Dragon's Dogma is a "strategy type of action" game

Capcom expects its upcoming fantasy action RPG to engage your brain as much as your button mashing.

"It’s more of a strategy type of action game," producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi told Siliconera.

"Maybe there are people out there that feel action games are too technical or difficult and it’s hard to beat enemies. Here you’re not alone. You have pawns and they are intelligent.

"You can formulate different strategies to take down creatures. There isn’t a set way to takedown all of the monsters in the game. Depending on how you form you party, with the pawns you have you can come up with all of these different ways to take down creatures. You’re using your brain to takedown enemies in this game."

Kobayashi's comments echo From Software's discussion of Demon's Souls (a game to which Dragon's Dogma perhaps owes a few nods) as an adventure that doesn't require dexterity so much as thought to complete.

Capcom has called Dragon's Dogma one of its most expensive games to date, which Kobayashi puts down to graphics.

"Just because this is an open world game, there are so many elements you have to create. So many towns, places, and settings that need to be drawn and fully realized to feel they are places you want to explore," he said.

"Then you have to populate them with different people, creatures, and monsters. The graphics have been a main source of eating up the budget. This is going beyond anything we had in Devil May Cry 4, which is a pretty linear game with a limited amount of elements that populate it."

The development team aren't highly experienced in RPG design, but were helped out by Makoto Ikehara, the designer of the Breath of Fire series.

"Because of his involvement with the Breath of Fire series, he brought that fantasy knowhow to the team," Kobayashi explained.

"He showed them how to incorporate RPG elements into a game like this and how you create a fantasy framework. Also, for the character designs themselves, what kind of characters you would need to populate the world. He really brought all of that knowledge into this game and taught our team a lot."

Kobayashi seemed a little cagey about Ikehara's involvement. Is there perhaps more in common between the two RPGs than a draconic theme?

Elsewhere in the interview, the producer revealed a number of interesting snippets about the game. Players will have some sort of fast travel ability, but won't be able to ride monsters using the grab system. Capcom is looking at ways to ensure players don't end up more powerful than early monsters, and the game will contain greater variety of enemies than found in typical action games. Players will meet a variety of characters throughout the game, but Pawns - player-created support AI - are a different kind ofbeing to the people inhabiting the game's world.

Dragon's Dogma is expected on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in the first quarter of 2012.

Thanks, Capcom-Unity.