Dragon's Dogma II's Character Creator Demo Lets You Make The Lion of Your Dreams

Dragon's Dogma II Adventure Log — Day 0

Two weeks before the imminent release of Dragon's Dogma II, developer CAPCOM put out a demo for the game on Steam that allowed players to create and store up to ten characters with the game's robust creation tools; five Arisen and five Main Pawns. Players can pick one character in each category to transfer over to the main game on launch.

CAPCOM remains one of the largest names in game development that still releases demos at all for their releases, most notably for the Resident Evil series and for Street Fighter 6 last year. Street Fighter's demo caused some controversy, as a few intrepid players were able to crack the demo months ahead of the game's release and play as characters that were not available to legitimate players. This posed a unique issue, as CAPCOM had announced that the world tour for Street Fighter 6 would have a 2 million dollar prize pool for the world finals, so they released a statement saying any players who they proved to have played the crack would be disqualified from the year's tournament altogether, preventing certain players from getting months of practice before everyone else.

Despite that exciting drama concerning their previous demo, Dragon's Dogma II still got an early demo, just like its predecessor all the way back in 2012. Dragon's Dogma I's demo was more fully featured, including some gameplay segments alongside the character creator. Despite my disappointment that DDII's demo only had a character creator, it didn't stop me from putting over 6 hours making 9 different characters. I've played DDI all the way through about twice, and enjoyed a hearty chunk of its New Game+ in anticipation for the sequel. I thought I was excited then, but that was before I got the opportunity to sink my teeth into the sequel's astounding graphical fidelity, even if its only with regards to its characters.

It's got some of the most convincing older, wrinkled skin in character creators to date. Skin absorbs and reflects light in different ways with different lighting environments, hair and fur look better than I've ever seen, especially with custom characters, and the game even allows you to customize your character's posture and walk cycle, dynamically altering their stance and motions in ways that were only possible with an expensive, highly tailored hybrid of motion tracking and hand animation.

Here it's available to characters in all sorts of shapes and styles of motion, and you can watch it change while you adjust the sliders. When I had first learned that not only would DDII include a race of cat-like humanoids called the Beastren, but that they would also be playable, and have their own culture and city, I knew I would have to play one as soon as humanly possible.

Obviously, I was blown away by DDII's demo. I've given fully into astonishment, and I'm planning on continuing to update this space with a log of my adventures through the game, as well as my thoughts on the game as they develop. In the mean time, let me introduce you to my Beastren Arisen Clark, and his Orc companion pawn Gia.

Clark is an archer that wears the scars of an old betrayal on his back, but the telltale scar of the Arisen on his chest is recent. That is where the dragon stole his still beating heart. Gia is a newcomer to these lands, and there are not many other people walking around with green skin like hers. Like all pawns, she was drawn to the Arisen and entered into his service, acting as the brawn in their party as a warrior. Any more of their story is yet to be told.

Hopefully you'll check back in with me to see where this game takes us, and you'll be excited enough to try it for yourself. Thanks for reading Parry Timing!