Warning for mild late game spoilers for Dragon’s Dogma II.
I’ve sunk into the unmoored world of Vermund, the world of Dragon’s Dogma II, the lakes and seas have evaporated, the skies are crimson red, fire and lightning vortexes threaten to destroy each of the major settlements and the Regentkin has tasked me with collecting carts to evacuate the citizens of the biggest city. Poisoned dragons hover in the distance looking truly menacing.
As I round a corner one of the pawns in my retinue, a caste of slaves that follow my whims, pipes up. It is my archer, who belongs to one of my real life friends, that speaks up. His name is Bucket.
“Look Arisen, a ladder!”
We’ve passed this ladder maybe a hundred times during my 80hrs of playing. Without fail one of my pawns has pointed it out. Every. Single. Time.
“Shut the fuck up Bucket.” I mutter to myself.
“One wonders what secrets it aught lead to.” This is from my main pawn, Dom.
“Oh, not you as fucking well.” I grumble.
Dom and Beyonce hanging out, probably admiring a ladder
The pawns are designed to help out with each fight. Your main pawn has the same basic levelling system as the main character, but it also has other things that simulates a personality. The more of the same type of enemy that they fight, in your game or others’, the better they get at fighting them. If they have experienced a quest before they will guide players towards them. It is a cool, unique feature to the game that adds a personality to your travels.
I faithfully recreated my original buddy from the first game and he has served as a bulwark to my strategy of fighting most monsters – standing at the front and hitting things with a big hammer while I plink enemies with my bow and arrow. I’ve watched Dom stun a Cyclops, knocking it off balance, and then grab it by one leg and send it toppling into a rock face for a satisfying amount of damage.
I was so invested in my pawns – the main ones being Bucket, Beyonce, Marmite and errr… Farty – that I started to see dynamics to them. Dom was the uptight fuddy duddy always telling people to not get too cocky, Bucket was a well meaning dunder head, Beyonce a prissy mage/healer, Marmite was the new guy with a spiffing moustache and knack for getting himself killed, and Farty.
Farty was just a dickhead.
Made by one of my regular multiplayer friends he was a man of diminutive stature – Farty liked nothing more than to make comments like ‘Oh, just need to make sure I get in the best regenerative pose if you are going to leave me here’. He was a passive aggressive little turd that I enjoyed taking into battles he was far too under-levelled for and watching him get absolutely paddled by different monsters. Crippling my progress by playing the game as a three man team instead of four.
See above, Beyonce on the left casting cool spells, Dom holding on to a dragon’s throat, and me having to carry Farty to safety after he was knocked unconscious.
I got several warnings of a dragon’s plague that infected pawns making them ‘uncooperative’, ‘mean spirited’ and eventually ‘homicidal’. It was hard to tell if Farty had the plague or just had a natural talent for being a pillock.
This was entirely by design;; my friend had made him as annoying as possible. Unsurprising as this was a long running thing amongst my inner circle of Xbox Live friends – every Sunday we sit down and play games, and it is only a matter of time before one of us trolls the other. There are running jokes, things that we have said to each other over and over again just because we know it will get a rise out of the other. Our pawns really are no different.
One of my friends recounted how Dom fell off a cliff and went into a downed state, and Bucket went ‘I’ll save you!’ and jumped off the cliff and killed himself too. Beyonce turned to me during one hike and said ‘I saw aught nearby in one of my previous travels, shall I take you there?’. When I agreed she took me on a route that took me halfway round the map, forgot what she was looking for and instead took me to a new mission.
Now, these might sound like bugs but if you have ever had a group of friends, this kind of online dumbarsery takes on an entirely human bent.
Every time Marmite failed to listen to my commands and just wandered off on his own, or got stuck in some scenery, I am reminded that Marmite belongs to my partner, a person that cannot go more than two hours without injuring herself on some kind of static item. I’ve seen her stumble on entirely flat floors.
Beyonce leading me in the completely wrong direction for hours lines up with her owner, a man who once got lost in his home city of Brighton. A city that is bordered to the South by a very visible sea. He was so lost, in fact, that he had to call a taxi to rescue him.
Farty’s owner loves to pick everything up that is not nailed down, frequently looting everything before we can get to it. There have been more than one occasion when Farty has shoved me out of the way as I am trying to open a box to go ‘Look Master! A treasure chest!’ and then take all its contents.
Dragon’s Dogma II is a wonderful sequel, even though it has buffed off some of its more crude edges, the erratic, heroic, infuriating, exhilarating behaviours of the Pawns enrich every moment of the game.
Even as I cursed them out, I still found myself cheering on my buddies as they leapt on top of hydras and attempted to stab it in the face.
As much I would like to play this in online co-op, my Pawns are all such loveable dickheads that it is basically the same thing.
Goddamnit, Farty why are you so smug even when I am trying to high five you?
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