Remember Elden Ring's fun post-release vibes? Dragon's Dogma 2 fans are hoping the leaks haven't ruined its shot at something similar

Getting to delve into a big game’s world for the first time usually feels pretty special. Sadly, with all the clips of Dragon's Dogma 2 that’ve been buzzing around ahead of its release later this week, fans aren’t sure it’ll be able to enjoy the kind of wholesome community vibes that Elden Ring had immediately after its release.

What do they mean? Well, it’s the fun period you can sometimes get with a huge, new open-world adventure where pretty much everything you and your mates stumble across is extra cool because none of you have seen it before. Every quest is fresh and every boss requires you to do some learning on the fly so you can beat ‘em.

This is the kind of experience a number of fans on the Dragon's Dogma subreddit are hoping they’ll get in the immediate aftermath of DD2's release, as the community pours through the floodgates and starts digging into the game for the first time, without the ability to find out everything they could want to know about it via a wiki. It’s a bit of a subjective feeling that comes with titles like this one; it’s cool to be able to see people posting about interesting stuff you’ve not seen or done yet, than an actual practical thing, but you can see why folks like the idea of this kind of ‘honeymoon period’, if you will.

That said, when DD2 comes out, these players are hoping for something akin to that moment in time when Elden Ring players all discovered that the early game version of Radahn was really tough and realised that yeah, you can put a stop to Malenia's Waterfowl Dance, actually. A couple of their peers have suggested this might not happen. Why? Well, the inevitable thirst to learn as much as you can about the game before delving into it.

“Considering how many spoilers there already are in this section with the leaks and everything, as well as the frequency of asking for tips, builds, vocations voting, etc,” one user in the thread reasons, “I just don't think this [subreddit] can do it.” While it’s true that there have been a lot of clips from the game doing the rounds on the net, especially over the past few days, as others in the thread have pointed out, the game’s Reddit community likely only constitutes a pretty small percentage of what its full player base will be.

So, there’ll likely still be plenty of folks going in close to or totally blind as to what to expect, which is what’s often cited as the reason that Elden Ring's release period was so fun. It’s also worth noting that there are plenty of leaked DD2 bits that don’t exactly show you much beyond a bit of combat, which might be able to loosely inform some builds, but shouldn’t leave folks feeling like they’ve seen anything remotely close to everything the game has to offer.

You can also add in the fact that, as some ER vets in the thread have pointed out, there were plenty of real hardcores who’d already blazed through that game a couple of days after it arrived and started posting advice and guidance.

So, whether this kind of fondly-remembered post-release ‘honeymoon period’ - regardless of what the reality was like - actually ends up being a thing with Dragon’s Dogma 2 or not, I’d say it’s definitely best not to get too hung up on it.