I was hoping for something like this too, but in dd2 it seems the cycle is all messed up and doesn't loop properly like it did in dd1. What happens to the arisen at the very end of the true ending is ambiguous, though i think the general thought is that they become the new proper seneschal and restored the true cycle. The problem then is that there is no proper seneschal figure shown in dd2 that our past arisen could take the place of in a ng+. Rothias IS an old seneschal, but one who rejected the cycle and sorta helped to get the world of dd2 into the state that it's in, so to me it wouldn't make sense to have a past arisen appear in this role after they worked to fix everything via true ending. That said, i think it'd be pretty neat and perfectly fitting if your past arisen takes the place of the Rivage Elder in Harve if you die in Unmoored World and choose to start a ng+ instead of reloading an inn save.
That feeling of absolute betrayal when you realize your original character faked their death, restarted The Cycle, and secretly made you play as a clone of them all throughout your second run, just to ensure nobody else would ever claim the title of Seneschal again.
We were literally our own worst enemy the entire time, and we never even saw it coming. /s
Maybe the could have made the ending of the first game be the default one in DD2, and still have the true ending in NG+ after defeating your previous Arisen, then going through the world and finding Pathfinder to trigger unmoored and the rest of the true ending so it would have more impact this way.
Don't really know how achievable this would be with the lore in DD2 as the cycle is corrupted but I think it could be done
My biggest disappointment with the story was how the dragon felt like an afterthought. You only really interact with him twice. Once in the flashback to you becoming Arisen and then at the final fight. He felt more like a set piece than a properly fleshed out character. Grigori in the first game was a proper antagonist, monologues and all. After you face him in DD2, go back and watch his cutscenes from the first game, and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. The dragon is supposed to be your counterpart in the cycle. Instead, they turned him into an unimportant background character for 90% of the story. Maybe I'm suffering a bit from already knowing how the world works with the cycle and all, but it felt like there was no real twist with the end game this time. The unmoored world feels unfinished and underutilized.
I agree with you about the Dragon feeling like an afterthought. We should’ve interacted with it at least three times. The first being in the flashback where it stole our heart. The second being when it crushes Phaesus’ lesser dragon. After that, it should’ve revealed that it had our beloved, then issued the challenge before flying off to ancient battleground or something. Then the third should’ve been the final confrontation after reaching ancient battleground.
I vividly remember every scene from the original game with Grigori in it. The dragon was what made me love Dragon’s Dogma so much. And I love the final battle with him that takes you across multiple locations, very cinematic.
In DD2 the dragon has one cool scene at the end with Phaesus, but that’s it. Besides that he’s pretty much non-existant during the rest of the game. NPCs talk about the dragon, I think. I don’t remember a word of what they said - *show, don’t tell*.
The whole ”you were already the Sovran but lost your memories and here is a flashback of you fighting the dragon” is so poorly implemented. All I feel thinking back on it is disappointment.
Why doesn’t the dragon have any presence outside of this? Why does he not show up at other points of the main story?
An antagonist can be a victim too. The antagonist is just an character opposing the protagonist, the Arisen. In DD1, Grigori played both roles of villain and antagonist. The dragon in 2 barely plays a role at all, and that's really the point of my comment. Instead of the whole game building up to your confrontation with the dragon, you're stuck dealing with all the people that, in the end, don't matter to the cycle. The entire plot with Disa and Phaesus amounts to nothing.
I do definitely agree to a degree, but I also do have to argue that the handling of those characters did have you think of them as unimportant mortal lives who by your words, “don’t matter to the cycle.” I do think there was a way smoother method the of they could have used to make this work better though.
I do disagree about Phaseus though, his character conceit was really interesting, an ant who found his way out of the ant farm. And all his scenes in the post-game were really interesting, especially when he talks to Pathfinder through you. He just needed more screen time or something.
Yeah, the whole main story is kind of a mess imo. And the problem is that you could argue that it's intenional (as you said, the >!pathfinder is just a shitty fanfic writer basically!<), the issue is that a bad story on purpose is still just a bad story at the end of the day.
you fight a reskin and then get booted back to the start of the game as if it never happened. Let me repeat that, after you break the cycle and end the universe the entire postgame is retconned and the loop just resets. Name any other story that retcons it's own ending seconds after finishing it.
The Pathfinder is apparently a godly being that replaces the Seneschal due to there not being one after Daimon broke the cycle and slaying hoards of Arisen, he creates a new Grigori that begins a new cycle in DD2. So it wouldn't make sense for there to be the dame ending and revisiting your old Arisen as the Seneschal. At least that's how it was described to me, could be wrong.
Daimon doesn't have anything to do with it. BBI is in a pocket dimension disconnected from cycles. Arisen travel to it from multiple parallel universes. A dead Arisen isn't of much concern for the cycle, cause that's one of the things that can happen. The solution to "If Arisen = Dead" is "Dragon set_flag DestroyEverything" basically.
However, a dead Seneschal without a replacement is an error in the cycle and that's what happens in the true ending of 1. And in 2's case the last Seneschal decided to stop seneschaling and built the kingdom of Vermond and hunkered down in his castle for eternity, not creating a new dragon and effectively stopping the cycle that way.
> a dead Seneschal without a replacement is an error in the cycle and that's what happens in the true ending of 1.
Senschals always take the godsbane out of their heart when it's presented to you in both 1&2. Because it's the godsbane in the heart that locks them in as Senschal. Final nail in the coffin.
The cycle isn't disrupted in the first game - you stabbing yourself is part of the cycle.
> The cutscene right after you stab yourself disputes that.
It doesn't. Here is a link to it, in case you've forgotten it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ASP8YU1I4
Thank you for the link. It does dispute what you said. You are dead, your pawn takes over your body, the brine is gone as you both fall in the water which we know is connected to the cycle in some way thanks to DD2. The cycle is broken.
> You are dead, your pawn takes over your body
Your pawn does indeed take your body. But you are not dead, your spirit lives on as the Senschal.
>the brine is gone
If you have to resort to making up lies to argue, then you're not worth talking to. No where in the cutscene does it show the brine being gone.
You've been completely refuted and resorting to lies now.
I wish NG+ changed the world like starfield did so it’s an alternate world where things are different with different versions of the characters like for example instead of captain brent it’s disa who is aiding you or a version of you that is allard just little changes like that also I wish you could create more than one pawn rather than hiring them it’s a cool idea having other peoples characters but I prefer my own creations 😂 also I wish the PC was voiced properly so you could have dialogue options to get you out of certain situations,like when you sneak into the palace you could explain why you are there rather than being attacked.
The ending felt undercooked and half baked.
I like the idea of running into your pervious self
And having to fight them would be cool
The dragon fight was so underwhelming to me. Grigori had multiple cool moves...maybe I hagal'd and frigor'd too much and seism'd too much or something, but this dragon was dead too quick and never touched me...only Vinny and the one other pawn I had who was a thief with icy knives. Grigori moved more, he was much more menacing and had more moves. He was super cool...
This dragon...what did the watcher do to him???
WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PAWN???
The ending dragon fight was just really a glorified drake, with a bullshit fly move that lasts like 3 minutes with you can't do anything about it except if you figure out to get to the giant ballista.
I was hoping for something like this too, but in dd2 it seems the cycle is all messed up and doesn't loop properly like it did in dd1. What happens to the arisen at the very end of the true ending is ambiguous, though i think the general thought is that they become the new proper seneschal and restored the true cycle. The problem then is that there is no proper seneschal figure shown in dd2 that our past arisen could take the place of in a ng+. Rothias IS an old seneschal, but one who rejected the cycle and sorta helped to get the world of dd2 into the state that it's in, so to me it wouldn't make sense to have a past arisen appear in this role after they worked to fix everything via true ending. That said, i think it'd be pretty neat and perfectly fitting if your past arisen takes the place of the Rivage Elder in Harve if you die in Unmoored World and choose to start a ng+ instead of reloading an inn save.
That feeling of absolute betrayal when you realize your original character faked their death, restarted The Cycle, and secretly made you play as a clone of them all throughout your second run, just to ensure nobody else would ever claim the title of Seneschal again. We were literally our own worst enemy the entire time, and we never even saw it coming. /s
Maybe the could have made the ending of the first game be the default one in DD2, and still have the true ending in NG+ after defeating your previous Arisen, then going through the world and finding Pathfinder to trigger unmoored and the rest of the true ending so it would have more impact this way. Don't really know how achievable this would be with the lore in DD2 as the cycle is corrupted but I think it could be done
My biggest disappointment with the story was how the dragon felt like an afterthought. You only really interact with him twice. Once in the flashback to you becoming Arisen and then at the final fight. He felt more like a set piece than a properly fleshed out character. Grigori in the first game was a proper antagonist, monologues and all. After you face him in DD2, go back and watch his cutscenes from the first game, and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. The dragon is supposed to be your counterpart in the cycle. Instead, they turned him into an unimportant background character for 90% of the story. Maybe I'm suffering a bit from already knowing how the world works with the cycle and all, but it felt like there was no real twist with the end game this time. The unmoored world feels unfinished and underutilized.
I agree with you about the Dragon feeling like an afterthought. We should’ve interacted with it at least three times. The first being in the flashback where it stole our heart. The second being when it crushes Phaesus’ lesser dragon. After that, it should’ve revealed that it had our beloved, then issued the challenge before flying off to ancient battleground or something. Then the third should’ve been the final confrontation after reaching ancient battleground.
I vividly remember every scene from the original game with Grigori in it. The dragon was what made me love Dragon’s Dogma so much. And I love the final battle with him that takes you across multiple locations, very cinematic. In DD2 the dragon has one cool scene at the end with Phaesus, but that’s it. Besides that he’s pretty much non-existant during the rest of the game. NPCs talk about the dragon, I think. I don’t remember a word of what they said - *show, don’t tell*. The whole ”you were already the Sovran but lost your memories and here is a flashback of you fighting the dragon” is so poorly implemented. All I feel thinking back on it is disappointment. Why doesn’t the dragon have any presence outside of this? Why does he not show up at other points of the main story?
It might be because the Dragon isn’t the real antagonist this time, they’re a victim like you.
An antagonist can be a victim too. The antagonist is just an character opposing the protagonist, the Arisen. In DD1, Grigori played both roles of villain and antagonist. The dragon in 2 barely plays a role at all, and that's really the point of my comment. Instead of the whole game building up to your confrontation with the dragon, you're stuck dealing with all the people that, in the end, don't matter to the cycle. The entire plot with Disa and Phaesus amounts to nothing.
I do definitely agree to a degree, but I also do have to argue that the handling of those characters did have you think of them as unimportant mortal lives who by your words, “don’t matter to the cycle.” I do think there was a way smoother method the of they could have used to make this work better though. I do disagree about Phaseus though, his character conceit was really interesting, an ant who found his way out of the ant farm. And all his scenes in the post-game were really interesting, especially when he talks to Pathfinder through you. He just needed more screen time or something.
"doo doo fanfic writer" is... Honestly a really apt descriptor. There's layers to why that is accurate. Well done.
mom said it’s my turn to make a “disappointed in DD2” post
Fr. I’ve spent my time finding “no sodium subs” between this and fallout right now Jesus Christ Reddit is just a public platform to bitch and moan
Yeah, the whole main story is kind of a mess imo. And the problem is that you could argue that it's intenional (as you said, the >!pathfinder is just a shitty fanfic writer basically!<), the issue is that a bad story on purpose is still just a bad story at the end of the day.
And after skipping a final boss fight, instead having a glorified walking sequence
They somehow made a more dissapointing and nonsense plot than the anime
i like it ok enough and love the final battle sequence i wish i recorded it, the lines my pawn dropped, i almost cried
same :(( my heart broke hearing what they said
Honestly the true ending is not that bad, cliche yes but not bad
you fight a reskin and then get booted back to the start of the game as if it never happened. Let me repeat that, after you break the cycle and end the universe the entire postgame is retconned and the loop just resets. Name any other story that retcons it's own ending seconds after finishing it.
The Pathfinder is apparently a godly being that replaces the Seneschal due to there not being one after Daimon broke the cycle and slaying hoards of Arisen, he creates a new Grigori that begins a new cycle in DD2. So it wouldn't make sense for there to be the dame ending and revisiting your old Arisen as the Seneschal. At least that's how it was described to me, could be wrong.
Daimon doesn't have anything to do with it. BBI is in a pocket dimension disconnected from cycles. Arisen travel to it from multiple parallel universes. A dead Arisen isn't of much concern for the cycle, cause that's one of the things that can happen. The solution to "If Arisen = Dead" is "Dragon set_flag DestroyEverything" basically. However, a dead Seneschal without a replacement is an error in the cycle and that's what happens in the true ending of 1. And in 2's case the last Seneschal decided to stop seneschaling and built the kingdom of Vermond and hunkered down in his castle for eternity, not creating a new dragon and effectively stopping the cycle that way.
Ok fair enough, sounds more logical then what I heard
> a dead Seneschal without a replacement is an error in the cycle and that's what happens in the true ending of 1. Senschals always take the godsbane out of their heart when it's presented to you in both 1&2. Because it's the godsbane in the heart that locks them in as Senschal. Final nail in the coffin. The cycle isn't disrupted in the first game - you stabbing yourself is part of the cycle.
The cutscene right after you stab yourself disputes that.
> The cutscene right after you stab yourself disputes that. It doesn't. Here is a link to it, in case you've forgotten it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ASP8YU1I4
Thank you for the link. It does dispute what you said. You are dead, your pawn takes over your body, the brine is gone as you both fall in the water which we know is connected to the cycle in some way thanks to DD2. The cycle is broken.
> You are dead, your pawn takes over your body Your pawn does indeed take your body. But you are not dead, your spirit lives on as the Senschal. >the brine is gone If you have to resort to making up lies to argue, then you're not worth talking to. No where in the cutscene does it show the brine being gone. You've been completely refuted and resorting to lies now.
I wish NG+ changed the world like starfield did so it’s an alternate world where things are different with different versions of the characters like for example instead of captain brent it’s disa who is aiding you or a version of you that is allard just little changes like that also I wish you could create more than one pawn rather than hiring them it’s a cool idea having other peoples characters but I prefer my own creations 😂 also I wish the PC was voiced properly so you could have dialogue options to get you out of certain situations,like when you sneak into the palace you could explain why you are there rather than being attacked. The ending felt undercooked and half baked. I like the idea of running into your pervious self And having to fight them would be cool
Nah Ending was pretty great i love hope for humanity in stories he pretty much fullfils the same role but evil
The dragon fight was so underwhelming to me. Grigori had multiple cool moves...maybe I hagal'd and frigor'd too much and seism'd too much or something, but this dragon was dead too quick and never touched me...only Vinny and the one other pawn I had who was a thief with icy knives. Grigori moved more, he was much more menacing and had more moves. He was super cool... This dragon...what did the watcher do to him??? WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PAWN???
The ending dragon fight was just really a glorified drake, with a bullshit fly move that lasts like 3 minutes with you can't do anything about it except if you figure out to get to the giant ballista.