Dragon's Dogma Retro(ish)Spective

Paul gives us his run down of Capcom's attempt at a western RPG.

[MAULxx]

I could never get over the fact that the game didnt fill out the screen. That alone kept me from playing it. Its not a movie... why is it in letterbox? Lol. The only game this gen in letterbox that I know of.
I dont even like cutscenes going to letterbox but many do & I live with it but... why on earth is Dragon's Dogma letterbox?

[Canary]

I don't really remember that effect. Maybe you had a display issue? Most games are set to 16:9 ratios, it's possible either DD or your own display was set to 16:10 instead, and may not have scaled (as most games do) resulting in a letterboxing effect.

Of course, most games DO scale, and several games--P4A comes to mind--have screen scaling issues, period.

This occurs because displays are nonstandard. Particularly in Japan, where--at least a few years ago--older 4:3 screens were far more prevalent than modern 16:9 and 16:10 displays.

While most PC game developers take this into account, and code their games to be able to scale to different aspect ratios and screen resolutions, they do so because they HAVE to. Yes, it helps make PC games 'future proof,' but it's necessary because even the contemporary market is too diverse.

Consoles lack that diversity, so rather than put in that extra work, most developers just code the game to a fixed aspect ratio and resolution.

This is why re-working PS2 games to display at higher, widescreen resolutions (the HD Classics series) is a time-consuming process, that takes even competent developers several months.

[UnHoly_One]

I had completely forgotten about that until you brought it up.

I think it looked strange to me for about 5 minutes and then I completely forgot about it.

It never impacted the gameplay, and the game was just plain awesome, so I didn't really mind giving up a few inches of screen space.

[ThanatosDMC]

It's low res. I forgot which website counted the pixels but it was below 720p, if i remember correctly.

Still a great game though. I prefer it over Skyrim Master difficulty. Problem was is that none of the people on my friends list kept playing after they finished the game so I cant use powerful pawns for free anymore that were above my level.

I prefer the silent Arisen. I actually would have liked the game better if there was no main storyline. The story line got in the way of my free roaming adventures since you have to go through the story to progress the game items, locations, npcs and enemy spawns.

[Neckbear]

This dude is actually complaining about one of the best character creation tools in recent memory AND it having a silent protagonist?

Talk about terrible taste.

[bluetoto]

Agreed, I had to grit my teeth to finish his piece. While some of his complaints are valid, they are present in other RPG's as well yet he acts like DD stands alone.

In Dark Souls the enemies spawn in the EXACT same spot every time you spawn/respawn with the same 2 or 3 basic attacks that you either block and counter or parry and counter yet it's a flaw in Dragon's Dogma?

I believe DS,Skyrim and Fallout had a silent protag, but DD isn't a real RPG because of this?

I'd LOVE if the author would do a piece on what is a "real" rpg as I'm sure that those games will be filled with most if not all of the same issues.

P.S- Dragon's Dogma DOES have fast travel, you just have to earn it.

P.S.S- to the author, the creation tools sucked to you? While I disagree with almost your entire opinion I'd love to see you list 5 better console games with a better toolset.