To help better understand the structure of the world in Dragons Dogma, it is like an apartment building with many floors/levels: 1) Every floor is the same but inhabited by different people, its own arisen, dragon, cycle and seneschal as the warden of that floor. 2) The Riftstone is the elevator that connects all these floors that your lets pawn travel through to them. 3) The Pathfinder is the owner of the building, watching every floor making sure things are in running order accordingly. (This is surmised from Capcom concept presentation of DD before the first game was released back then.)

There's a reddit post that i highly suggest everyone read that explains everything about DD2 including the fact that the pathfinder's ending dialogue was mistranslated so poorly that it completely changes the narrative. In short, King Rothias abandoned his duties as senischel and killed every person to challenge for the position of the next arisen so the pathfinder manipulated the cycle of arisen/dragon but in doing so he basically doomed the world into a slow oblivion. Notice the major differences between Grigori (the dragon from dd1) and this dragon. Grigori was all about reinforcing the idea that everything rested on the arisen's choices and decisions whereas this dragon seems incredibly shallow and is basically begging the arisen to end the pathfinder's false cycle. Ulrika was originally going to be the next arisen but when you sacrificed yourself to save her the dragon chose you because it was going to require a great will to finally end the false cycle. The former arisen in harve village (the old fisherman who is in the final cutscene) had reached the unmoored world himself but lacked the will to put an end to the false cycle. The unmoored world is the true world with the veil lifted showing the oblivion surrounding the world which will ultimately consume it due to the false cycle of arisen/dragon that the pathfinder is manipulating. Im leaving out a lot of details and not giving justice to the depth of it all but definitely look into that reddit post if you are intrigued by the lore behind dd1 and 2

If there is a DLC like BBI, I kinda hope we get the opportunity to fight the Pathfinder like we fought the Senechal.

Dragons Dogma 2 is something special, it seems like everyone that likes it REALLY likes it and everyone that doesn't like it didn't play it 👼

These solo Josh videos are chefs kiss 🤌🏽

"All the world's a stage. And all the men and women are merely players."

Pawn getting sassy? A little toss into brine will cleanse everything 😂

The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end, Oroborus intensified.

From how he talks about pawns, I don't think this guy got the secret love dialogue from his main pawn

For true fans of DD1 its might actually be a sequel! once you get to the unmooring world you will see a familiar location….

I love the sequel, yet a few changes are just strange... Yeah, the entity that controls the world is the Seneschal, and is a crucial part of the cycle. The Arisen, when he bested the dragon, must confront and beat the Seneschal in order to become the next seneschal. Or as you will, the next God, the will of the Arisen will fuel the world, until the will is gone, and a new Arisen is needed to become the Seneschal to watch over the world (Meaning a new big dragon drops out of the sky). Should the Arisen fail to beat the Seneschal, he'll become the next big red dragon. In the first game, becoming duke was a bad ending, because all the dukes before chose to sacrifice a beloved to the dragon instead of fighting it. I kinda miss the Seneschal bit, was a neat way into New Game plus, to basically fight yourself. I guess... The Rothais is the Seneschal, still confusing why he sits in the ruins of Gran Soren, instead of in the rift... Oh well 🌞

Yah know it’s going to be dragons dogma 2 when you’re walking in gransys castle

I would like an Expansion that actually has us existing in the world that progresses after the True Ending. There has to be other threats out there and the world cannot just be that location alone.

Glad some people actually understood and appreciated the genius of this game.

So we just gonna forget a lot of the things from DD1 like our pawns literally are learning from and turn into us at some point

They aren't getting free will they are doing the Dragon/Drakes will. This is also in the 1st game. The dragons snatch up your companion and compel them to attack you. After you stop them everything pass that is new, but the drakes are the ones controlling the pawns. Which sucks in the bad way lol. It seems at the very end is when they get free will.

Only realized that theres a hint for gettin in the unmoored world right at the beginning after started ng+ in the intro

I can only imagine how the first people who discovered this route reacted. They either did it out of curiosity/trial and error cause the godsbane was never used in the story, or thought it'd be funny to make up a joke ending where once Grigori finishes his speech he notices you killed yourself out of boredom, only triggered that ending by accident

I didn't like the ending because it felt like a rushed info dump, maybe it needed more time to bake. The concept is fine, but as a follow up to DD1, it's lacking. The ending felt like the last games midpoint. Still a fun game and I'm playing the heck out of it.

Yoooo i never knew this thanks man fr 💯💯💯💯

The expansion better let me get my original main pawn back somehow? I got to attached to that one to only create a new one just for the expansion.

It's crazy how the Brine began as "we don't have time to finish swimming mechanics before we ship this game" to where we are now. I was honestly hoping that this time they would have allowed you to go into the water like most other games but I guess not.

I wouldn’t say a reboot it could be the same universe as 1 but hundreds of years in the future and the cycle is continuing but it seems like a lot of the arisen choose to give up on defeating the dragon until we arrive. DD1 established the cycle and DD2 broke it. It’s basically a continuation and I cant wait for the dlc or ever DD3

The thing about "excusing" problems through plot contrivance is this; First, that the plot needs to be contrived, and secondly, that it's an excuse--a contrivance designed to make you ignore detractions. The good news is that neither of those things are true, and thus these points are valid; Dragon's Dogma 2's awkward NPC interractions--whether that be Pawn or Human--work well because they all give the game an uncanny sense of un-reality that it directly confronts through its themes. If the player is convinced by the 'play', they ignore the tells guiding them through the cycle--they complete quests in unintended ways, they throw NPCs off cliffs, they screw around. They become like the Mad Sovran. The ending itself requires you to think with the sort of outside-the-box mentality of a speedrunner using glitches to skip. The True Ending is intentionally unnatural; it's achieved by pulling out a random sword you were given probably 20 hours prior, mid-dialogue, whilst flying on the back of a massive dragon, way to the final boss' arena. It's so not what you would be thinking of doing, that it comes across as a total shock when it actually works. From here, the interesting part kicks in. Suddenly the game is using its 'flaws' (really, reasonable limitations on NPCs scripting that most large games would be expected to have anyway) to tell a story of how artificial beings gain a will of their own, and it's satisfying because you yourself witnessed one such being--your Main Pawn--develop that will through your own actions; a relationship made naturally through unintentional gameplay habits. By the end of the game, your Pawn (who is literally controlled by your commands) has probably done a million unexpected things, and this becomes pay-off for the ending of the game. What is Dragonsplague, if not a Pawn developing a will against the Arisen's commands, and becoming like the Mad Sovran? And how is the final Dragon defeated? Through the power of the Dragonsplague--its free will made manifest. People write off 'bad on purpose' plots and then talk about how brilliant Metal Gear Solid 2 is--a game that was literally made crappier on purpose. We can't act like every flaw is a secret message by the developers, but a good developer can play to their flaws as well as their strengths; when Ultima Online was being developed, they had to split the player-base over multiple servers, so they canonized 'shards' to explain the existance of multiple parallel worlds. I don't see any reason why Dragon's Dogma 2's story could be so meta-contextual, yet we for some reason aren't allowed to let that meta-contextuality influence our opinions of the artificial mechanics of the world. It's literally just how art works--how is that bad at all? It's arguably more interesting than if all the NPCs acted totally realistically all of the time.

wait but we meet people who was arisen and isn't anymore

Capcom has an opportunity to go so many places with content with the True Ending

Dragon's Dogma 2 felt like an Isekai! (see anime genre)

The things you are saying are great and I really appreciate the content... However I suggest you to show in the video the things you are talking about more synchronized with the speech 😊

I think the secret ending is what the secret Godsbane dores will be for. There's like 4 that I have found. All behind rubble that ya have to tern the cam into to see.

This is like that movie The Island but with swords and dragons 😂

The algo changing at the same time as Jules leaving is beyond apparent. I love Josh videos, but this channel more than most makes clear the acrobatics content creators have to fold themselves into to keep our lord Algo happy

The true ending to this game is super weird and not really explained leaving so many questions. I quite like this guys very game journalist's take that it's all meta. However that doesn't quite do it for me. You "break the cycle", but what does that mean. Simple answer is easy, no more dragon, then arisen, repeat. But why? and how? Did we just destroy the brine somehow? Is the pathfinder dead? The greater will maybe? Did we combine with the dragon and take control? What the F was Phaeses doing and did he get any answers? I think I missed the whole world is but a play thing, guess this was the pathfinder, but not sure when. Even with that being the case, this is like dark souls level of questions, but I'm not sure there are answers.

Why does the game in your video sometimes looks so weird bloomy? colors that are off.

80 hours? Pah. Try 256.

Well said, I mean explained. 👍

That true ending is depressing 😢

That's deep

DD II has some intriguing lore, but it's frustrating that they didn't develop it into something more impactful. It's clear they put effort into a few quests, but for the most part, the main quests received the kind of lackluster attention usually reserved for side quests, with just a handful that are better developed. Games like Mass Effect, Cyberpunk, Red Dead Redemption, and even Skyrim did a much better job with their storytelling. Take Phaesus, for instance-he could have been a fascinating character, but you hardly see him, his motivations are obscured, and by the time he becomes significant in the game, you feel no real connection to him. Overall, the game is just okay-the combat and exploration are fantastic, but the storytelling leaves a lot to be desired. I will say I don't want to make this sound like a reason to not buy the game I did like the ending but by the time we got to it, it wasn't fully earned.

What if by giving your pawns dragons plague & letting them kill the villagers destroyed small towns & cities what if we create a new story like the first Arisen that was a beastran of Vermund

This is pure delusional cope. The mental gymnastics people are doing to justify this game being a lazy remake with nothing new is astounding. The world, NPC’s, and story wasn’t bland and shallow on purpose to make a statement about the game being an actual game in universe. The game is just a lazy remake. It has nothing new, no new mechanics, no new systems. The story is terrible. The combat is all the same. The vocations are all the same. Massive disappointment. The game wasn’t shallow and bland on purpose. Stop justifying this lazy re-make. If there was more depth to the unmoored world, I’d be happier. The unmoored world should have been half the game, tearing down the veil of the world, tearing down the whole bland story as some kind of test to the arisen. And there could have been more realistic and likable characters after that. But it wasn’t. It was a 2 hour adventure with like 1-2 new enemies to fight. Didn’t ad anything. I think as more time passes, more people are going to view this game this way, when the excitement is far gone, especially with the unmoored world.

Idk why the pathfinder would actively work against itself xD he literally points us to the god's bane blade, gonna be honest I like the story of the 1st game it was simple and interactive if you were the Arisen and you cleared the game the boss would be your arisen in ng+ even if the game explains why it is so undercooked that does not make it better the Npcs and the story should have been far better than what it was and the secret ending should have been something that you are not guided into. bad guys should have consequences for their actions and the world should be reactive to the players actions with or w/o the plot or excuses, because atm it's the same excuse as it was in DD1; they didn't have enough resources like what have you done with the money you received from the old game??

just shame the good music is in the intro and ending, the in between ain't as strong, especially if you're expecting the first game's level of music the overall thing about the story unraveling if people strayed from their stories could also be used politically, especially in japan or the more controlling countries, or even the game's production being controlled but we're not here for that.

sigh, thought the thumbnail was Alex Mercer.

No free will until the DLC 👀

It took 10.39 minutes to get to the point and 2.3 seconds to get back to the passionate rant off topic about other video games

Most disappointing game of 2024 for me especially after what Itsuno was promising. It sounded like he was talking about BG3 instead of his own game 😂

Second

First.

is this copium at the highest level?

We live in a society of idiots and morons basically. The sad fact is in this day, not liking something requires a tremendous amount of endless commentary on why you don't like it and no one else should dare to disagree. I prefer simple. Don't like it? Don't play it. Go entertain yourself with something you enjoy. No commentary needed. No time, energy wasted. Its the same with music or tv. That show, that song offended you? Turn it off. Move on. No muss. No fuss. Too ez. But apparently impossible for some. Strange world. Like the unmoored world actually. Odd thing that...

I dig your passion and energy for the games “true” ending but I can’t help but feel even more frustrated by it? You said it yourself, shallow game mechanics are still shallow game mechanics. Also in 2024 the meta narrative “surprise” of you are playing a video game feels hollow and played out without something more to it, no? I enjoy the game but it really feels like someone was so beholden to remaking the first and not improving it in any way. The “true” ending reveal feels like an afterthought reasoning for the game being so shallow and frustrating? Maybe Im alone in this? I’m someone that was a fan of the original so not jelling with the sequel was surprising to me as well.

Yeah no, I don't care if you're story is just being "meta," how dry and awful and forced that story is, I'm not finishing it. It's dreadfully awful, and there are so many better ways to tell that story than "Whoopee! I'm the hero! Everyone automatically trusts and loves me!"

Man I really tried to enjoy this game, but damn I found it dull and clunky.

Josh loves his job but damn get a wife lol

Dd2 is plain bad

Is it an additional $2.99 to unlock, too?

Everything about this game is trash

*Thanks for 0 like and 1 subscriber* 😅