// KOTAKU — GAMING
Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen Developers Say They Aren’t Nerfing Dragonsplague—Just Making It More Clear
CapcomDragon's Dogma 2Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen
I love Dragon’s Dogma 2, but I’ve been cranky lately. Don’t get me wrong. I’m stoked for the upcoming Dark Arisen DLC. Not only was the announcement unexpected to begin with, but what we’ve seen so far looks genuinely very cool. No, what’s got me cranky is what the update is doing to Dragonsplague, one of the scariest and coolest mechanics in the base game. It is my opinion that the developers are nerfing it. The developers themselves say otherwise.
This comes from an email interview I conducted with DLC director Kento Kinoshita and producer Naoto Oyama. In it, I swung right out of the gate on my current bugaboo, Dragonsplague. For context, Dragonsplague is a disease that your Dragon’s Dogma 2 pawns, or NPC followers, can contract. It starts off benign, giving them significant buffs in combat and making them bolder and less obedient. But if allowed to progress, it will eventually transform the infected into a dragon who will nuke an entire city. When Dragon’s Dogma 2 first came out, the city-burning came as a huge surprise to anyone it happened to, and as word spread, players learned they had to be on their toes to detect a possible infection and kick their plagued pawn off a cliff before it could spread. The result was a scary yet cool atmosphere of anxiety around picking up pawns online, or any dragon encounter: would my pawns get infected? Could they be already?
Dragon’s Dogma 2 has since been updated to make it a little easier to tell who has the plague, including the addition of glowing red eyes indicating the disease before you recruit them online, a little tutorial warning explaining what Dragonsplague does, slower disease progression, and an added Casual Mode to the game that stops the village-destroying entirely. I already felt most of that was excessive (Casual Mode is great, the rest…eh!), but people were complaining, so sure, fine. But with the upcoming DLC and several updates in the lead-up to its release, more Dragonsplague mitigations are coming. There will be more information in the menus about buffs to pawns with the plague, and a potion to cure Dragonsplague entirely is being added.
To me, that feels like a nerf on top of a nerf. Kinoshita sees it differently.
“We have not reduced the negative impact of Dragonsplague itself, and the core gameplay of having players weigh the risks and rewards to make their own choices—which was the original intention of the mechanic—remains unchanged,” he said. “Since the game’s launch, there has always been a benefit where Pawns are strengthened by Dragonsplague, but we faced the issue of not having communicated this adequately to our players. With the title update, the stat boosts from Dragonsplague will now be reflected in the actual numbers, and it has become easier to tell if a Pawn is afflicted based on their behavior.
“Through these adjustments, players can now enjoy the risk-reward dynamic in a much clearer way—such as deciding whether to leave an afflicted Pawn as is to prioritize a combat advantage, or best timing to use the Dragonsbaulk Draught to heal them.”
With this explanation, I can kinda see where he’s coming from. Instead of being wary of a mystery disease with horrible impacts, this encourages players to gamble with Dragonsplague, keeping it on the pawn as long as possible before curing it, but risking destruction if they take too long. That makes some sense to me, but I’m still wistful for the good ol’ days of abject terror. Alas.
I spoke with Kinoshita and Oyama on a number of topics related to the Dragon’s Dogma 2 DLC. For instance, they told me that while it should be relatively easy for most players to access the DLC by speaking to Brant in Vernworth, if you’re in the game’s true ending world state (if you know you know), you won’t be able to accept the DLC quests. You’ll have to finish the game, and then start a New Game+ playthrough.
“That being said, in future title updates, we plan to intr