14 DAY TRIAL // Dragon’s Dogma is an action role-playing game created by publisher Capcom and one of its main defining gameplay mechanics is the Pawn System, which actually allows players to borrow characters from someone else’s game and use them in their own quests.
Hideaki Itsuno, who is the game director working on Dragon’s Dogma, says that the core system was inspired by his previous experience on message boards.
He states on the Capcom Unity blog that, “I used to frequent BBS boards as a passive viewer, until one day I decided to actually write a post. Before then, I would just check the board once a day, but after that I was so eager to see a response that I started checking ten plus times a day.”
Using the Pawn System offers advantages to both those who get characters from other players, because they can access new abilities and potentially high-level powers, and to those who make their own Main Paws available for the lending process, because the characters can gain knowledge of enemies and new dungeon areas.
Apparently, Itsuno even considered allowing gamers to make their own avatars available for the Pawn System. It eventually decided against it because it could actually create a gap between the player and the game protagonist he controls.
The game director added, “I realized, if it was an AI-controlled character for both players, then that AI would have a consistent life of its own, which would actually contribute to a feeling of connectivity between players sharing a character.”
Dragon’s Dogma also allows players to give pawns presents, exchange strategies with them and control their in-game behavior.
Dragon’s Dogma will tell the story of a lowly villager who has his heart actually taken out of his body by a dragon and is thrown in the middle of a fight for the fate of the world.
The game is set to be launched on the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 on May 22 in the United States and three days later in Europe.