It’s been a while since I’ve put anything out, and want to dust the cobwebs off. So I’m going to talk about something that’ll most likely be boring to you, to anyone that’s seen my work, I’m going to talk about Dragon Quest eleven. A game I spent a considerable amount of time playing last winter.
So, what’s Dragon Quest: It’s a Japanese role playing game created in 1986 by Yuji Horii, with character and world design by legendary artist and animator Akira Toriyama. These two creators have had these roles all the way up to the newest iterations. The series has two reputations, one for being so popular in Japan that it’s the only game to be released on a Saturday instead of a Thursday, due to so many people skipping work and school it causes a panic across the country. It’s second reputation is for never capturing anything close to that kind of success abroad*.
My first time playing a Dragon Quest game was Dragon Quest eight on the PS2 in early 2019. I had just been paid for finishing the first draft of a play and thought with my commission I could get a PS2 as a cheap treat for my fifteen year old self (I had just turned thirty) (the play never got put on). I played it solidly every day for at least a month and sincerely believe I’d have finished were it not for a skipping disc and a realisation that my fifteen year old self wouldn’t have wanted a PS2, let alone one as a gift from his future self.
I bought Dragon Quest eleven on sale almost two years later on my Nintendo Switch as an early Christmas present, and was surprised how much it felt just like the game that came out on the PS2 fifteen years ago.
The best way to describe the feel of Dragon Quest is to imagine a CottageCore DragonBall Z that, at it’s most dramatic, steers towards Lord of the Rings. It has an epic scope, but most of the excitement comes from quiet moments. The death animation of the Crulecumber or the trading telegrams between a brother and sister living in two different towns, the decorations of the houses themselves and the differences in accents and cultures between each town.
There’s something very “gamey” about DQ that somehow allows you to be more immersed it’s world than games that strive for realism. Everything feels meant, and by that I mean everyone you see is in a specific space for a reason. Dragon Quest doesn’t rely on generating artificial crowds to make a city feel bigger, or rag doll physics for each enemy when they get hit, as it gets in the way of Yuji Horii’s artisanal approach. All these modern advancements would only chip away at the charm the game holds. There’s a striving for timelessness, from the combat, to the story, to the animation. It’s why the Cruelcumber dies the exact same way every time, but I could watch it a hundred times more- where if it had Rag Doll physics, it might fall differently every time after getting hit, but never would it be so beautiful.
In some ways it feels like a game from 1986, but on a system that can make water look really nice.
So that’s a bit about Dragon Quest, now let’s get into what I want to talk about: experience points and skill trees. In a role playing game, for every battle your character wins, every secret they find (every move they make, breath they take) they’re awarded with “experience points” and the more points built, the more to spend on upgrading your character. However, you can’t spend these points in a linear fashion, instead you’re presented with a variety of diverging paths, with each path building your character in their own distinct way. This is called a Skill Tree.
For example, say you have a hero who has a wand that can cast magic spells. With your first ten experience points you’ll be presented with the option to either buy the ability to heal your party, or to damage your enemies. Now, you can always build up experience points and pick both skills, but the further along the branch you, the more experience points are needed, and the more branches split, forcing your hand to decide who your character is. It’s this mechanic that makes your character unique and helps define their personality. It’s a very simple, widely used system, but it’s used well in Dragon Quest, especially when you get halfway through the game and something odd happens. Something I’ve had on my mind since it happened.
Just as you’re about to reach what you think is the last third of the game, you actually hit the mid point. The bad guys interrupt, and win. Time moves on, and you’re now in a world that has spun into disarray. The next ten to fifteen hours are spent on singular characters arcs, without a team or any clear idea of what the next step in the story is. The sense of loss only really feels consequential once you open up your menu, check a characters skill tree and see that for everyone, a branch has been removed.
You probably know I’m a performer and writer. Writing specifically for performance. Since I was twenty one I’ve been gigging, from stand up comedy, to poetry, to theatre, to hosting. Each one of these skills a small, but significant step on my skill tree. A bonsai I’ve spent the best part of a decade trimming. I don’t have a university education, I’ve always been adamant that the choices I’ve been making will pay off. For over a year now, I feel like this branch of my skill tree has gone, and I’m so depressed to see how little development has gone into the rest of myself. Finding purpose in the last year has been difficult, and this moment in Dragon Quest eleven encapsulated that feeling of loss better than any other medium. Because the experience points don’t just develop skills, as I said, they develop the character’s personality- how they’re able to contribute- how they’re perceived- how they perceive themselves. The idea of investing so much time in reworking yourself has been at times genuinely debilitating and that loss of worth has led to depression, and not a rainy cloud over a sad cartoon one. One that has me realise how much of my self worth has depended on the validation of a crowd. Wound up with the ‘small man’ syndrome. I wound up grossing myself out by how bitter and insecure I had become. Since then though I’ve been in therapy and got a dog. Slowly trimming a new bonsai, hoping it’ll grow upright. Sorry for harping on about my own stuff there.
I really loved seeing the idea of these skill tree’s feed into the story of the game, for the past ten weeks I’ve been part of this course at the Donmar called Future Forms. It’s been about looking at how we can tell stories in new ways. Since then this moment has popped into my head. A dramatic in a mechanic.
There’s another moment where Dragon Quest implements the skill tree in a way that I found equally touching, in a different way (and maybe a little more appropriate to end on). After the sequence I mentioned earlier, where you play as each individual party member- without a team- you start a campaign to travel the world and bring everyone back together again. The two party members you didn’t get to play as, the twin sisters Veronica and Serena, are the last characters you find. Only Veronica is on her own, and you realise that in Serena was killed in the fallout of the loss.
Again, in the story of the game, it’s all fairly typical- a funeral cutscene, sad music, npc’s sharing memories of Serena- it’s only once you start to play as Veronica you see something special in her skill tree. Before I tell you that, I have to say that each skill tree for every character in Dragon Quest has it’s own unique shape, and it’s only when Serena dies you realise that Veronica and Serena’s skill trees matched together perfectly in a the shape of a butterfly. You realise this because Veronica carries Serena’s skill tree with her. What better way to represent carrying someone with you in spirit? Perfection.
*went into it, wrote it, was boring, deleted it.