Occam Thoughts: Dragon's Dogma

To quote Staind, the only band I want to play at my wedding and my funeral, “It’s been a while." This started out as a regular Occam Thoughts and then I wrote a bunch of words about Dragon’s Dogma. So I guess I’m just going to talk about Dragon’s Dogma. Hope you enjoy them.


Dragon’s Dogma

The previews for this intrigued me. It gave me a Dark Souls meets fantasy vibe. I loved the muted, sad beauty of Dark Souls and the open world, go fight giant monsters with pawns concept set off all the right bells and whistles in my cloud king mind. When I finally got the game through Gamefly, I was excited to see if the hype was legitimate. My character was a tiny shriveled midget lady wizard. My first thought was of the psychic from Poltergeist.



I command the primal fucking forces of nature and I will hate fuck your secret places with my thought cock.


So I created my glorious post-menopausal midget wizard and had to choose a pawn. Well, what goes best with tiny people with bone deformities? Giant blind guys! So my pawn was roughly eleven feet tall, blind and talked like an Ent. These two were my Harold and Maude. Through the dozens of hours I would spend fighting monsters and walking everywhere, I’d often imagine that when they rested together at night, unspoken desires would fuel their actions and he would spike her on his giant horse cock like someone throwing an overripe melon onto a stake.




The adventure began slowly enough. A dragon attacked my village and I bravely tried to defend it but no to no avail as the dragon easily defeated me and proceeded top fingerfuck my chest and eat my heart. So I was now Arisen, which meant that people expected things of me and I got 10% off all purchases made at TJ Maxx. I hurried through plot stuff (boooooring) as fast as I could until I reached a point where I could just wander. This is where the game shines. Simply walking around with your pawn and encountering new creatures and places is a joy that was both engrossing and engaging. I slayed goblins and harpies and wolves…oh yes, wolves. I’m not sure about the biology of wolves and their breeding cycle but I must have killed roughly 12,589 wolves so I guess in Dragon’s Dogma land female wolves are just constantly giving birth. It got to the point where I would see a wolf pack and plead with them to leave me alone, that surely they can smell the wolf blood on me like a musk and that they have no chance of killing me. But no, they attacked and I burnt them to ash. If nothing else, I was thinning out the population so that's something at least.


The moment I “got” this game, (you know that moment when everything clicks and suddenly you can see the Matrix) was the first time I fought a Cyclops. The first time I fought one it was intense. I shot fire balls at its face. Pubert, my pawn, climbed its legs and hacked away at its back. My other pawns did stuff too but I wasn’t fucking them nightly so who cares about them. When the cyclops finally toppled over, I felt powerful, like I had overcome a challenge and vanquished a for greater than myself using teamwork and strategy. However, as time went on and I played more, I realized that for the most part cyclopses just wanted to wander and lay down a bit and not be bothered with anyone. Their war cries weren’t rage-fueled battle hymns, but cries of pain and fear. There was this creeping suspicion that cyclopses are like Blaster from Master Blaster in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. I began to feel more like George at the end of Of Mice and Men and less like Conan after he killed Wilt Chamberlain. So I tried to avoid them as best I could. However, I murdered every fucking Chimera I found. Those snake/goat/lion bastards can rot in hell. With their awful goat heads and snake tail spitting venom at you and the lion mouth being all “BITE MOTHERFUCKER!” Fuck them.





Side note: anyone else find it kinda creepy how the ogres would go specifically for women in your party?


Graphically, it was a mixed bag. The details on the larger monsters were just lovely. They all popped on the screen and the attention to detail really made those grand battles something special. However, the rest of the world looked dull. Now I don’t mean dull as in boring. I was fine with the idea of a relatively normal looking world inhabited by mythical beasts. I actually liked that a lot. Was more immersive than trying to lose myself in Ugthawar, Tree Palace to the Forest Elves or whatever grand place you have to visit in some fantasy rpg’s. What I mean is that textures were muddy and pop-ins were frequent. I figured they had sacrificed world detail to make the creatures look fantastic. Most of the time, I was ok with this though there were moments I felt like I was strolling through a PS2 game, in that bad way.





My biggest complaint about the game was walking. You walk everywhere. My biggest challenge in the game was never killing the dragon or any monster, but having the patience to endure another 15 minute walk from point A to point B. There were stones you could find or purchase to fast travel but by the time I had hoarded away 10 or so I was almost finished with the game and they were mostly useless to me. Now I loved exploring the world. Discovering an entire country or monsters and caves and retarded cyclopses and child rapist chimeras is the bee’s knees. However, I like to do that at my own pace and when I want to. Making me walk pretty much everywhere forced me to spend unnecessary hours traveling. When I was ready to do plot stuff, I still had to endure long walks which was irksome. I hope for a sequel they add fast travel, at least to major cities and areas to minimize the tedium.



As irritated as I would get at walking around so damn much, it should be a testament to how much
fun I had with the game when I hit the 70 hour mark with it. Gone are the halcyon days of 100+ hour games for me. I’m too busy with the waking world and get distracted by alcohol, cigarettes and masturbation. So when I drop that many hours into a game it must be doing something right, at least for me. At the end of my journey with Pubert, I found myself a grand mage who could whip monsters with a bolt of lightning and bring down the fucking Apocalypse onto the heads of my enemies. I had traveled across the country dozens upon dozens of times for quests and for funsies. I had built a chateau entirely out of wolf bones and wore a cape made of fetal chimera fur. I had slain the dragon and found that there was even more adventures awaiting me after the credits rolled. It was a wonderful game with flaws and I’m glad I played it. Should you be so inclined, I think Dragon’s Dogma is worth your time too. And if not, well, we will always have that footage of the burning gryphon. Jesus, that one still haunts me.