What Dragon’s Dogma Should Copy from Shadow of the Colossus

Forbes’ contributor Erik Kain has chimed in again with his ideas on how to make Dragon’s Dogma a better title, this time arguing that it should borrow a few more elements from Shadow of the Colossus in addition to monster climbing. Here’s an excerpt:

I only ever played a tiny bit of Shadow of the Colossus back in the heady days of the PlayStation 2. I’m remedying that now as I play through the PlayStation 3 port (and later ICO, which I never played both games came on the same disc.)

So far the game is terrific. There’s a good chunk of blessedly sparse, vague story toward the beginning, and then you’re off on horseback to find and topple your first Colossus, armed only with a bow and a magic sword. And some serious moxie.

The first Colossus made me think instantly of how badly I want something like this in Dragon’s Dogma – something toweringly huge, monolithic, gargantuan.colossal. Climbing the back of an angry ogre or cyclops is a lot of fun; being whisked off on the back of a griffin up into the sky is thrilling. But I keep hoping, and yet never encountering, something truly monumental.

In the Scandinavian film Troll Hunter (which you should seriously go see) the final troll encountered by the wayward film crew is truly mountainous. If Capcom released a giant monsters DLC pack with trolls the size of that one, or giant ogres that required real strategic climbing a la SotC, I’d buy it in a heartbeat. Which says quite a lot, since I’ve almost never purchased DLC.