"I have what it takes to continue this series' legacy" Hideaki Itsuno may have left Capcom, but Dragon's Dogma 2's new director reckons the RPG is still in good hands

In August 2024, Dragon's Dogma 2 director Hideaki Itsuno left Capcom after "30 years and five months" at the Japanese publisher. The legendary developer, responsible for creating Dragon's Dogma and championing the Devil May Cry franchise, is practically synonymous with the former. It's a well-known story that he originally conceived of the game around the time he was working on Devil May Cry in the early 2000s, and had to fight hard for time and budget when preparing the launch of the original Dragon's Dogma game in 2012. In many ways, the 2024 launch of Dragon's Dogma 2 felt like coming good on a promise nearly two decades in the making.

So when Capcom announced Dragon's Dogma 2 was getting a new update - a huge expansion called Dark Arisen, the exact same name as the first game's expansion - I was a little curious: did Itsuno's shadow remain hanging over the remaining developers attached to the game? Will this expansion feel markedly different when he's not around to impart his vision?

"We have a great deal of respect for Mr. Itsuno, and as you mentioned, he left the company in 2024," says Dragon's Dogma 2 producer, Naoto Oyama, when I asked about working on the series without Itsuno present, "but Capcom has always structured ourselves so that we aren't absolutely reliant on a single person or a single creator without whom a series or a title falls apart, and can't continue to exist. For example, the director of this game, [Kenta] Kinoshita, he has been not only the director of Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen (2013) but he was a main planner on the first Dragon's Dogma, and on Dragon's Dogma 2 - as well as the Japan-only Dragon's Dogma Online. He has worked on all four of those titles to date, and I think that as a team we've developed a lot of know-how and understanding of what it is that makes Dragon's Dogma a unique series. So as we come up with the launch of this new expansion, we're confident that we still know what it takes to make a great Dragon's Dogma game."

Nodding, Kinoshita adds: "Speaking as the director personally, as well: I've seen the whole series through to date. It's a series which is beloved for being a little bit different compared to other open-world RPGs - and having a bit of uniqueness to it - but I've been with it from the start. So I'd like to believe that I have what it takes to continue the series' legacy into this expansion."

It's refreshing to hear that, and from what we've seen of Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen so far, I can believe what Kinoshita is saying - in another article based on this same interview, Kinoshita explained how he and Oyama are ensuring quality-of-life changes to the game don't impact its hardcore nature too much.

Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen launches on 9th October, alongside a new Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game.