Dragon Quest 12 Will Shape the Future of the Series, Says Square Enix Boss

I wonder if they'll be replacing Toriyama's art style? I can't really imagine a mature game where every enemy stares at you with that big grin all the time. But at that point, would it still be a Dragon Quest game?

Oh god. Its going to be hack and slash. Calling it now

@Milktastrophe Nah as far as we know, Toriyama's still involved. His studio's copyrights are all over the marketing materials. Do wonder what'll eventually happen when Toriyama gets too old, though. Dragon Quest would certainly lose a core part of its identity if it didn't have his art style.

@UltimateOtaku91 Square Enix already confirmed it'll have a new battle system, but apparently, you'll still be able to play with traditional turn based commands if you want.

I’ll guess cyberpunk setting with more action oriented battle system. I hope not, but look at what they turned FF into.

@ShogunRok Ugh...it's time for Squeenix to ruin their other flagship JRPG series just like they did with Final Fantasy and no VII Remake doesn't count as its source material is from a game released before they ruined the series.

I'm certainly willing to be open to whatever they release but if there was any one series that I have no problems with sticking to the tried and true, it's DQ. More of the same would be just fine with me.

i'd rather them take the speed and style / dynamic nature of the Persona turn based combat and implement that aspect into the DQ combat system (if they want to make it feel more modern at least).
other than that, keep the core gameplay the same. i'm totes ok with it.

Thanks God, the fine line between old school and plain old boring was starting to get a bit blurred imho.

@UltimateOtaku91
i mean...if they make it somewhat similar to the Persona 5 Strikers combat (where you can't win with just hacking and slashing, and actually requires some management and strategy) - i'll ultimately be okay with it.
but either way, keeping it turned based is probably best.

@strawhatcrew but they have dragon quest heroes for that

As long as it's still voiced with regional British accents, can play it traditionally turn based and get a puff-puff then it's all good.

I think a lot of people are completely overreacting. While I do think that DQ12 might attempt to seduce a more Western audience (and that probably does mean some mechanical changes) I still can't see it being a drastic departure from what the series is known for. It's not going to suddenly turn into some mad westernised action game — not when Dragon Quest is so steeped in tradition and is still spearheaded by figures who have steered the series for decades.

@ShogunRok After 25+ years, I'm sure someone by now would have been able to match Toriyama art style to a 'T'

@Floki It's technically already happened. The Dragon Ball Super manga is penned by another artist named Toyotarou, who's been mimicking Toriyama's art style for decades. Toriyama still oversees the manga and writes the story (for the most part), but yeah. Maybe something similar will happen the DQ.

Maybe it will become a Yakuza game since Like a Dragon became a Dragon Quest game. =P

Translation... We will Westernize it.

I mean I do not have a problem with it. FF-XVI looks like The Witcher 4 I always wanted. Day 1 in my book.

And probably only 7-10% of PS5s will be in Japan like PS4. Sony saw the writting on the Wall, just follow them West.

@Bentleyma-

Pretty much the same sentiment.
I always thought the reason why Dragon Quest has remained popular is because it has stuck to its roots for so long. (where Final Fantasy branched out too much)

Hope their direction doesnt become to devisive (unless sales for the last title didnt meet expectations or something, theres no reason to change)

Please don't turn into a combat system like FF7R. Some of us actually prefer the slower more methodical turn based combat where you carefully select skills that play well off each other. It's such a turn off to see most JRPGs going the action route.

@Agramonte It's Always Been Westernize The Games Take Place In a Fictional Western European Setting. (PS I Know What You Really Mean I'm Just Being Silly)

This honestly sounds worse and worse every single time they talk about it. What I'm hearing is "We got rid of Dragon Quest to use it's name for a new series aimed at people who love Naughty Dog games."

Remember the last time Square and Capcom tried this approach? Yeah, Capcom almost went bankrupt and Square had a letter of intent to be purchased by Microsoft. Konami vanished almost entirely.

How are we back in this same mess?

I guess this means DQXI is the last actual DQ game.

@ShogunRok I mean, you saw the same FFXVI trailer we saw, right? Square's headed straight back to the mid-00's "imitate Call of Duty as much as we can" craze. Only now it's "imitate Game of Thrones."

@NEStalgia aren’t the westernised resident evil games the best selling games in the series? Isn’t the westernised Monster Hunter World Capcom’s best selling game of all time? Doesn’t every final fantasy game outsell Dragon Quest now?

Also Final Fantasy 16 looks amazing to me.

@NEStalgia All they've said is that they're looking to the future with innovation in mind. Respectfully, I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion you did from such a short statement above.

@bozz Yes but that future couples with the prior statements about the changes to the series.

@ChrisDeku Yeah, who needs variety? Homogenezation for the largest possible market share is the dream of consumers, creators, and investors united!

We'll see about monster hunter. Rise went the other way and went totally Japanese, literally. And it's selling great for a single platform game and hasn't hit PC yet.

I don't much follow RE so I'm take your word for the history there. FF always sold better than DQ but the marketing and release history have a lot to do with that as well. The question then becomes is diversity in catalog has value, or of always chasing the same market is a good idea. Media executives tend to do the latter and it rarely ends well.

@NEStalgia The simple truth is the Japanese market is just not reliable anymore, if you’re betting your house on it to sell your traditional story driven single player game, then you’re going homeless.

Anime style games like Astral Chain and Code Vein sold under 100k in Japan and made 1M WW in 3 & 5 months. On the switch Momotaru Dentetsu(a casual board game) sold more copies in 4 months than Breath of the Wild did in 4 years.

Guilty Gear Strive got accused of westernising, and losing the Japanese market, yet it sold more copies in 3 months(500k) than the entire previous trilogy did lifetime.

Japan only wants ***** mobile gacha games now.

@NEStalgia I mean Square put FF in a fantasy setting in the 90s. It's literally called Final Fantasy. If anything they're just returning to their roots.

@Abeedo Uh...every FF through XII had a fantasy setting, but that is NOT the issue with the newer FF games, the garbo story and or gameplay are the offenders...

FF VII Remake is the only exception and Squeenix buggered that up by screwing PS4 owners by only releasing the first part on PS4 and expecting people to miraculously find a mythical PS5 to play the future parts. Btw most of us aren't rich enough to pay $1,000+ for a scalped PS5, which Squeenix apparently didn't get that memo...

Dragon Quest XI S was the best JRPG since Skies of Arcadia. It was incredible because it was so traditional. The fact it stuck to its roots made it feel fresh as such games are very rarely released now. I hope they do not Westernise it, then bastardise it like they have the FF franchise. I am hoping it is still turn based and traditional. Fingers crossed.

@Abeedo don't get my wrong, fantasy setting is my favorite FF setting. But what they showed was DmC meets Game of Thrones. That does not fill me with determination. Especially with the gameplay track record in the series of late. And I say that as a fan of XV.

@ChrisDeku isn't playstation the home of the traditional story driven single player game, though?

@TowaHerschel7 Even those other Final Fantasies still have a fantasy setting. They've just been closer to science fantasy than high fantasy.

If they change the battle system being turn based, I'm so out

@ATaco unfortunately these developers have some disease where they have to turn all their franchises into DMC. They don't realise the sales are actions of previous legacy and natural growth, so dumb, we won't be able to have anything nice in a few years

@ShogunRok Well more Western influencing with their RPG's has not make me like them more. That last horrible thing they made with Koei didnt give me a lot of confidence that more western influencing makes it better.

@TowaHerschel7 by the time the next part of FF7 releases the PS5 will be easy to buy. It's like 2 or 3 years away lol. The PS5 stock situation is nothing new for a new, in demand console, it's just exacerbated by chip shortages, but it'll calm down over time like with other consoles. We're already starting to see healthly restock.

Also the FFXIV team are quality writers.

Square Enix: So how do we appeal to Westerners?

Answer: CHAOS CHAOS CHAOS!!!!

Because we're all too monkey brain here to care about deep and complex storylines.

As a long time fan of both FF and DQ, I can't deny that I am a little worried about this. I did not like 15 at all, it just did not feel like a FF game. I'm more excited for 16, since the setting actually feels like Final Fantasy. SE is known to mess things up, so I'm keeping my hype in check for this new DQ game.

@Orpheus79V Uh...healthy restocks WHERE?! Seriously even if you try to buy a console online as soon as a restock is announced, it's already sold out within literal seconds...Also there aren't many people who can afford sitting in front of their computer for weeks waiting for a restock for an instant add to cart before it sells out 15 seconds later. 😫

@Onion_Knight My problem with FF XVI is that there are no party members. At this point it sounds more like an open-world adventure game than an actual JRPG...

@TowaHerschel7 is that confirmed? I don't know anything about the combat system besides what they showed in the trailer.

@Onion_Knight Yeah it was confirmed in an interview awhile back. And that's not something I'm looking forward to.

@TowaHerschel7 Well that doesn't sound good either then...smh!

@NEStalgia Yes, and that’s why Japan doesn’t buy PlayStation games anymore. So Japanese devs need to make games with broader appeal beyond their dwindling traditional markets.

Hopefully a fully voiced protagonist that actually matters and not some silent weirdo

As someone grow with traditional turn based rpg, its time they make it faster. Like put a setting where we can put more deep tactics to characters if we not intent to control them during battle and for manual control battle of characters, put option so we dont need to wait for action animations everytime to speed up the battle. I actually end up auto battle during normal encounters in dq11. But the tactics are not very good, those guy like to use attacks with high mp and running out of mp very fast.

@ChrisDeku I thought Sony killing Vita and PSP is why Japan stopped buying PlayStation games. They don't seem to mind buying Nintendo games very much... DQXI sales on 3DS crushed PlayStation sales. Freaking 3DS! Falcom games do pretty well in Japan, though increasingly PC is taking over from PlayStation. That and Japan never got over getting flipped off in the PS4 launch.

It's a bit chicken and egg. I know what you're saying, I'm familiar with that, and I do agree. I'm aware of the sales drop in Japan and the mobile obsession. But we saw Japanese publishers, namely Square and Capcom do this 15 years or so ago and it nearly destroyed them. They were in bad shape until they basically doubled down on Japanese design again. They tried to produce "Western" games. The problem is, Japanese ideas of a "Western" game are usually quite poor, and the Western fans that like Japanese games actually like the Japanese game designs, which are unique and different from what Western studios make. So they ended up alienating everyone. The games were "weird" and didn't interest the CoD audience they wanted, and they were too samey and didn't interest the large niche in the west that likes Japanese design, so it sold to noone.

These companies/brands have a "niche" - a large niche. The audience may have shifted Westward instead of domestically in Japan, but the interest in the Japanese content as-is from fans in the West is still focused on the traditional content. Trying to chase CoD/GTA/Fortnite/TLoU's audience by trying to imitate the Hollywood approach can't end well. It may see short term gains as people are curious, but long-term, it's either going to turn casual Western players off it (it's still going to be "too Japanese" or at least "too weird" because Japan is Japan no matter how hard it tries to present a Western product, sideways), or it's going to turn Japanese game fans away from it by being just another Western game.

I like Western games. I like Japanese games. I want to play both kinds of games, and I don't really want to play some oddly homogenized blend of the two designed by marketing executives to capture market share rather than content creators. If DQXII and FFXVI try to be too Western that they're not really Japanese anymore, might as well play Witcher 3 and wait for Dragon Age 4, proper Western fantasy games rather than sideways takes that want to be but aren't. Even if Japanese companies make Japanese type games, but more people buy them in the West than Japan, that's still quite a large niche for their content. This is just the executives trying to "have it all" and get that sweet, sweet, CoD money. Just like 15 years ago.

But while we're talking about how much Square Enix wants to make bank by selling Western games to Western players, where TF is Deux Ex 3???