Dragon's Dogma Preview
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Dragon's Dogma is set in a completely open fantasy world. It isn't based on any one franchise or legend, but it does pull inspiration from a range of sources. As such, it looks like the game will give players a taste of everything from Greek myth to Dungeons & Dragons. Both influences were on display in last week's demo, some portion of a quest through a broken-down castle. In addition to encountering harpies and a chimera boss at the end, there were also goblin-like creatures and a mammoth dragon. The latter just popped up in a cutscene, but there's little doubt you'll be fighting it at some point in the game.
The focus of this particular demo was the game's warrior class, which comes equipped with your fairly standard sword & shield combo; there's also the Strider (ranged plus dual-wielded blades) class and an as-yet-unseen mage class. The basic combat controls give you light and heavy attacks, but each of your two class-specific weapons sword and shield, in this case each have their own special attacks which can be used by holding down LB or RB (on an Xbox 360 controller) as a modifier.
Also key to Dragon's Dogma are your pawns. Few details have been revealed about these characters adventurers with various skills that can be brought in to aid you in your journey (up to three at a time). You can issue basic go/stop/help orders, but they generally act independently, using their range of skills, and learning in the process which ones are more or less effective against the enemies you're facing. In battle, the action will occasionally pause while a brief cutscene plays, in which one pawn or another tells you what s/he is about to do and how you can take advantage of it. A simple example is, a mage pawn might imbue your weapons with fire because that's the element a particular foe is more vulnerable to.
