Square Enix announce Dragon Quest 12
"It's like a Dragon Quest for adults"
Today, Square Enix celebrated the 35th anniversary of the Dragon Quest series, announcing a handful of new games and spin-offs from the JRPG series. The biggest reveal was the announcement of Dragon Quest 12: The Flames Of Fate, the next mainline game following 2017's Dragon Quest 11. While the developers didn't reveal too much about it, DQ12 certainly sounds like a darker, moodier take on the series, with Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii saying, "it's like a Dragon Quest for adults".
Here's the teaser trailer from last night's stream. It doesn't show much, just some fiery roman numerals and a smoldering Dragon Quest logo. It's a very nice logo, though.
At the end of that trailer, the Japanese voiceover asks: "What is the purpose of life?" Which seems rather moody indeed. Horii mentions that there will be choices involved, too, saying: "You're in control of the game or your life." How sinister.
It's unknown if Dragon Quest 12 will come to PC, but Dragon Quest 11 did - albeit a year after it launched on consoles in Japan. While there's no set release date just yet, the devs want to launch DQ12 at the same time worldwide (which would be a first for the series). Seeing as DQ11's arrival on PC was synchronous with its release in the west, it's possible we could see it on PC from the start. That might just be wishful thinking, though.
It's good to see Square Enix toying with the idea of simultaneous global releases. Sega recently said they wanted Persona devs Atlus to launch their games at the same time around the world, too, thanks to the success of Ryu Ga Gotoku's Yakuza: Like A Dragon, which was the first Yakuza game to release on multiple platforms in the west at the same time as it launched in Japan.
As well as DQ12, Square Enix also revealed an "HD-2D" remake of Dragon Quest 3 (in the same style as Octopath Traveler), a treasure-hunting RPG Dragon Quest Treasures, a cutesy mobile game called Dragon Quest Keshikeshi, as well as an offline version for the Japan-only MMO Dragon Quest 10, plus a major expansion the online version. Most of these are only set to hit consoles at the moment, but we're hoping we'll eventually see some PC releases in the mix, too.
Catch the full stream with all the announcements and a bit of devchat below (the vid properly starts at around the 25:45 mark, before that it's just a waiting screen).
