Anyone anticipating Dragon’s Dogma 2 may be put off by Capcom’s decision to only allow one save file, but director Hideaki Itsuno says this limitation should actually encourage exploration.
Word of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s single save file first dropped back in January via a preview from IGN Japan. Additionally, the game regularly auto-saves, so it’s essentially impossible to save-scum your way through the adventure; every decision you make matters and will have some sort of lasting impact. For instance, much like the first Dragon’s Dogma, there are time-sensitive quests, with Screen Rant’s preview describing one where you’re tasked with finding a missing boy. Take too long and you’ll find his corpse instead, and you’ll have to live with that.
Some may find this approach overly punishing, but Itsuno explained to Game Informer in a March 5 interview that this restriction is meant to “encourage the thrill of exploration” and avoid affording players too much freedom. He gives an example of how with multiple save files, you’d be less hesitant to jump off a cliff to see if you’d survive the fall. If you die, you can just reload. As Itsuno puts it, “That has quite the opposite effect of encouraging that exploration feel.”
In Dragon’s Dogma 2, you need to be more discerning. Jump off the cliff and die, and you’ll lose progress. If you survive, you’ll still walk away with less health. So, it’s better to search for another route, thus resulting in more thorough exploration of the world, and you might even make new discoveries along the way. That said, while you can’t make a backup save file, Itsuno added you can still load from the last inn you rested at, so “[Dragon’s Dogma 2 is] not a game where you won’t have any possible way to go back.”
While the lack of multiple save files is bound to be a deal breaker for some, this probably won’t bother die-hard fans of the first Dragon’s Dogma since that too only had one save file. Hopefully, the rumored Dragon’s Dogma 2 demo turns out to be real, since giving people a taste for its gameplay could help win over new fans. That is, if all the glowing previews haven’t done so already. Dragon’s Dogma 2 launches for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on March 22.
