Dragon's Dogma 2 NPCs Might Fight Each Other Over the Player's Affections

ign.com:

Dragon's Dogma 2 is right around the corner, and our month-long IGN First covering the game has revealed tons of new details about its incredible new monsters, systems, and vocations. In our conversations with creator Hideaki Itsuno, we also learned about a number of new features of the NPC systems in Dragon's Dogma 2, including one that might result in NPCs fighting one another over the player character.

The first Dragon's Dogma featured a "pawn" system, where players could customize an NPC assistant that would follow the player around the world, fight alongside them, and assist with quests. They could then flesh out their party with two additional pawns borrowed from other people playing online who would arrive with their own skills, personalities, and knowledge of quests they'd done in their respective games. When not in the player's party, these pawns would fill out the world of Dragon's Dogma, wandering the roads and towns available to be recruited at any time. It was a strange and unique system that helped the world feel full, if occasionally a bit robotic.

In Dragon's Dogma 2, that system is back, says Itsuno. But Capcom has had a lot of time and tech to improve on the system since then. Itsuno says he wanted to create "properly detailed NPCs" and ended up with a "ridiculous number of people" in the world, and he's been trying to build systems where characters behave as if they have goals and are making decisions in the world regardless of what the player is doing. One notable improvement is that now not only can NPCs have affinity for the player as they did in the previous game, they can also feel attached to other NPCs.

"For example, if you find a pair of friends, hitting one will cause the other to get mad at you too. Or if you do something nice for a child, the parent might thank you and like you more as well. That's what I mean by relationships between NPCs."

But the relationships between NPCs and players may also be enhanced. Itsuno notes that while the