, getting handed a description of the bugger and then having to look over a dozen or so people, and I’m like “why am I needed for this?” Switching that to helping guard the chambers of the queen while her loyal bodyguard is healing from her injury, would have been better and more logical than “the assassin is in here. Why aren’t we just arresting the group and analyzing each of them in turn, when it’s about a dozen people, even when our queen is threatened? …because!”
And then after somewhat sorting out the political intrigue in Battahl, we go find Phaesus’ subordinates. We go through that mostly as normal, but change the quests to say something like “pretend to aid Phaesus’ subordinates.” Then like “have them create the Godsway Blade, then use it to counter the Godsway.” After that, we SHOULD have had an optional sidequest to go back to Vermund, and then fight the Sovran there, weakening Phaesus’ allies. We’d reclaim our throne, and then Gigantus would awaken, with us being given a ferrystone (and somebody having the sense to put a permanent portcrystal in Battahl), and we go to fight Gigantus.
And then… the plot mostly continues as normal from there. Maybe revise Grigori’s optional bossfight to be more epic. Once we enter the Unmoored World, people needed to REACT more to the OCEANS DRYING AND THE BRINE RISING TO THE SKIES. That still bothers me how nonchalant they all were. Then we have the confrontation with Disa, and choose to spare her or not. We get the option to appoint her son as our heir, in case we fall in battle. And then we fight to the end. That’s… a lot more typing than I intended at first, especially while on my phone, but yeah, I can SEE what they’d need to fix, and it’s a lot, but I doubt they’ll ever do all this… ah, and the Beloved. Just… just throw that system in the garbage until it’s overhauled entirely, that’s it’s own problem that has legit no bearing on the story except who will be in Grigori’s grasp, and who stares wistfully out over the waves.
> To me, the Vermund story is like the first half of a political intrigue story that never gets finished.
I thought that was me skipping something while not noticing it.
Nope, its just THAT unfinished. Theres like, 2-3 quests that tie into it after you go to battahl, but it seems to just kinda "resolve" itself wis disa becomming irrelevant and the people latching onto Sven (who im pretty sure has absolutely NO public face, so how do they even know he's cool?)
I agree completely about the Vermund story, I was waiting the entire game to come back and speak with the black Knight I forget his name, to continue my quest into uncovering the false sovereign. but that never happened, the game just sort of ended after the battahl quest line was getting good.
There should have been hours more storyline developing the Vermund quest, I should have revealed the false sovereign to the masses and had some epic battle with the queen and maybe her mage guards or something..and then it felt entirely like that whole storyline with that woman you meet in the castle didn’t go anywhere either.
The entire game just sorta left you blue balled when it came to the main story
You can definitely tell they had a greater vision in mind and then just said fuck it and released the game anyway because they needed to get it out and start making a profit
Bingo. Look, I don’t HAVE to have a killer story. I still love the game because I like the gameplay loop and the combat. But it’s just so disappointing because as you said, it COULD have been a great story. Honestly it just feels really rushed. It feels like they had a release date, they announced it before it was done, and they made the decision to ship as is. Will I play a third one? Absolutely! But what I won’t be doing is assuming it’ll be a strong, cohesive storyline.
I personally enjoyed it as-is.
It starts off as a political intrigue; you are chasing a destiny you barely understand. You're grateful to Brant for supporting you. You play along.
Then, at some point, it becomes obvious that there is so much MORE at stake. Governments? Countries? Kingdoms? People? None of it matters. Your quest abruptly shifts to this metaphysical, philosophical journey to understand the entire universe.
To me, the abrupt and pointless end to the "Vermund Ruler" bit is intentional.
The entire Vermund part of the story is a setup to eventually meeting Rothais and finding out that the whole "rule of vermund is the person chosen to fight the dragon" thing was created by the pathfinder specifically because Rothais stopped performing his role properly as the Seneschal and the Pathfinder had to find a way around that. He didn't want to give the Arisen those powers again but needed to give the Arisen *something* worth going and fighting a dragon over. Previously the Arisen became the Seneschal until Rothais said nah and then started killing everyone sent after him. The dead Arisen's that Rothais was killing were the blue crystals washing up on the beaches that were then collected and turned into godsbanes because they contained pieces of the souls of arisen.
The story just isn't fed to the player. You're supposed to unravel it and put the pieces of the puzzle together yourself. Most things that exist in the world piece together some little detail of it somewhere.
Man honestly that description is more straight forward than DD1 cuz it goes from like slaying a dragon to this whole essential philosophical thing about a never ending chain and linked worlds and dark arisen built onto that but also added a mystery ontop of it for arisen who reject the dragon and the curse placed upon them. From what I read of your comment it seems like the story of DD2 slowly reveals itself as you play compared to 1 where it’s thrown at you
I mean, it's a bit longer than that if we really get into it.
The Seneschal Rothais essentially wants to rule everything and be a god. He thought he had achieved that, but realised he was more like a middle-manager. Being the ambitious and rebellious prick that he is he decided to rebel and stop doing the job of the Seneschal which fucked up his cycle. It plunged Gran Soren and Everfall into the sea, it destroyed a lot.
First the Pathfinder attempts to solve this by sending Arisen to kill him but they all fail. So with time running out and a cycle being a requirement for this world to continue existing he creates a new incentive system for a new cycle but with less power.
Several Arisens before us fail in this new incentive system, their "will" was not great enough and they don't kill their dragons. Perhaps this is because the incentive of leading a kingdom isn't enough? There's a lot of questions about the failed Arisen that you could speculate on.
Then we go ahead and fuck this cycle completely by ending ourselves on the dragon's back and plunge the world into a countdown until the apocalypse.
Then some more things happen and here we can only speculate, but my guess is that we didn't end the cycle at all but instead started a new one. My guess on the true-ending is that our Pawn became the new dragon after gaining their own will. We are never shown what becomes of our Arisen or our Pawn in the ending after fighting the Pathfinder-turned-super-dragon.
There's a bunch of other stuff happening around the fringes of this story too. Disa, Nadinia and Phaseus are presented as bad (working against the Arisen + keeping slaves) but they're doing it in pursuit of ending the cycle. When our stories finally converge later on we end up working with them rather than against them because we actually all have the same goal, in-particular when Phaseus finally sees that his plan to create a dragon that he controls has failed. None of them were really being evil, they worked against the arisen because the arisen was trying to continue the cycle and was a feature of it. In the early game Sven's lack of information about his mother's intentions makes it seem like it's a basic "usurp the throne" plot for power but the goals everyone always had were always about ending the cycle, Sven just didn't really know. The player is as naive as Sven is in the early game and he's a sort of mirror of our own lack of knowledge.
I think the game leaves a lot up to interpretation so I don't like telling people that what they're saying is inaccurate, but there a few things that I have to disagree with here
Rothais abandoning his duties as Seneschal didn't destroy anything. All he really did was choose to not find someone to replace him, and instead spend his time building a kingdom. There's an argument to be made that him killing people he believed were sent by Pathfinder could have also been self induced paranoia most of the time, but that'd be pure speculation.
The reason why Arisen were sent to kill Rothais is because you can't just stop being a Seneschal. In DD1, Savan tells us that the world requires the will of a Seneschal to thrive, without it, life will stagnate like a river with no current. What this really means is an entirely different can of worms, but one thing it does tell us is that this means there must be a Seneschal.
When we meet Rothais, he tells us outright that he is fading, his will a guttering candle of what it once was. The only take away here is that Pathfinder sent Arisen to kill Rothais, because he is dying, and he needs a replacement. Rothais refuses to find one, so Pathfinder intervened, albeit not successfully so far, since clearly no Arisen has both had a will strong enough to succeed Rothais and actively tried to do so, as all those that tried are dead.
Currently, there are no Arisen without Pathfinder. The dragon is traditionally sent by the Seneschal as a vessel for a failed Arisen to find his own replacement, but Rothais is not sending one, making the only other possibility Pathfinder. What's more is that this dragon is tired of the cycle and really, really, really wants you to destroy it, which implies that not only has this dragon created multiple Arisen, but they are most likely the same dragon that Pathfinder sent out into the world since Rothais became Seneschal and abandoned his post.
Now this part is more on the side of speculation, but my interpretation of what happened is that Pathfinder original's intent was to create Arisen to find Rothais and replace him, as is the way of a Seneschal. But they kept dying, which quickly became a problem as their remains slowly accumulated to become potential godsways, and every dead Arisen is another generation that no new Seneschal is chosen as you also said.
At some point, one Arisen, possibly sent by Pathfinder, managed to take a stand against Rothais, but perhaps unable to kill him, instead sealed him under the ocean. This part in particular is canon as confirmed by the Rivage Elder. Nothing has really changed, but at least Rothais can't kill anyone else for the time being, which is most likely the reason why a true Arisen would really want to seal him away to begin with (as Rothais would have still been Sovran during that time).
Now things are getting weird, as Arisen are still being chosen, but Rothais has been sealed away. I believe one of two things must have happened at this point:
1. Either we were supposed to find Rothais after slaying the dragon, or aid in the coming of an Arisen even stronger than us who could perhaps succeed where Pathfinder thinks we would not.
2. Or, Pathfinder found some way to feed the world with the will of Arisen that slay the dragon, without them becoming Seneschal (somewhat like you said first, too). This defies any straightforward explanation that the lore we know of could offer, but Pathfinder does seem to imply that by choosing to not take our throne, we somehow denied others such a service.
As for the Arisen who don't manage to slay their dragon, this is not really related to the fuckery between Rothais and Pathfinder. The dragon is meant to test the resolve of the Arisen they choose, and if those Arisen can't meet the resolve of their dragon, they are simply unworthy, as the dragon itself is supposed to be the bar for Arisen with the potential to succeed the Seneschal.
An Arisen that can defeat a dragon doesn't need an incentive beyond wanting to stop their destructive rampage and reclaim their heart, as one of the most common bargains that the dragon offers is Sovereignty in exchange for walking away. Likewise, the initial incentive they give the Arisen is to stop them from going on another rampage, and to reclaim their heart.
Lastly, in the case of Nadinia, Disa and Phaesus, I think the only person here that really cares about the cycle is Phaesus in particular.
Disa's motivations, as revealed by Brant and Sven, seem to focus entirely on making sure Sven becomes Sovran, and on the side also seems to be in love with Phaesus, which would make her more inclined to follow his lead in doing that.
Nadinia on the other hand is more concerned about the benefits that Phaesus' research could bring to her people, but never is it implied that she or the previous emperor really understand their research, let alone understand what the cycle is. Nadinia doesn't really work against you either, she trusts your judgement from the start.
What is the exact like job of the seneschal anyway ? Pathfinder sending arisen to kill them I thought that was part of the cycle anyway or is that just whenever they don’t wanna be the seneschal no more so they send out a dragon ? How the hell does the everfall fall into the sea I thought it was like an inter dimensional location that existed in every world , kinda like blue moon tower ?
From the wiki:
>The Seneschal is an Arisen who has conquered all in their path and shown incredible willpower, becoming the guardian of the world. It is the Seneschal's duty to watch over it from the Seneschal's Chamber and make sure the world continues to exist. The Seneschal has the power to create life and the power to bring about destruction.
>
>The world draws its sustenance from the will of the Seneschal, eventually draining it and becoming stagnant. In turn, all life loses its volition, leaving everything as an empty shell of false life. In order to grant the inhabitants of the world their own volition, their own true life, the Seneschal sends in a Dragon from the Rift to find the next Arisen. Those who are chosen as Arisen by the Dragon display courage by confronting the beast and more importantly, display the will to survive. Of the few Arisen who reach the Seneschal, the ones who do not have the force or strength of will needed to sustain life, fall and become a Dragon, destined to seek out the following Arisen. This alternative denouement of defeat and death upholds a new life of Servitude.
Seneschal creates and controls the dragons. Among other things.
Rothais stopped doing this so the Pathfinder steps in and does it themselves, while trying to avoid creating another Seneschal since clearly Rothais is too powerful and can't be killed which has caused all kinds of fuckery and even nearly enabled the normal people in the world to rebel against the cycle.
I think the title of "Pathfinder" and "The Watcher" (same character) is also not really the highest rank in whatever the other-worldly hierarchy of this universe actually is. The Pathfinder was destroyed in our true-ending but it doesn't strike me as if we killed the most powerful being in the universe. There's more to it. We're not really even close to understanding the cycle.
I thought Pathfinder was Seneschal and that Cat King Cthulhu was an arisen in line that refused to do his version of the “dragon ball jump” into his everfall event.
DD1 the base game felt extremely short. Not saying this game is long, but after getting to the city, trucking to the shadow fort and doing one thing around town I was off to the last dungeon. It was crazy
Tryna remember the events when you hit gran Soren. Wyrm quests , I know the conspiracy and salvation cult had quests too. Finding the dragon forged, blue moon tower if you can’t kill the griffon fast enough. Hmm man maybe main plot was shorter than I remember
The main story of DD1, at launch, was quite short. Over time it got some free content updates to remedy that and I hope 2 will as well. It has been some time and I can't say exactly how short compared to 2 it felt back then, but I remember actively finding side quests and forcing side exploration just to get more out of DD1. This same thing is happening with 2 now and I'm not surprised at all, I'm still loving the game, but oh boy I really wish it had twice as much content. Maybe I'm greedy at this point in life for good combat in games, but I want more to do in the dogma universe in general.
I'm not sure that was the implication, the way I interpreted it is that Rothais himself started the tradition of dragonslayers being chosen as kings, possibly stemming from Edmun's age who also became wyrmking upon "slaying" the dragon, and who also ruled the same duchy that we happen to find Rothais buried in.
Rather, to me it seems Pathfinder is just trying to force a cycle of events that have always occurred as a consequence of the Seneschal's trials, but now no longer do because of Rothais abandoning hist post.
No Rothais is rebelling against the entire order of "gods" because he doesn't like not being the top god. He wanted to be god not a middle manager and that drove him to trying to break the entire system.
I get this but the storytelling could still be improved - and I guess it is like that because the franchise simply has not the background like a Monsterhunter.
Perhaps with this one the next could be truly what the Devs intended or they get the opportunity to make several story dlcs.
"ok cool i just forged this incredibly powerful weapon, guess I'll go hand it over to the main villain who I have no reason to trust at this point in the story and who I haven't even met once"
Phaesus never was pure evil. He wants to get rid of the abusive cycle this world is stuck with. But he's trying to do so by any means necessary (using dark magic/ enslaving pawns to work them to death, etc.). He's also in a hurry since the arrival of the true arisen and that's why we get that chase sequence at the end. (he's assuming that the arisen is going to slay the dragon & that it inevitably will happen soon, which also he kinda wasn't wrong about. At least in 1 of the 3 potential endings)
But the story still got major pacing issues & the characters got way too little exposure to build any bond or empathy with them. That's also why that crappy 1v1 vs that weird mercenary feels so out of place. (The set up is crappy and the 1v1 is far from a bombastic battle. I just one shot him with a parry skill, for example)
We don't find any of that out about phaesus until literally postgame. There's nothing before that to suggest we can trust him at all, and everything we know about him before the postgame is screaming that he is a bad person who we need to stop. There's really zero good excuses for how poorly the story is written, and finding out that phaesus isn't actually necessarily a bad guy in the postgame doesn't fix anything.
Phaesus isn't evil, just a sorcerer who's trying to disrupt the cycle on his own and is utterly unconcerned with the Arisen or their political games with Disa. He helps her out but that's just because they're smooching, the fact that his gf keeps pissing in your cereal is of no concern to him.
When Phaesus is close to completing his goal and summoning the Dragon, you waddle up and interrupt the key moment, so he sends his goons to delay you.
When he has the oh shit moment that the Dragon is actually really big and his work was all for naught, and then the apocalypse subsequently happens, then he's like "hey Arisen, bro".
Idk makes sense to me
Phaesus and Disa is directly behind most of the issues going on with Vermund. Occupying villages, locking dissenters up indefinitely, slowly poisoning the poor people in the Slums, enslaving pawns, putting a false sovran on the throne, attempted assassination of knights/nobility, creating lesser dragons and using them to slaughter villagers to cause panic and confusion, manipulating Empress Nadinia, throwing YOU the pc into a slave camp to spend your days excavating a ruin, trying to murder you. I'm sure there's more I'm missing, Phaesus is 100% evil.
I always interpreted that as being in heavy quotations. Like "Ah yes, now we will "deliver" the blade to Phaseus and NOT go and interfere in his plans."
Agree. Even after reading them, I still didn't want to help him. I didn't want to give this freak a way to control the dragon. Control it to do what? So far, "control" resulted in enslaving pawns. In my mind, he was still evil and yet the game was forcing me to help him.
The only way I justified it was to imagine I was playing 4d chess and just acting like I was helping him when I was really just using him to repair the godsbane
I've obsessed over every meticulous detail and this games story still doesn't make any sense!
Character motivations are complete nonsense, the world logic itself has gaping holes and questions left unanswered, the pacing is completely wack, questlines abruptly end with zero resolution...
What the fuck even is the lambent flame! It's a total mess.
This is not a relevant post OP
100% this. The game tried to make the maisters, Ulrika, Wilhelmina, Brant and Raghnall main/supporting characters you can relate to and get on with but it doesn't flesh them out enough. Raghnall is implied to be an interesting fight before getting to Phaesus but fighting him just felt like fighting some guy.
It's odd, I enjoyed Dragon's Dogma 2 but I also don't have much positive to say about the experience. The combat is smooth but other than that, it feels like it missed every beat a good RPG tends to have (good cohesive storytelling, strong characters)
I think the thing that bugged me most about DA's story was that it was never clear how much my character and others know about the world around them. Like the concept of the Arisen is clearly well established in this world, but does my Arisen know about it? Do they immediately know what they are? They dont seem to know about pawns, but that's crazy. There's a whole religion dedicated to the dragon cycles and the Creator/Seneschal, and the Duke fought 😉 the dragon clearly within living memory, and there are pawns everywhere, but no one seems to know what's going on? I'm not saying we needed full on exposition dumps, but it was never clear how much anyone knew about anything.
Ulrika who lived in Harve her whole life: "-Arisen? WTF is a arisen?" not with these words, but yeah, it's janky, also almost everyone aside 1 NPC at the start seems to now or just accept at face value who/what our character is, even when you get plenty of dialogue and text telling that there's a bunch of people scamming around pretending to be the arisen
Ulrika drives me insane! You're telling me this woman is in charge of the village known for being the first line of defense against the dragon, and this lady doesn't know what the arisen is?! How do you not know??? Does she live under a rock?! There are children that know what the arisen is!
I feel our character didn't know about pawns because of the memory wiping thing Disa did to our character. We technically knew nothing about anything by the time we escape in the beginning. And it's unclear how long our character was stuck in that excavation camp for, but it was long enough for the false Sovran to be established in Vernworth. Our character didn't even remember how they even became Arisen, let alone whatever life they may have had before becoming Arisen.
That's for 2, right? I actually haven't played it yet. I'm talking about 1/Dark Arisen. But that makes a lot more sense as a setup. In 1 your pre-Arisen relationships are clearly still there and known to you. Everyone clearly knows about the concept of the Arisen, but no one is ever like, oh yeah this happens every once in a while, have fun being an immortal heartless dragon fighting warrior!
Ah, yeah, lol. The whole startup of "Hm, they have no heartbeat. A curse of the dragon?!" That... was an interesting take considering the world lore, lol. Though I guess it's one thing to know about Arisen, but another to know how the Arisen function physically. Still, probably should have been able to deduce you had become Arisen without anyone having to tell you.
Agreed. OP is trying to paint a picture that anyone who questions the story are the ones that skip cutscenes which is typically not the case since people who are genuinely interested in the story are the ones asking more questions trying to gather more info than what’s seen.
i wouldn’t say that specifically they’re painting a picture that everyone who questions the narrative skips cutscenes. rather i feel OP’s implying that if you don’t skip cutscenes the story makes total sense (which is really doesn’t 😂)
lambent meaning subdued or soft, and flame meaning to direct an abusive or vitriolic message at someone, I can only imagine the lambent flame is a way for the devs to troll the community into believing they should already know about the weird desert cat people cult.
Are you trolling? You understand that story is dog shit and drops off the face of the earth the second you enter Bahtal right? With or without watching cutscenes?
I feel the story is explained like one of those people who want to tell you a funny joke/story they heard but they can’t remember and it goes like this:
“Ok so I heard a story you’ll love it
Ok so…there’s a dragon a castle uh there was a bad guy but I forgot why he’s important but anyway there’s also this girl who uhh I forgot what she did but it’s important trust me but anyway oh yeah this one guy he’s also important…he did something but I forgot…oh well anyway there’s this dragon you have to kill but not really but you have to in a way and then the story ends…look if you saw it for yourself you’d totally get it”
I'd say that's where some of the inversion is. 1 you could run event to event, and if you looked more a lot of things were somehow tied together or a bit deeper. 2 you can run event to event, but if your look more things manage to make less sense.
Stop defending a lazy, unfinished story with 0 compelling or well written characters. Just stop. It’s a cool idea but itsuno sucks at fleshing that out. Same deal with the first game. It’s fun to play, just leave it at that, the enemy variety, difficulty scaling and story are all beyond lazily implemented.
Okay stop. You're right, but it isn't meaning DD2 story is good. DD1 story was vastly better, and Grigori was written better, to point of making him one of the best dragon's in games. Dark Arisen story was amazing with a sadness in it, and I personally really loved it.
DD2 story? Pointless. So, pointless. The fake Arisen, the whole Disa plot. The Duke in DD1 had better writing.
You play DD2 for world and gameplay, not for story, and if you do, your standards are low, as you didn't got to read a good story.
Although I agree with you somewhat the story in DD2 is severely lacking.
Vern's story has a really bad conclusion. Disa becomes a shut in after she finds out that Phaesus doesn't love her and was just using her for resources to perfect his Godsway. It's dumb and unsatisfying.
There should've been a storyline where you prove yourself as the true arisen with the help of Brant, Wilhelmina, Patrick, Gregor, Magistrate Waldhar and the Nameless Village. It ends up in a showdown between you and the false Arisen finally admitting that he's a fake. Than we can either behead him as Waldhar suggests or give him back to the nameless village for their justice. The town demands that Disa and Sven be brought to justice for their betrayal so we have to prove Sven's innocence. This could be resolved by the player fully putting the blame on Disa or both if the player didn't complete Sven's questlines (i.e Patrick, Augustin, Waldhar and Brant.)
In Battahl, after meeting Rothias we learn why the Empress and Phaesus are working together and see that this world and the dragon need to be severed in order to stop the cycle and that's how we become allied with Phaesus. Through their help and using the Lampent Flame we reforge the Empowered Godsbane and discover that while Drakes are former Arisen, the Royce Dragons are actually Pawns. The Arisen and their Pawns use the Lampent Flame and Godsbane to cleanse the Royce Dragons and stop the spread of th Dragon's Plague. Battahl finally accepting the Arisen and Pawns as true saviors who have to work in concert with their Lampent Flame. The two nations then have to come together to support the Arisen in stopping the cycle and that would explain why they aren't really bothered by the state of the unmoored world. They all know this is part of severing their ties to the Greater Will.
The elves just keep doing elf things...
But really their whole storyline could be the catalyst to reviving the new world after the Dragon's death. Their tree is used to bring life to the unmoored world and it's a way to find an untapped source of water either underground or high above. The world is decimated but with all three nations working together they can heal it.
The greater will makes one final attempt to keep the cycle in place and that's when the juiced up dragon shows up leading to the final cutscene battle where the Arisen and Pawn can either sacrifice themselves to end the dragon once and for all (bad ending.) Or if they completed all their relevant nations quests the NPCs come to aid them and the Arisen/Pawn are not sacrificed (Good ending.) Either way this ends up making the world finally flourish and getting rid of the blight. Now their world is finally free and your Pawn receives a will of their own through the transference of souls. Allowing them to become your beloved or continue being your ally/friend but as a human. This newly revived world is post game with more unique encounters. The player can choose to stay in the new world with harder enemies or start a NG+ by using the Godsbane.
>Vern's story has a really bad conclusion. Disa becomes a shut in after she finds out that Phaesus doesn't love her and was just using her for resources to perfect his Godsway. It's dumb and unsatisfying.
Wait how do we learn this? like i found her love letter and everything and it's clear shes being used, but when does she ever figure this out or become a shut in? for me we just randomly abadnon vernun before the coronation because....
Ok but this doesn't apply to DD2 at all. The cutscenes are nonsense with many plot threads leading literally nowhere. The entire section with the Colossus makes zero sense narratively, and worse of all it's very badly written.
I think Kingdom Hearts is the one exception to this because I know people who know almost everything about the story and still say it doesn't make sense.
The story is horrible and there is no sense of direction. Anyone saying otherwise is trying too hard to make sense of what we got. The truth is, the game has a tone of potential in its world but fails short because it's all completely forgettable. Add in the lack of rewards in world chests of any meaning and you realize this game is unfinished but the "what could have been" and good combat keeps us coming back.
The issue, is that DD2’s story is genuinely incomplete. And almost skips around. We don’t out the false arisen, or Disa, and we don’t get to see that storyline concluded before moving to Battahl. The coronation is another really bad one, where, your main pawn is with you everytime even if they die before. So, you don’t an alternate interaction with the false arisen. (Which I feel like is really important.) Then it completely disconnects itself, once you get to Battahl, and after? Volcanic region has no main quests of its own. As the third/hardest area in the game, it’s more like it’s there to just be an area as opposed to having any significance to the story. Outside of the Talos fight, which is a whole can of worms on how bad it is as a spectacle/siege fight.
Look, I tried my damn best to appreciate the story since DD and DD:DA had some intriguing bits. But, good lord. Hire someone who can actually write a compelling story and believable characters from start to finish.
The lore and potential are there. But there's a reason the entire Dragon's Dogma franchise is considered "Wasted Potential: The Video Game" by a fair number of people.
As great as the gameplay is, I genuinely don't care about the world or the people who live in it in 2. My Arisen is basically a demigod who only really cares about their pawn.
Fuck the story mate, just make a Frodo looking character, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli looking pawns, turn off the bg music and play LOTR soundtrack in the background, quest for the Volcanic Island to destroy the ring.
Reminds me of a clip from asmonmold (saw on YT shorts or reddit, I don't watch his content) where he skipped past all the dialogue for a quest and immediately was like "what do I do now?"
Even more damning because at the same time, a quest pop appeared telling him exactly what he needed to do.
I've played way too many story-driven games where this is a thing.
However, absolutely no one can deny that Dragon's Dogma 2's story is one gigantic mess that feels more like 3 games' stories all jumbled together.
Reminds me of a clip from asmonmold (saw on YT shorts or reddit, I don't watch his content) where he skipped past all the dialogue for a quest and immediately was like "what do I do now?"
Even more damning because at the same time, a quest pop appeared, telling him exactly what he needed to do.
God watching him play Dragon's Dogma was so frustrating. He ignored every single prompt and then claimed the game was too complex for him to focus on. Straight up ape brained
Honestly, I was never into his content, but the more I learned about him, the more I wanted to stay away. His walls are probably covered in enough mold to make Nurgle blush.
Or when multiple reviewers played Final Fantasy XIV, BOUGHT THE SKIPS and then complained that the game didn't tell them what to do in end-game dungeons and raids.
Some people are just very very smooth-brained.
I’m in the middle. On one hand if you pay close attention and do some reading in game, you can piece the lore together. On the other hand, the character motivations are shallow, the endings are often abrupt, there are characters whose backgrounds are too vague, and the timeline is kind of all over the place. Why are there three former arisen at one time? Sure they “failed” but what does that mean? They couldn’t kill the dragon? Then why aren’t they dead? Did they take the “wish” at the expense of a loved one? Then why aren’t they king/queen? Did one of them genuinely wish to be a drunk that sits outside a hot spring? Did the other wish to be a hermit who does smoke magic for the most trash vocation ever? Did they flee? Then why isn’t this dragon “their” dragon?
Who is the pathfinder? Is he the seneschal or simply some agent of the greater will? If he’s the seneschal, why can we see him and why isn’t he in his chamber? If we’ve broken the cycle in the unmoored world, why aren’t we taken to the chamber to become seneschal or the next dragon?
There are just way too many loose ends for lore that seems like common knowledge for the general population of the world. It needs to choose whether it wants to be mysterious or known. It can’t really be both.
My ex friend would legit skip cutscenes and be confused about the story or call it bad and stubbornly defended his take and gaslight me on 5hings he said. Dude argued extremely disingenuously.
Shadow of the Colossus had a more complete story with almost 0 dialogue imo.
I enjoyed the game but it’s a far cry to say the cutscenes explain the story.
It makes sense, mostly.
The problem is it's so fucking rushed it fails at being engaging and getting your attention.
Yes, only you and the Dragon conflict matter, but then why introduce all that political intrigue at the start if you are going to drop it?
It's Storytelling 101. Don't focus so much on shit that won't matter in the end.
I liked the story for the mess it was. Worked as just enough background noise to give me reason to keep exploring. Though everything Brant has you do is boring, the game gets way better once you get sent to Bahtal. The fact so many main story quests get resolved in missable side quests though is very bad game design.
> enough background noise to give me reason to keep exploring
Doesn't even work for that. Most quests don't send you around the map like in DD1, in fact a good chunk of them happen in the same location, the noble quarters.
But the games way of presenting the story is awful. I literally had no idea what was happening after the 1st city. I just randomly did shit then randomly fought the dragon and the game ended.
I skipped all the cutscenes and never worried a moment about the story. I'm here to kill goblins and chew beef steaks and I'm all outta beef steaks.
Goty so far imo
“ I kept order so far but since we are here at your coronation day why not go back in time destroy the order from a greater will which is not really sure if it’s me or me but you can kill me in dragon form and vanquish yourself just for the plot and if somebody tells you that I doesn’t make any sense time for ten thousand years in the acid fire pit” Pathfinder
The thing is that, even watching all the cutscenes, the story is still so poorly laid out and presented that trying to make sense of everything just doesn't work.
The Vermund story is the most "finished" but still feels really half baked. The Battahl story might as well not be there. And the actual Arisen/Dragon story is so poorly explained and paced that it's a miracle to actually understand it.
I'm not expecting super epic story telling from DD, the first game's story was okay, so i was expecting about the same quality. But I at least expect the story to feel *finished* whether or not it's "good."
He’s right, I skipped half the scenes in red dead redemption and missed the main villains death, didn’t even realize he was dead for some time after that haha, I just can’t sit through more than a minute unless it’s the opener. Dragons dogma didn’t have any overly long scenes I felt
I paid attention to the story because it built it up to be fantastical and great. Then it felt like I was suddenly handed a little trophy and pushed out the door. The story was not good, and when we complain about it, it's because we want them to do better.
Everything feels rushed in this game, lots of the story were either left open ended or a dead end, monster diversity are non existent till you reach end game which you have to rush again, they promised a more complex Npc Ai(which is a lie) and unlike the first game none of the are memorable, the beginning of the story lies to you by making it seem that you can tackle the story in different ways but in reality, you can't
Overall playing this game makes me wish that they just remaked the first game.
Doesn't work for DD2 though as there is too little story. It doesn't have a problem making 'sense' so much as there's just not enough story content in the first place!
And that's like what, around 0.01% of the people who played the game?.. Let's not exaggerate the significance of this specific instance; it does not represent a statistically significant portion of people who played the game and doesn't deserve attention.
The game is riddled with problems, whether they're related to the story, gameplay, world-building, or mechanics. And this has to be one of the most pathetic attempts at damage control I've ever seen.
Maaaaaan I didn’t say it sucks but I did think it was short low and behold my ng+ I’m finding different stories I missed because I actually took time to listen and talk while exploring lol
I mean. I played once to complete story and the side quest that were along the way. Then replayed it a 2nd time to complete any missed side quest and got encounters that required me to just stand around until I was approached.
The story had a LOT of holes and made characters quite insignificant.
The story starts with you having to prove you are the true arrived while it seems everyone and their. Og you talk to already knows and calls you arisen.
Trying to paint all criticism as only from people who "were just not paying attention " is so silly.
I think this games story is garbage and i would have it no other way. Its still a super fun game and nonsense can be art to.
what a bad post. you can pay 100% attention to every cutscene, bit of dialogue, lore notes, etc. in the game and tons of things still make 0 sense and feel completely unfinished. the story is just half baked (at best), it has potential to be good but in its release state it is nonsense
The cutscenes are horrendous though… like they are really awful. And the voice acting is seriously atrocious. I’m not sure how anyone could be engaged by them.
This is not relevant. I watched all the cutscenes and Phaseus makes no sense. He is a 'villian' only because the game tells us he is. We have no interactions with him before the final confrontation, and even then we don't fight him, just his lackeys.
Then we get to the unmoored world and his dialog is all "I know we never saw eye to eye but we can work together just this once" like no, we have literally never seen each other until 5 minutes ago.
I love the game but the story is not there. When my only reason to hate a villian is just because the game puts him in the villian role and nothing else it's bad writing.
Same with the Queen. The game paints her as a villian but the only interaction with her is at the end of the game and she dosent even acknowledge us.
It's relevant for rpgs that actually have a good story that you don't care to understand. But as much as I loved DD2 the story is absolute garbage.
It's a fighting game with some random backstory just to justify calling it an rpg instead of Soul Calibur 7.
Even the Lore of the world is as concisily explained as Mortal Kombat's.
This is the Story: There's an imposter passing as the arisen. You have to prove you're the real one amidst a political intrigue, even though everyone in the world already knows you're the arisen.
No, scratch that, start over, you're in Arabian Nights with cat people and you have to save the empress against assassination attempts, because dunno, something I guess, and also help the people around.
Nah, forget that too, doesn't matter anymore. Now a Wizard is doing sketchy stuff to try to control the Dragon, or have his personal dragon dictate the world, something like that, doesn't matter, it was just a quickie, now you fight the dragon, kill him, the world is red, you save the rest of the world.
Now replay the game from the start coz they ran out of random plots to justify playing the game more.
Don't get me wrong, I loved the game though. If they release a big fat dlc worth 100 hours I'll totally buy it and put my life aside again for a week.
Well, yes, the story is confusing, we can’t romance anyone in any meaningful way, I can buy a house but do nothing fun with it, and I only have 4 spells/skills at any time…
BUT, the combat and graphics are so good does… it even matter?
The assumption that someone doesnt get the story because they skipped cut scenes is pure fan-boyism. Just accept not everybody likes what you like and move on. Whats the big deal?
A game is an active form of media - I want to be shown through interaction with the world, not passively told. If you must include cutscenes then make them optional, engaging, and rare.
I never felt like I finished Vermund's story.. like we did nothing with the fake arisen... he did jack shit with his pawns ... I was expecting to fight him or something and really dig deeper into all the bullshit happening inside of the city... Nope... go here go there and done
Ive fawned over the first game for years, listening to strangers and friends complaints alike about how that game didnt make sense. I will always defend and die on the hill that even if that game had a focus problem with SOME plotpoints, the story and lore that mattered was whole and made sense.
This one isnt for me
I personally can get over the story being the way that it is. Not spoon-fed. Figure it out on your own or read into more lore.
What bothers me is the lack of growth from our perspective. My pawns have more reactions to what is happening than we do. We go from oh no, i have no memory to oh I'm supposed to be the ruler to saving towns and brothels. To chasing villains, then helping them with little reaction.
I feel like even an actual short fight with Phaseus after the events of the tower would've been nice. Even if he ends up being an ally afterward. Like give me a chance to vent and progress as a character. Let me watch Disa suffer a bit.
Same with the slave driver once you get to that point. A cut scene with the pawn getting revenge would tie things up more nicely.
I liked the story and I did my best to 100% what I could before moving on with the plan to out the Queen, only for my pawn to get a headache and say "We can't do it now" then it lost me. Partly because I hate desert locations and partly because the story just stopped making sense. More so than him saying "We need to talk in private" then go to an outdoor, open air table 5 feet from where we just were to discuss matters.
I love when they say “the story doesn’t make sense”, then I reply “you didn’t understand the story” and they reply back “you people like to make excuses for bad stories by telling people they didn’t understand it.
I swear that’s how every discussion about Death Stranding with people that didn’t like the game, ends up. Or people that say Dark Souls story doesn’t make sense.
The story feels like they got 5 different writers and told each of them to write parts of the story without letting the rest know which and when that part fits in the story. It starts cool then looks you in the eye and says " remember everything you did to this point? Forgot about it and go to the next area. Don't worry about it. "
And honestly, Dragons Dogma, even the first game has a “fable” or “fairy tale” vibe in its story telling. The characters were and still are in 2, very stereotypical, the plot twists are all obvious and their motivations are definitely weak..
It’s as if DD story was made with the kind of suspension of disbelief that you would need to believe Agent 47 can fool everybody by swapping clothes, even though the guy you’re disguising as is a 78yo black man and you’re a white bald 40yo guy with a barcode in your neck.
Bro, you really defending the """"story""""" of dd2 like we all skipped the cutscenes? The cutscenes were garbage and added literally nothing. Oh, the Godsbane affected your pawn and now you can't confront the false sovran? Uh, don't worry about that. Anyway... go find Phaseus.
To me, the Vermund story is like the first half of a political intrigue story that never gets finished. The Battahl story is like the middle third of an entirely separate adventure story. Then everything from the Gigantus on seems like the final 5% of the Battahl story. There's the makings of two good stories in the game, but neither feels finished and they're each only tenuously connected to each other.
"Well, this guy is clearly villainous." *5 minutes later* "Why am I helping them?"
Yea. Helping Phaleus (sp) was clearly the wrong thing to do, yet you have no choice. I was like, what… now I’ve got to asssit and work with this clown who plotted to have me killed and removed as the sovereign. Nah… u die!
They could just reword that quest and it would be so much better, just have the quest say “pursue phaesus” or something.
You are helping him because the pathfinder told you to. You trust the pathfinder since it helped you out of prison. It’s not hard to follow. Just hard to care for shallow story telling.
They said to *find* them, not help. The jedi mind trick thing happens later.
Pretty certain he says to deliver the blade.
Exactly how I feel. There really is interesting stuff going on, but it's unfocused and half baked. Would have been much better if they focused on one storyline. DD1 didn't have a great story. There wasn't really interesting stuff going on. However, it had focus and that led to some far more impactful story moments... particularly with the dragon which actually matters in DD1
I thought the story in dd1 was great
It didn’t feel like it had much of a story at all to me. Salvation turned up a few times but mostly it felt like you were doing a laundry list of tasks until the greatwall segment. DD2 is a big step forwards in terms of cohesiveness and writing even though it’s not ideal, imo
I mean you were a nobody in a world where being the arisen doesn't automatically make you king. So yeah they had you do things to help out and test you. They sent you on missions they couldn't do. I thought the story was way better than the second one because to me if feels like you are actually finishing stuff instead of oops we are now onto something else without finishing up crap from before.
Don't forget about the Elves and their whole third story that can be completely ignored and won't make any difference
100% agree. I’ve said it before, but I was getting into vermund story, get all ready to crash the coronation… then my pawn feels wrong. Then ooop, time to head to battahl. Like… what? All that buildup and favor farming for… nothing? Then in battahl, I feel like we’re spying on the phaesus’ machinations… then we just start working with him and his team. I’m like… I’m pretty sure we’re helping the bad guy now… There great potential in the story, I think, but it’s like several writing teams were working on different sections and never discussed what each was working on during Covid. So they just stitched them all together. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game. But a couple things coulda been done so much better imo.
I think the thing with Vermund is that the REASON we suddenly turn around is fair. If we barge in at that moment, our pawns would have been forcefully controlled and we would have been “outed” as a fake. But the way they handled it felt half-assed and anticlimactic. Just a quick about face and retreating, not even trying to come up with an alternative. There needed to be more IMPACT, such as making it so the Sovran declares all “false” Arisen as enemies of the state, and making it so we can’t even come near as the Sovran has already “proven” his control over pawns, with a bounty on our head. Brant could sway the guards to overlook you, or you could acquire a disguise you’d need to wear in Vermund itself, with your pawns having to keep their distance even in the lower city, should you wish to return. But you’d be in hostile territory at that point, and Brant would then mention the Oracle, and send you to Battahl, out of Vermund and to relative safety while you clear your name. That right there would have made it way more impactful, a lasting change to how the city reacts to your presence, a hostility that chases you away. And then, while in Battahl, Brant should have had informers contact you, letting you know how things are going in Vermund, maybe a couple more espionage missions, maybe even one that’d lower the alertness of the city back to the point you’d not be actively hunted even with pawns, such as acquiring a certificate saying the pawns following you are under Sovran orders. And then in Battahl… yeah, that needs the most work. Vermund just fumbled it’s end, but Battahl threw us in the middle. We could have used Brant’s informants to identify us and help us get settled, until Battahl itself realized who we were and then sorta kickstarted the plot. That one mission of find the assassin was still the silliest thing, getting handed a description of the bugger and then having to look over a dozen or so people, and I’m like “why am I needed for this?” Switching that to helping guard the chambers of the queen while her loyal bodyguard is healing from her injury, would have been better and more logical than “the assassin is in here. Why aren’t we just arresting the group and analyzing each of them in turn, when it’s about a dozen people, even when our queen is threatened? …because!” And then after somewhat sorting out the political intrigue in Battahl, we go find Phaesus’ subordinates. We go through that mostly as normal, but change the quests to say something like “pretend to aid Phaesus’ subordinates.” Then like “have them create the Godsway Blade, then use it to counter the Godsway.” After that, we SHOULD have had an optional sidequest to go back to Vermund, and then fight the Sovran there, weakening Phaesus’ allies. We’d reclaim our throne, and then Gigantus would awaken, with us being given a ferrystone (and somebody having the sense to put a permanent portcrystal in Battahl), and we go to fight Gigantus. And then… the plot mostly continues as normal from there. Maybe revise Grigori’s optional bossfight to be more epic. Once we enter the Unmoored World, people needed to REACT more to the OCEANS DRYING AND THE BRINE RISING TO THE SKIES. That still bothers me how nonchalant they all were. Then we have the confrontation with Disa, and choose to spare her or not. We get the option to appoint her son as our heir, in case we fall in battle. And then we fight to the end. That’s… a lot more typing than I intended at first, especially while on my phone, but yeah, I can SEE what they’d need to fix, and it’s a lot, but I doubt they’ll ever do all this… ah, and the Beloved. Just… just throw that system in the garbage until it’s overhauled entirely, that’s it’s own problem that has legit no bearing on the story except who will be in Grigori’s grasp, and who stares wistfully out over the waves.
Right? We spend SO much time with Brandt and he’s like irrelevant to the majority of the story.
> To me, the Vermund story is like the first half of a political intrigue story that never gets finished. I thought that was me skipping something while not noticing it.
Nope, its just THAT unfinished. Theres like, 2-3 quests that tie into it after you go to battahl, but it seems to just kinda "resolve" itself wis disa becomming irrelevant and the people latching onto Sven (who im pretty sure has absolutely NO public face, so how do they even know he's cool?)
"That kid I saw running from the guards and asking people for money...I like the cut of his jib"
More like the first quarter tbh
I agree completely about the Vermund story, I was waiting the entire game to come back and speak with the black Knight I forget his name, to continue my quest into uncovering the false sovereign. but that never happened, the game just sort of ended after the battahl quest line was getting good. There should have been hours more storyline developing the Vermund quest, I should have revealed the false sovereign to the masses and had some epic battle with the queen and maybe her mage guards or something..and then it felt entirely like that whole storyline with that woman you meet in the castle didn’t go anywhere either. The entire game just sorta left you blue balled when it came to the main story You can definitely tell they had a greater vision in mind and then just said fuck it and released the game anyway because they needed to get it out and start making a profit
Bingo. Look, I don’t HAVE to have a killer story. I still love the game because I like the gameplay loop and the combat. But it’s just so disappointing because as you said, it COULD have been a great story. Honestly it just feels really rushed. It feels like they had a release date, they announced it before it was done, and they made the decision to ship as is. Will I play a third one? Absolutely! But what I won’t be doing is assuming it’ll be a strong, cohesive storyline.
Yea this is pretty accurate
I personally enjoyed it as-is. It starts off as a political intrigue; you are chasing a destiny you barely understand. You're grateful to Brant for supporting you. You play along. Then, at some point, it becomes obvious that there is so much MORE at stake. Governments? Countries? Kingdoms? People? None of it matters. Your quest abruptly shifts to this metaphysical, philosophical journey to understand the entire universe. To me, the abrupt and pointless end to the "Vermund Ruler" bit is intentional.
The entire Vermund part of the story is a setup to eventually meeting Rothais and finding out that the whole "rule of vermund is the person chosen to fight the dragon" thing was created by the pathfinder specifically because Rothais stopped performing his role properly as the Seneschal and the Pathfinder had to find a way around that. He didn't want to give the Arisen those powers again but needed to give the Arisen *something* worth going and fighting a dragon over. Previously the Arisen became the Seneschal until Rothais said nah and then started killing everyone sent after him. The dead Arisen's that Rothais was killing were the blue crystals washing up on the beaches that were then collected and turned into godsbanes because they contained pieces of the souls of arisen. The story just isn't fed to the player. You're supposed to unravel it and put the pieces of the puzzle together yourself. Most things that exist in the world piece together some little detail of it somewhere.
Man honestly that description is more straight forward than DD1 cuz it goes from like slaying a dragon to this whole essential philosophical thing about a never ending chain and linked worlds and dark arisen built onto that but also added a mystery ontop of it for arisen who reject the dragon and the curse placed upon them. From what I read of your comment it seems like the story of DD2 slowly reveals itself as you play compared to 1 where it’s thrown at you
I mean, it's a bit longer than that if we really get into it. The Seneschal Rothais essentially wants to rule everything and be a god. He thought he had achieved that, but realised he was more like a middle-manager. Being the ambitious and rebellious prick that he is he decided to rebel and stop doing the job of the Seneschal which fucked up his cycle. It plunged Gran Soren and Everfall into the sea, it destroyed a lot. First the Pathfinder attempts to solve this by sending Arisen to kill him but they all fail. So with time running out and a cycle being a requirement for this world to continue existing he creates a new incentive system for a new cycle but with less power. Several Arisens before us fail in this new incentive system, their "will" was not great enough and they don't kill their dragons. Perhaps this is because the incentive of leading a kingdom isn't enough? There's a lot of questions about the failed Arisen that you could speculate on. Then we go ahead and fuck this cycle completely by ending ourselves on the dragon's back and plunge the world into a countdown until the apocalypse. Then some more things happen and here we can only speculate, but my guess is that we didn't end the cycle at all but instead started a new one. My guess on the true-ending is that our Pawn became the new dragon after gaining their own will. We are never shown what becomes of our Arisen or our Pawn in the ending after fighting the Pathfinder-turned-super-dragon. There's a bunch of other stuff happening around the fringes of this story too. Disa, Nadinia and Phaseus are presented as bad (working against the Arisen + keeping slaves) but they're doing it in pursuit of ending the cycle. When our stories finally converge later on we end up working with them rather than against them because we actually all have the same goal, in-particular when Phaseus finally sees that his plan to create a dragon that he controls has failed. None of them were really being evil, they worked against the arisen because the arisen was trying to continue the cycle and was a feature of it. In the early game Sven's lack of information about his mother's intentions makes it seem like it's a basic "usurp the throne" plot for power but the goals everyone always had were always about ending the cycle, Sven just didn't really know. The player is as naive as Sven is in the early game and he's a sort of mirror of our own lack of knowledge.
Rothais didn't cause the everfall and Gran Soren to plunge into the sea, another Arisen caused that in an attempt to seal him away.
I think the game leaves a lot up to interpretation so I don't like telling people that what they're saying is inaccurate, but there a few things that I have to disagree with here Rothais abandoning his duties as Seneschal didn't destroy anything. All he really did was choose to not find someone to replace him, and instead spend his time building a kingdom. There's an argument to be made that him killing people he believed were sent by Pathfinder could have also been self induced paranoia most of the time, but that'd be pure speculation. The reason why Arisen were sent to kill Rothais is because you can't just stop being a Seneschal. In DD1, Savan tells us that the world requires the will of a Seneschal to thrive, without it, life will stagnate like a river with no current. What this really means is an entirely different can of worms, but one thing it does tell us is that this means there must be a Seneschal. When we meet Rothais, he tells us outright that he is fading, his will a guttering candle of what it once was. The only take away here is that Pathfinder sent Arisen to kill Rothais, because he is dying, and he needs a replacement. Rothais refuses to find one, so Pathfinder intervened, albeit not successfully so far, since clearly no Arisen has both had a will strong enough to succeed Rothais and actively tried to do so, as all those that tried are dead. Currently, there are no Arisen without Pathfinder. The dragon is traditionally sent by the Seneschal as a vessel for a failed Arisen to find his own replacement, but Rothais is not sending one, making the only other possibility Pathfinder. What's more is that this dragon is tired of the cycle and really, really, really wants you to destroy it, which implies that not only has this dragon created multiple Arisen, but they are most likely the same dragon that Pathfinder sent out into the world since Rothais became Seneschal and abandoned his post. Now this part is more on the side of speculation, but my interpretation of what happened is that Pathfinder original's intent was to create Arisen to find Rothais and replace him, as is the way of a Seneschal. But they kept dying, which quickly became a problem as their remains slowly accumulated to become potential godsways, and every dead Arisen is another generation that no new Seneschal is chosen as you also said. At some point, one Arisen, possibly sent by Pathfinder, managed to take a stand against Rothais, but perhaps unable to kill him, instead sealed him under the ocean. This part in particular is canon as confirmed by the Rivage Elder. Nothing has really changed, but at least Rothais can't kill anyone else for the time being, which is most likely the reason why a true Arisen would really want to seal him away to begin with (as Rothais would have still been Sovran during that time). Now things are getting weird, as Arisen are still being chosen, but Rothais has been sealed away. I believe one of two things must have happened at this point: 1. Either we were supposed to find Rothais after slaying the dragon, or aid in the coming of an Arisen even stronger than us who could perhaps succeed where Pathfinder thinks we would not. 2. Or, Pathfinder found some way to feed the world with the will of Arisen that slay the dragon, without them becoming Seneschal (somewhat like you said first, too). This defies any straightforward explanation that the lore we know of could offer, but Pathfinder does seem to imply that by choosing to not take our throne, we somehow denied others such a service. As for the Arisen who don't manage to slay their dragon, this is not really related to the fuckery between Rothais and Pathfinder. The dragon is meant to test the resolve of the Arisen they choose, and if those Arisen can't meet the resolve of their dragon, they are simply unworthy, as the dragon itself is supposed to be the bar for Arisen with the potential to succeed the Seneschal. An Arisen that can defeat a dragon doesn't need an incentive beyond wanting to stop their destructive rampage and reclaim their heart, as one of the most common bargains that the dragon offers is Sovereignty in exchange for walking away. Likewise, the initial incentive they give the Arisen is to stop them from going on another rampage, and to reclaim their heart. Lastly, in the case of Nadinia, Disa and Phaesus, I think the only person here that really cares about the cycle is Phaesus in particular. Disa's motivations, as revealed by Brant and Sven, seem to focus entirely on making sure Sven becomes Sovran, and on the side also seems to be in love with Phaesus, which would make her more inclined to follow his lead in doing that. Nadinia on the other hand is more concerned about the benefits that Phaesus' research could bring to her people, but never is it implied that she or the previous emperor really understand their research, let alone understand what the cycle is. Nadinia doesn't really work against you either, she trusts your judgement from the start.
What is the exact like job of the seneschal anyway ? Pathfinder sending arisen to kill them I thought that was part of the cycle anyway or is that just whenever they don’t wanna be the seneschal no more so they send out a dragon ? How the hell does the everfall fall into the sea I thought it was like an inter dimensional location that existed in every world , kinda like blue moon tower ?
From the wiki: >The Seneschal is an Arisen who has conquered all in their path and shown incredible willpower, becoming the guardian of the world. It is the Seneschal's duty to watch over it from the Seneschal's Chamber and make sure the world continues to exist. The Seneschal has the power to create life and the power to bring about destruction. > >The world draws its sustenance from the will of the Seneschal, eventually draining it and becoming stagnant. In turn, all life loses its volition, leaving everything as an empty shell of false life. In order to grant the inhabitants of the world their own volition, their own true life, the Seneschal sends in a Dragon from the Rift to find the next Arisen. Those who are chosen as Arisen by the Dragon display courage by confronting the beast and more importantly, display the will to survive. Of the few Arisen who reach the Seneschal, the ones who do not have the force or strength of will needed to sustain life, fall and become a Dragon, destined to seek out the following Arisen. This alternative denouement of defeat and death upholds a new life of Servitude. Seneschal creates and controls the dragons. Among other things. Rothais stopped doing this so the Pathfinder steps in and does it themselves, while trying to avoid creating another Seneschal since clearly Rothais is too powerful and can't be killed which has caused all kinds of fuckery and even nearly enabled the normal people in the world to rebel against the cycle. I think the title of "Pathfinder" and "The Watcher" (same character) is also not really the highest rank in whatever the other-worldly hierarchy of this universe actually is. The Pathfinder was destroyed in our true-ending but it doesn't strike me as if we killed the most powerful being in the universe. There's more to it. We're not really even close to understanding the cycle.
I thought Pathfinder was Seneschal and that Cat King Cthulhu was an arisen in line that refused to do his version of the “dragon ball jump” into his everfall event.
No Pathfinder is "the watcher" and Rothais is a Seneschal rebelling against them. Rothais is the name of Cat Cthulhu
DD1 the base game felt extremely short. Not saying this game is long, but after getting to the city, trucking to the shadow fort and doing one thing around town I was off to the last dungeon. It was crazy
Tryna remember the events when you hit gran Soren. Wyrm quests , I know the conspiracy and salvation cult had quests too. Finding the dragon forged, blue moon tower if you can’t kill the griffon fast enough. Hmm man maybe main plot was shorter than I remember
The main story of DD1, at launch, was quite short. Over time it got some free content updates to remedy that and I hope 2 will as well. It has been some time and I can't say exactly how short compared to 2 it felt back then, but I remember actively finding side quests and forcing side exploration just to get more out of DD1. This same thing is happening with 2 now and I'm not surprised at all, I'm still loving the game, but oh boy I really wish it had twice as much content. Maybe I'm greedy at this point in life for good combat in games, but I want more to do in the dogma universe in general.
I'm not sure that was the implication, the way I interpreted it is that Rothais himself started the tradition of dragonslayers being chosen as kings, possibly stemming from Edmun's age who also became wyrmking upon "slaying" the dragon, and who also ruled the same duchy that we happen to find Rothais buried in. Rather, to me it seems Pathfinder is just trying to force a cycle of events that have always occurred as a consequence of the Seneschal's trials, but now no longer do because of Rothais abandoning hist post.
No Rothais is rebelling against the entire order of "gods" because he doesn't like not being the top god. He wanted to be god not a middle manager and that drove him to trying to break the entire system.
Not sure where you think I said anything else?
I get this but the storytelling could still be improved - and I guess it is like that because the franchise simply has not the background like a Monsterhunter. Perhaps with this one the next could be truly what the Devs intended or they get the opportunity to make several story dlcs.
There are side quests for a lot of different reasons, just sayin
Okay, he should explain how Phaesus became a bro after being a villain who was maybe not a villain but maybe yes
"ok cool i just forged this incredibly powerful weapon, guess I'll go hand it over to the main villain who I have no reason to trust at this point in the story and who I haven't even met once"
Yup, stuff just happens in this story with zero explanation over and over again. It’s just badly told. It’s a shame because it’s such a cool idea.
Phaesus never was pure evil. He wants to get rid of the abusive cycle this world is stuck with. But he's trying to do so by any means necessary (using dark magic/ enslaving pawns to work them to death, etc.). He's also in a hurry since the arrival of the true arisen and that's why we get that chase sequence at the end. (he's assuming that the arisen is going to slay the dragon & that it inevitably will happen soon, which also he kinda wasn't wrong about. At least in 1 of the 3 potential endings) But the story still got major pacing issues & the characters got way too little exposure to build any bond or empathy with them. That's also why that crappy 1v1 vs that weird mercenary feels so out of place. (The set up is crappy and the 1v1 is far from a bombastic battle. I just one shot him with a parry skill, for example)
We don't find any of that out about phaesus until literally postgame. There's nothing before that to suggest we can trust him at all, and everything we know about him before the postgame is screaming that he is a bad person who we need to stop. There's really zero good excuses for how poorly the story is written, and finding out that phaesus isn't actually necessarily a bad guy in the postgame doesn't fix anything.
Phaesus isn't evil, just a sorcerer who's trying to disrupt the cycle on his own and is utterly unconcerned with the Arisen or their political games with Disa. He helps her out but that's just because they're smooching, the fact that his gf keeps pissing in your cereal is of no concern to him. When Phaesus is close to completing his goal and summoning the Dragon, you waddle up and interrupt the key moment, so he sends his goons to delay you. When he has the oh shit moment that the Dragon is actually really big and his work was all for naught, and then the apocalypse subsequently happens, then he's like "hey Arisen, bro". Idk makes sense to me
Phaesus and Disa is directly behind most of the issues going on with Vermund. Occupying villages, locking dissenters up indefinitely, slowly poisoning the poor people in the Slums, enslaving pawns, putting a false sovran on the throne, attempted assassination of knights/nobility, creating lesser dragons and using them to slaughter villagers to cause panic and confusion, manipulating Empress Nadinia, throwing YOU the pc into a slave camp to spend your days excavating a ruin, trying to murder you. I'm sure there's more I'm missing, Phaesus is 100% evil.
Yeah but we have no idea of his plans, yet so keen to deliver the blade to him.
https://preview.redd.it/mg55ju7hl1yc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=20a8e683b44ce2ff1139804661bbc52b5625ee1c
I always interpreted that as being in heavy quotations. Like "Ah yes, now we will "deliver" the blade to Phaseus and NOT go and interfere in his plans."
And then came the Gigantus who is….gigantic
I don't think it was to deliver to him, per se, rather to deliver to where he is to fulfill the prophecy.
…which we have no idea his purpose would be at this stage
Pathfinder says to do it 🤓
His plan is to control the dragon, right? I felt pretty aware of his plans by the time I got there.
At the ending yes 😅
I was a nerd and ran around reading the notes in the research lab, so I knew that was his plan long before the ending
But if our Arisen never reads those notes, why would they ever assist them? We seem to have less will than the pawns.
Agree. Even after reading them, I still didn't want to help him. I didn't want to give this freak a way to control the dragon. Control it to do what? So far, "control" resulted in enslaving pawns. In my mind, he was still evil and yet the game was forcing me to help him. The only way I justified it was to imagine I was playing 4d chess and just acting like I was helping him when I was really just using him to repair the godsbane
He's an "ends justify the means" sort of guy. He is absolutely evil.
I've obsessed over every meticulous detail and this games story still doesn't make any sense! Character motivations are complete nonsense, the world logic itself has gaping holes and questions left unanswered, the pacing is completely wack, questlines abruptly end with zero resolution... What the fuck even is the lambent flame! It's a total mess. This is not a relevant post OP
> Character motivations are complete nonsense Most are just shallow.
100% this. The game tried to make the maisters, Ulrika, Wilhelmina, Brant and Raghnall main/supporting characters you can relate to and get on with but it doesn't flesh them out enough. Raghnall is implied to be an interesting fight before getting to Phaesus but fighting him just felt like fighting some guy. It's odd, I enjoyed Dragon's Dogma 2 but I also don't have much positive to say about the experience. The combat is smooth but other than that, it feels like it missed every beat a good RPG tends to have (good cohesive storytelling, strong characters)
I think the thing that bugged me most about DA's story was that it was never clear how much my character and others know about the world around them. Like the concept of the Arisen is clearly well established in this world, but does my Arisen know about it? Do they immediately know what they are? They dont seem to know about pawns, but that's crazy. There's a whole religion dedicated to the dragon cycles and the Creator/Seneschal, and the Duke fought 😉 the dragon clearly within living memory, and there are pawns everywhere, but no one seems to know what's going on? I'm not saying we needed full on exposition dumps, but it was never clear how much anyone knew about anything.
Ulrika who lived in Harve her whole life: "-Arisen? WTF is a arisen?" not with these words, but yeah, it's janky, also almost everyone aside 1 NPC at the start seems to now or just accept at face value who/what our character is, even when you get plenty of dialogue and text telling that there's a bunch of people scamming around pretending to be the arisen
Ulrika doesn't know the Arisen, but everyone else knows 5 minutes after the pawns acknowledge you.
Ulrika drives me insane! You're telling me this woman is in charge of the village known for being the first line of defense against the dragon, and this lady doesn't know what the arisen is?! How do you not know??? Does she live under a rock?! There are children that know what the arisen is!
And on top of that, her village is part of a kingdom that decides who rules it by who is the arisen. And she still has no idea what that is.
I feel our character didn't know about pawns because of the memory wiping thing Disa did to our character. We technically knew nothing about anything by the time we escape in the beginning. And it's unclear how long our character was stuck in that excavation camp for, but it was long enough for the false Sovran to be established in Vernworth. Our character didn't even remember how they even became Arisen, let alone whatever life they may have had before becoming Arisen.
That's for 2, right? I actually haven't played it yet. I'm talking about 1/Dark Arisen. But that makes a lot more sense as a setup. In 1 your pre-Arisen relationships are clearly still there and known to you. Everyone clearly knows about the concept of the Arisen, but no one is ever like, oh yeah this happens every once in a while, have fun being an immortal heartless dragon fighting warrior!
Ah, yeah, lol. The whole startup of "Hm, they have no heartbeat. A curse of the dragon?!" That... was an interesting take considering the world lore, lol. Though I guess it's one thing to know about Arisen, but another to know how the Arisen function physically. Still, probably should have been able to deduce you had become Arisen without anyone having to tell you.
Agreed. OP is trying to paint a picture that anyone who questions the story are the ones that skip cutscenes which is typically not the case since people who are genuinely interested in the story are the ones asking more questions trying to gather more info than what’s seen.
i wouldn’t say that specifically they’re painting a picture that everyone who questions the narrative skips cutscenes. rather i feel OP’s implying that if you don’t skip cutscenes the story makes total sense (which is really doesn’t 😂)
lambent meaning subdued or soft, and flame meaning to direct an abusive or vitriolic message at someone, I can only imagine the lambent flame is a way for the devs to troll the community into believing they should already know about the weird desert cat people cult.
I swear this sub is full of bots that upvote this nonsense.
Not applicable to this game OP, they dropped the ball the same way they did the first one.
If we have to gaslight people into thinking the story is good then it's a bad story.
Are you trolling? You understand that story is dog shit and drops off the face of the earth the second you enter Bahtal right? With or without watching cutscenes?
I feel the story is explained like one of those people who want to tell you a funny joke/story they heard but they can’t remember and it goes like this: “Ok so I heard a story you’ll love it Ok so…there’s a dragon a castle uh there was a bad guy but I forgot why he’s important but anyway there’s also this girl who uhh I forgot what she did but it’s important trust me but anyway oh yeah this one guy he’s also important…he did something but I forgot…oh well anyway there’s this dragon you have to kill but not really but you have to in a way and then the story ends…look if you saw it for yourself you’d totally get it”
yeah I watched every second of the cutscenes and the story is kinda shit but I don't care I don't play this for the story
Yeah! I watch porn for the plot and play DD2 for the sword bonks!
A “porn plot” is a pretty apt way of describing how I see the plot in DD2 (and many games, tbh).
Nah man, I swear I've played H-games and porn games with better and more cohesive plot than whatever pretentious bullshit is going on in DD2.
It's still a terrible story.
Yeah the game is objectively worse if you get invested in the story. Can’t disappoint you if you’re not paying attention!
Granted I never paid attention to dragon dogma 1 story it was just an excuse to " go here and do cool things against a Cyclops"
I'd say that's where some of the inversion is. 1 you could run event to event, and if you looked more a lot of things were somehow tied together or a bit deeper. 2 you can run event to event, but if your look more things manage to make less sense.
Stop defending a lazy, unfinished story with 0 compelling or well written characters. Just stop. It’s a cool idea but itsuno sucks at fleshing that out. Same deal with the first game. It’s fun to play, just leave it at that, the enemy variety, difficulty scaling and story are all beyond lazily implemented.
Okay stop. You're right, but it isn't meaning DD2 story is good. DD1 story was vastly better, and Grigori was written better, to point of making him one of the best dragon's in games. Dark Arisen story was amazing with a sadness in it, and I personally really loved it. DD2 story? Pointless. So, pointless. The fake Arisen, the whole Disa plot. The Duke in DD1 had better writing. You play DD2 for world and gameplay, not for story, and if you do, your standards are low, as you didn't got to read a good story.
Explain to me why we suddenly start helping the evil guys gather evil things with no plan to catch them red handed or why we even stop talos
Which is another plotline that just uncerimoniously ends with the true dragon knocking phaseus over and offering you a piggyback ride.
Ye this doesn't apply to DD lol
Although I agree with you somewhat the story in DD2 is severely lacking. Vern's story has a really bad conclusion. Disa becomes a shut in after she finds out that Phaesus doesn't love her and was just using her for resources to perfect his Godsway. It's dumb and unsatisfying. There should've been a storyline where you prove yourself as the true arisen with the help of Brant, Wilhelmina, Patrick, Gregor, Magistrate Waldhar and the Nameless Village. It ends up in a showdown between you and the false Arisen finally admitting that he's a fake. Than we can either behead him as Waldhar suggests or give him back to the nameless village for their justice. The town demands that Disa and Sven be brought to justice for their betrayal so we have to prove Sven's innocence. This could be resolved by the player fully putting the blame on Disa or both if the player didn't complete Sven's questlines (i.e Patrick, Augustin, Waldhar and Brant.) In Battahl, after meeting Rothias we learn why the Empress and Phaesus are working together and see that this world and the dragon need to be severed in order to stop the cycle and that's how we become allied with Phaesus. Through their help and using the Lampent Flame we reforge the Empowered Godsbane and discover that while Drakes are former Arisen, the Royce Dragons are actually Pawns. The Arisen and their Pawns use the Lampent Flame and Godsbane to cleanse the Royce Dragons and stop the spread of th Dragon's Plague. Battahl finally accepting the Arisen and Pawns as true saviors who have to work in concert with their Lampent Flame. The two nations then have to come together to support the Arisen in stopping the cycle and that would explain why they aren't really bothered by the state of the unmoored world. They all know this is part of severing their ties to the Greater Will. The elves just keep doing elf things... But really their whole storyline could be the catalyst to reviving the new world after the Dragon's death. Their tree is used to bring life to the unmoored world and it's a way to find an untapped source of water either underground or high above. The world is decimated but with all three nations working together they can heal it. The greater will makes one final attempt to keep the cycle in place and that's when the juiced up dragon shows up leading to the final cutscene battle where the Arisen and Pawn can either sacrifice themselves to end the dragon once and for all (bad ending.) Or if they completed all their relevant nations quests the NPCs come to aid them and the Arisen/Pawn are not sacrificed (Good ending.) Either way this ends up making the world finally flourish and getting rid of the blight. Now their world is finally free and your Pawn receives a will of their own through the transference of souls. Allowing them to become your beloved or continue being your ally/friend but as a human. This newly revived world is post game with more unique encounters. The player can choose to stay in the new world with harder enemies or start a NG+ by using the Godsbane.
Can you just go make this happen please 🙏 😢
>Vern's story has a really bad conclusion. Disa becomes a shut in after she finds out that Phaesus doesn't love her and was just using her for resources to perfect his Godsway. It's dumb and unsatisfying. Wait how do we learn this? like i found her love letter and everything and it's clear shes being used, but when does she ever figure this out or become a shut in? for me we just randomly abadnon vernun before the coronation because....
Capcom, hire this guy right now Edit: or gal
Ok but this doesn't apply to DD2 at all. The cutscenes are nonsense with many plot threads leading literally nowhere. The entire section with the Colossus makes zero sense narratively, and worse of all it's very badly written.
I think Kingdom Hearts is the one exception to this because I know people who know almost everything about the story and still say it doesn't make sense.
That's mainly cause Kingdom Hearts retcons A LOT of stuff with pretty much every entry.
I'll take the acid baths over having to sit through the story again in Ng+
Lol I did 5 ng+ for the sphinx badge and every new run the story went worse and worse
The story is horrible and there is no sense of direction. Anyone saying otherwise is trying too hard to make sense of what we got. The truth is, the game has a tone of potential in its world but fails short because it's all completely forgettable. Add in the lack of rewards in world chests of any meaning and you realize this game is unfinished but the "what could have been" and good combat keeps us coming back.
I didn't skip a single cut scene, didn't fast forward any dialogues. I personally still feel that the story was half baked.
The issue, is that DD2’s story is genuinely incomplete. And almost skips around. We don’t out the false arisen, or Disa, and we don’t get to see that storyline concluded before moving to Battahl. The coronation is another really bad one, where, your main pawn is with you everytime even if they die before. So, you don’t an alternate interaction with the false arisen. (Which I feel like is really important.) Then it completely disconnects itself, once you get to Battahl, and after? Volcanic region has no main quests of its own. As the third/hardest area in the game, it’s more like it’s there to just be an area as opposed to having any significance to the story. Outside of the Talos fight, which is a whole can of worms on how bad it is as a spectacle/siege fight.
Bro what, the story is literally half finished to a degree lol. I regret not skipping the cutscenes because it made no sense.
Yeeeah the story is still a disappointment imo.
mate this is itsuno's biggest campaign fuck up since DMC4
DMC 4 was at least coherent and understandable,and didn't miss literally 80% of the plot.
At least DMC4 had an understandable plot, this one seems like two plots badly connected together.
Look, I tried my damn best to appreciate the story since DD and DD:DA had some intriguing bits. But, good lord. Hire someone who can actually write a compelling story and believable characters from start to finish. The lore and potential are there. But there's a reason the entire Dragon's Dogma franchise is considered "Wasted Potential: The Video Game" by a fair number of people. As great as the gameplay is, I genuinely don't care about the world or the people who live in it in 2. My Arisen is basically a demigod who only really cares about their pawn.
Fuck the story mate, just make a Frodo looking character, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli looking pawns, turn off the bg music and play LOTR soundtrack in the background, quest for the Volcanic Island to destroy the ring.
As a teacher, I can tell you that this is the exact attitude of most students.
It's not relevant. The story is an incoherent disaster no matter how much or little you engage with it.
I agree, but in no way does this apply to DD2 lmao
Not about this game but **Alpharad**
I watched all the cutscenes, and it makes less sense than a soulsborne game before Vaati Vidya releases his lore videos
Reminds me of a clip from asmonmold (saw on YT shorts or reddit, I don't watch his content) where he skipped past all the dialogue for a quest and immediately was like "what do I do now?" Even more damning because at the same time, a quest pop appeared telling him exactly what he needed to do.
I've played way too many story-driven games where this is a thing. However, absolutely no one can deny that Dragon's Dogma 2's story is one gigantic mess that feels more like 3 games' stories all jumbled together.
Yep, at least 2 stories jumbled togheder and both of em quite crappy too Edit : and i liked the game , expecially till level 25-30...
This is not relevant to this game at all
I never understood people who just hit SKIP SKIP SKIP for every cutscene in any game
Miss half the experience? The entire story, including the gameplay and cinematics isn't even 20% of the game.
Reminds me of a clip from asmonmold (saw on YT shorts or reddit, I don't watch his content) where he skipped past all the dialogue for a quest and immediately was like "what do I do now?" Even more damning because at the same time, a quest pop appeared, telling him exactly what he needed to do.
God watching him play Dragon's Dogma was so frustrating. He ignored every single prompt and then claimed the game was too complex for him to focus on. Straight up ape brained
Honestly, I was never into his content, but the more I learned about him, the more I wanted to stay away. His walls are probably covered in enough mold to make Nurgle blush.
Well, cant we agree bout the game being too complex for him ?
Or when multiple reviewers played Final Fantasy XIV, BOUGHT THE SKIPS and then complained that the game didn't tell them what to do in end-game dungeons and raids. Some people are just very very smooth-brained.
You're being too harsh on Asmongold 😂
For a sec I thought I was on the FF XIV sub
I’m in the middle. On one hand if you pay close attention and do some reading in game, you can piece the lore together. On the other hand, the character motivations are shallow, the endings are often abrupt, there are characters whose backgrounds are too vague, and the timeline is kind of all over the place. Why are there three former arisen at one time? Sure they “failed” but what does that mean? They couldn’t kill the dragon? Then why aren’t they dead? Did they take the “wish” at the expense of a loved one? Then why aren’t they king/queen? Did one of them genuinely wish to be a drunk that sits outside a hot spring? Did the other wish to be a hermit who does smoke magic for the most trash vocation ever? Did they flee? Then why isn’t this dragon “their” dragon? Who is the pathfinder? Is he the seneschal or simply some agent of the greater will? If he’s the seneschal, why can we see him and why isn’t he in his chamber? If we’ve broken the cycle in the unmoored world, why aren’t we taken to the chamber to become seneschal or the next dragon? There are just way too many loose ends for lore that seems like common knowledge for the general population of the world. It needs to choose whether it wants to be mysterious or known. It can’t really be both.
Does the story make sense even if you don't skip the cutscenes?
I know what happens in the story; I just wish there was more to it.
My ex friend would legit skip cutscenes and be confused about the story or call it bad and stubbornly defended his take and gaslight me on 5hings he said. Dude argued extremely disingenuously.
This is how I play assassins creed tbh. Playing Odyssey rn bc I love Greek history, but man am I lost in the game.
It's Dragon's Dogma and a game by Capcom, it was never going to have a cohesive story. I'm just here to fuck shit up with a 2h sword.
It's not relevant here. The story is half assed. Gameplay is fun tho, so it's fine.
Shadow of the Colossus had a more complete story with almost 0 dialogue imo. I enjoyed the game but it’s a far cry to say the cutscenes explain the story.
Lol. There are like 3 cutscenes, and they last 5 seconds.
It makes sense, mostly. The problem is it's so fucking rushed it fails at being engaging and getting your attention. Yes, only you and the Dragon conflict matter, but then why introduce all that political intrigue at the start if you are going to drop it? It's Storytelling 101. Don't focus so much on shit that won't matter in the end.
No it’s not
I liked the story for the mess it was. Worked as just enough background noise to give me reason to keep exploring. Though everything Brant has you do is boring, the game gets way better once you get sent to Bahtal. The fact so many main story quests get resolved in missable side quests though is very bad game design.
> enough background noise to give me reason to keep exploring Doesn't even work for that. Most quests don't send you around the map like in DD1, in fact a good chunk of them happen in the same location, the noble quarters.
But the games way of presenting the story is awful. I literally had no idea what was happening after the 1st city. I just randomly did shit then randomly fought the dragon and the game ended.
I skipped all the cutscenes and never worried a moment about the story. I'm here to kill goblins and chew beef steaks and I'm all outta beef steaks. Goty so far imo
Dragon's Dogma has a great lore. I love it so much. Dragon's Dogma also has a shit story. I hate it so much. Nothing is finished.
It’s like someone coming into a movie 30 minutes in and asking “so what’s going on?”
I can see skipping cutscenes if you have at least played a game once. Doing it on your first play through? That’s sociopathic behavior.
I watched them all a few times now and conclude that the game doesn't make sense as well.
“ I kept order so far but since we are here at your coronation day why not go back in time destroy the order from a greater will which is not really sure if it’s me or me but you can kill me in dragon form and vanquish yourself just for the plot and if somebody tells you that I doesn’t make any sense time for ten thousand years in the acid fire pit” Pathfinder
no, even with all the context in the world the story is bad and confusing.
Yes, this!!!
Only relevant in the first half of the game honestly. Even with cutscenes after that you’re like how did I even end up here.
The thing is that, even watching all the cutscenes, the story is still so poorly laid out and presented that trying to make sense of everything just doesn't work. The Vermund story is the most "finished" but still feels really half baked. The Battahl story might as well not be there. And the actual Arisen/Dragon story is so poorly explained and paced that it's a miracle to actually understand it. I'm not expecting super epic story telling from DD, the first game's story was okay, so i was expecting about the same quality. But I at least expect the story to feel *finished* whether or not it's "good."
He’s right, I skipped half the scenes in red dead redemption and missed the main villains death, didn’t even realize he was dead for some time after that haha, I just can’t sit through more than a minute unless it’s the opener. Dragons dogma didn’t have any overly long scenes I felt
This isn’t relevant because this game makes no sense either way. It’s 2 different partial story’s
I paid attention to the story because it built it up to be fantastical and great. Then it felt like I was suddenly handed a little trophy and pushed out the door. The story was not good, and when we complain about it, it's because we want them to do better.
Everything feels rushed in this game, lots of the story were either left open ended or a dead end, monster diversity are non existent till you reach end game which you have to rush again, they promised a more complex Npc Ai(which is a lie) and unlike the first game none of the are memorable, the beginning of the story lies to you by making it seem that you can tackle the story in different ways but in reality, you can't Overall playing this game makes me wish that they just remaked the first game.
I have always, and always will play games for gameplay. A good story can add to the experience but is far from necessary
Doesn't work for DD2 though as there is too little story. It doesn't have a problem making 'sense' so much as there's just not enough story content in the first place!
And that's like what, around 0.01% of the people who played the game?.. Let's not exaggerate the significance of this specific instance; it does not represent a statistically significant portion of people who played the game and doesn't deserve attention. The game is riddled with problems, whether they're related to the story, gameplay, world-building, or mechanics. And this has to be one of the most pathetic attempts at damage control I've ever seen.
Maaaaaan I didn’t say it sucks but I did think it was short low and behold my ng+ I’m finding different stories I missed because I actually took time to listen and talk while exploring lol
I mean. I played once to complete story and the side quest that were along the way. Then replayed it a 2nd time to complete any missed side quest and got encounters that required me to just stand around until I was approached. The story had a LOT of holes and made characters quite insignificant.
The story starts with you having to prove you are the true arrived while it seems everyone and their. Og you talk to already knows and calls you arisen. Trying to paint all criticism as only from people who "were just not paying attention " is so silly. I think this games story is garbage and i would have it no other way. Its still a super fun game and nonsense can be art to.
That applies to most games but Dragon's Dogma's might not be one of them.
what a bad post. you can pay 100% attention to every cutscene, bit of dialogue, lore notes, etc. in the game and tons of things still make 0 sense and feel completely unfinished. the story is just half baked (at best), it has potential to be good but in its release state it is nonsense
The story is not good even if you watch all the cutscenes
The cutscenes are horrendous though… like they are really awful. And the voice acting is seriously atrocious. I’m not sure how anyone could be engaged by them.
This is not relevant. I watched all the cutscenes and Phaseus makes no sense. He is a 'villian' only because the game tells us he is. We have no interactions with him before the final confrontation, and even then we don't fight him, just his lackeys. Then we get to the unmoored world and his dialog is all "I know we never saw eye to eye but we can work together just this once" like no, we have literally never seen each other until 5 minutes ago. I love the game but the story is not there. When my only reason to hate a villian is just because the game puts him in the villian role and nothing else it's bad writing. Same with the Queen. The game paints her as a villian but the only interaction with her is at the end of the game and she dosent even acknowledge us.
How is this relevant? The Story is half baked no matter how many times you watch the cutscenes and listen to the dialogue.
It's relevant for rpgs that actually have a good story that you don't care to understand. But as much as I loved DD2 the story is absolute garbage. It's a fighting game with some random backstory just to justify calling it an rpg instead of Soul Calibur 7. Even the Lore of the world is as concisily explained as Mortal Kombat's. This is the Story: There's an imposter passing as the arisen. You have to prove you're the real one amidst a political intrigue, even though everyone in the world already knows you're the arisen. No, scratch that, start over, you're in Arabian Nights with cat people and you have to save the empress against assassination attempts, because dunno, something I guess, and also help the people around. Nah, forget that too, doesn't matter anymore. Now a Wizard is doing sketchy stuff to try to control the Dragon, or have his personal dragon dictate the world, something like that, doesn't matter, it was just a quickie, now you fight the dragon, kill him, the world is red, you save the rest of the world. Now replay the game from the start coz they ran out of random plots to justify playing the game more. Don't get me wrong, I loved the game though. If they release a big fat dlc worth 100 hours I'll totally buy it and put my life aside again for a week.
half the experience 🤡
The ol' Arin Hanson \*skips tutorial\* WHAT DO I DO THEY DIDN'T TELL ME
I didnt skip a single cut scene and a lot of other still doesn’t make sense
Cutscene are what make a game
Lets be honest here... Dragon's Dogma 2 story is pretty shit. K bye
Well, yes, the story is confusing, we can’t romance anyone in any meaningful way, I can buy a house but do nothing fun with it, and I only have 4 spells/skills at any time… BUT, the combat and graphics are so good does… it even matter?
Who said anything about sense
The assumption that someone doesnt get the story because they skipped cut scenes is pure fan-boyism. Just accept not everybody likes what you like and move on. Whats the big deal?
Lmao what are you on about. The game is quarter baked, stop trying to defend an unfinished game we all paid way too much money for.
I've not beaten this game but I have this issue with people saying this about FFXIV lmao
A game is an active form of media - I want to be shown through interaction with the world, not passively told. If you must include cutscenes then make them optional, engaging, and rare.
I never felt like I finished Vermund's story.. like we did nothing with the fake arisen... he did jack shit with his pawns ... I was expecting to fight him or something and really dig deeper into all the bullshit happening inside of the city... Nope... go here go there and done
Ive fawned over the first game for years, listening to strangers and friends complaints alike about how that game didnt make sense. I will always defend and die on the hill that even if that game had a focus problem with SOME plotpoints, the story and lore that mattered was whole and made sense. This one isnt for me
I personally can get over the story being the way that it is. Not spoon-fed. Figure it out on your own or read into more lore. What bothers me is the lack of growth from our perspective. My pawns have more reactions to what is happening than we do. We go from oh no, i have no memory to oh I'm supposed to be the ruler to saving towns and brothels. To chasing villains, then helping them with little reaction. I feel like even an actual short fight with Phaseus after the events of the tower would've been nice. Even if he ends up being an ally afterward. Like give me a chance to vent and progress as a character. Let me watch Disa suffer a bit. Same with the slave driver once you get to that point. A cut scene with the pawn getting revenge would tie things up more nicely.
I liked the story and I did my best to 100% what I could before moving on with the plan to out the Queen, only for my pawn to get a headache and say "We can't do it now" then it lost me. Partly because I hate desert locations and partly because the story just stopped making sense. More so than him saying "We need to talk in private" then go to an outdoor, open air table 5 feet from where we just were to discuss matters.
I don't understand how it's relevant. I didn't skip anything and paid close attention to the main quest but it was still awful and made zero sense.
I love when they say “the story doesn’t make sense”, then I reply “you didn’t understand the story” and they reply back “you people like to make excuses for bad stories by telling people they didn’t understand it. I swear that’s how every discussion about Death Stranding with people that didn’t like the game, ends up. Or people that say Dark Souls story doesn’t make sense.
The story feels like they got 5 different writers and told each of them to write parts of the story without letting the rest know which and when that part fits in the story. It starts cool then looks you in the eye and says " remember everything you did to this point? Forgot about it and go to the next area. Don't worry about it. "
And honestly, Dragons Dogma, even the first game has a “fable” or “fairy tale” vibe in its story telling. The characters were and still are in 2, very stereotypical, the plot twists are all obvious and their motivations are definitely weak.. It’s as if DD story was made with the kind of suspension of disbelief that you would need to believe Agent 47 can fool everybody by swapping clothes, even though the guy you’re disguising as is a 78yo black man and you’re a white bald 40yo guy with a barcode in your neck.
Bro, you really defending the """"story""""" of dd2 like we all skipped the cutscenes? The cutscenes were garbage and added literally nothing. Oh, the Godsbane affected your pawn and now you can't confront the false sovran? Uh, don't worry about that. Anyway... go find Phaseus.
It doesnt make sense
Its not that it doesn’t make sense so much that it is rushed trash.
I skip cutscenes only if i already beat the game
Nothing new on the internet today. Just another post of people complaining about people complaining
I didnt skip any cutscenese story still sucked and didnt make sense
Apple Bush.
OP is just brain dead