Dragon’s Dogma 2 has no ‘boring’ fast travel, Capcom says

Why teleport when you can get attacked by wild beasts?

Capcom is eschewing traditional fast travel in their upcoming RPG Dragon’s Dogma 2, as director Hideaki Itsuno thinks it makes for a boring open-world game. Itsuno made the comments in a recent interview with IGN, where he said worlds that rely on fast travel to get around don’t understand how to make experiences interesting.

“Travel is boring? That's not true,” Itsuno said. “It's only an issue because your game is boring. All you have to do is make travel fun. That's why you place things in the right location for players to discover, or come up with enemy appearance methods that create different experiences each time, or force players into blind situations where they don't know whether it's safe or not ten meters in front of them.”

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is going to be one of the biggest games of 2024

Itsuno said he and his team worked hard to create a world where anything can happen at any point of your journey. He used ox cart travel, one of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s methods of faster mobility, as an example. Your cart might run into a blockade set up by goblins, forcing you to fight if you want to proceed, or a passing griffon may mistake you for its next meal and swoop in to attack.

Both could happen at once, if the conditions are right. Itsuno said the team didn’t use many scripted encounters in the open world – the kind where everyone would find a goblin blockade at the same place, for example. Instead, they created codes of behavior and probability that influence how the world acts and reacts.

“None of [those encounters have] been set up by us in advance,” Itsuno said. “Instead, griffins naturally have an inclination toward attacking cows they discover as they move, and these pieces all just happen to work together to naturally create the situation. So yes, an oxcart ride in this world may be cheap, but a lot can come as a result of that cheapness. I think that's the kind of world we've managed to create.”

Dragon’s Dogma 2 launches on March 22, 2024, for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.

Capcom says you can play Dragon’s Dogma 2 first thanks to amnesia