While us lot in the West might like Dragon’s Dogma 2’s friction, Japan doesn’t quite agree, and its producers say balancing that has been a real challenge

Both the original and Dragon’s Dogma 2 are not games for everyone. Not in the Dark Souls, uber challenging sort of way necessarily, just in that they do not hold your hand, right down to not even having a lock-on feature in combat. There’s a long list of other aspects that provide friction, interesting friction, that make the games so beloved. At least, they’re beloved in the West, because folks over in the RPG’s home country of Japan have a different perspective, a difference its devs find difficult to balance.

“The requests from fans in Japan and the rest of the world were completely opposed to one another,” explains producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi in a recent interview with Famitsu (as translated by Kotaku). “We would categorize feedback and rank it by volume of comments, and it turned out the most important issues for Japan and the rest of the world were directly opposed to one another.”

Fellow producer Naoto Oyama specifically notes that “Japanese and Asian players are less positive towards being inconvenienced on their journey, while in the West this is often referred to as friction, and in some cases is actually highly desirable. If we stuck too closely to the feedback of one group it may be difficult to please players on the other, so considering that, we’re trying to design a game that audiences in all regions will enjoy.”

This interview comes ahead of the game’s big Dark Arisen expansion, and after an update that arrived just yesterday which curtailed some of the issues people had with the game’s Dragonsplague system. An update prior to that made fast travel a lot easier too. But in the Famitsu interview, Hirabayashi wanted to make one thing clear: he doesn’t “feel like intentional friction is the core identity of Dragon’s Dogma 2.”

He goes on to explain, “Fundamentally, we didn’t intend to define this game as one where overcoming inconveniences was what was most important. Rather, we feel the most important point of this game is a sense of accomplishment. For example, when you reach a mountain, often you have a choice of going half way via some sort of transport, or you can undertake the entire journey on foot from the beginning. While I feel it’s most rewarding to reach the summit by traveling only on foot, we developed the game considering what elements were necessary to incorporate a strong sense of accomplishment into the gameplay itself.”

I don’t think he’s necessarily wrong there, you could make a semantic argument of friction versus accomplishment, but I personally view them as two halves of a whole. The friction creates a challenge, and you achieve a sense of accomplishment from overcoming it. Friction isn’t a bad thing! It makes for interesting emergent narratives, often. Even if said friction can also cause you to shut your PC down and walk off a tad bit of rage.