Dragon's Dogma 2 is one of Capcom's big surprises and a release made possible due to the company's strong performance, with its finances and stock prices at an all-time high. However, there's much more to the origin of this sequel, with inspiration drawn from other sources, such as Rockstar Games' masterpiece.

Dragon's Dogma 2 and the Strong Influence of Grand Theft Auto V

During an interview with VGC, Hideaki Itsuno, director of Dragon's Dogma 2, revealed that one of the major inspirations for this sequel to the fantasy RPG franchise is none other than Grand Theft Auto V, a game that marked a decade of dominance and success in the gaming industry. According to the Japanese creative, the open-world, crime-themed game from 2013 showed them a different perspective on what they could do in a Dragon's Dogma sequel beyond building upon the existing foundations.

Regarding this, Hideaki Itsuno stated: "Mostly, we just wanted to take things that we couldn't do in Dragon's Dogma at the time when it came out, whether it was because of time constraints or pushing the limits of the hardware that existed at the time. So, the main inspiration was ourselves and finally being able to achieve what we wanted in this current generation of consoles. If I had to pick another game that came out in the meantime, I'd actually say GTA V. I admired how they were able to create a world where it really felt like the NPCs were living their lives independently of the player. All sorts of interesting emergent behavior could happen each time you explored the city, and all sorts of weird accidents seemed like they would happen whether you were there or not. That feeling of a living world is something that I've definitely tried to achieve in Dragon's Dogma 2."

Earlier this year, Capcom revealed that Dragon's Dogma 2 would be a single-player title, but players would feel it as multiplayer due to the work done with NPCs to create a living world. This shift from traditional fantasy and RPG elements was a direct result of the influence of GTA V.

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