Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen Developers Say They Aren’t Nerfing Dragonsplague—Just Making It More Clear

I love Dragon’s Dogma 2, but I’ve been cranky lately. Don’t get me wrong. I’m stoked for the upcoming Dark Arisen DLC. Not only was the announcement unexpected to begin with, but what we’ve seen so far looks genuinely very cool. No, what’s got me cranky is what the update is doing to Dragonsplague, one of the scariest and coolest mechanics in the base game. It is my opinion that the developers are nerfing it. The developers themselves say otherwise.

This comes from an email interview I conducted with DLC director Kento Kinoshita and producer Naoto Oyama. In it, I swung right out of the gate on my current bugaboo, Dragonsplague. For context, Dragonsplague is a disease that your Dragon’s Dogma 2 pawns, or NPC followers, can contract. It starts off benign, giving them significant buffs in combat and making them bolder and less obedient. But if allowed to progress, it will eventually transform the infected into a dragon who will nuke an entire city. When Dragon’s Dogma 2 first came out, the city-burning came as a huge surprise to anyone it happened to, and as word spread, players learned they had to be on their toes to detect a possible infection and kick their plagued pawn off a cliff before it could spread. The result was a scary yet cool atmosphere of anxiety around picking up pawns online, or any dragon encounter: would my pawns get infected? Could they be already?

Dragon’s Dogma 2 has since been updated to make it a little easier to tell who has the plague, including the addition of glowing red eyes indicating the disease before you recruit them online, a little tutorial warning explaining what Dragonsplague does, slower disease progression, and an added Casual Mode to the game that stops the village-destroying entirely. I already felt most of that was excessive (Casual Mode is great, the rest…eh!), but people were complaining, so sure, fine. But with the upcoming DLC and several updates in the lead-up to its release, more Dragonsplague mitigations are coming. There will be more information in the menus about buffs to pawns with the plague, and a potion to cure Dragonsplague entirely is being added.

To me, that feels like a nerf on top of a nerf. Kinoshita sees it differently.

“We have not reduced the negative impact of Dragonsplague itself, and the core gameplay of having players weigh the risks and rewards to make their own choices—which was the original intention of the mechanic—remains unchanged,” he said. “Since the game’s launch, there has always been a benefit where Pawns are strengthened by Dragonsplague, but we faced the issue of not having communicated this adequately to our players. With the title update, the stat boosts from Dragonsplague will now be reflected in the actual numbers, and it has become easier to tell if a Pawn is afflicted based on their behavior.

“Through these adjustments, players can now enjoy the risk-reward dynamic in a much clearer way—such as deciding whether to leave an afflicted Pawn as is to prioritize a combat advantage, or best timing to use the Dragonsbaulk Draught to heal them.”

With this explanation, I can kinda see where he’s coming from. Instead of being wary of a mystery disease with horrible impacts, this encourages players to gamble with Dragonsplague, keeping it on the pawn as long as possible before curing it, but risking destruction if they take too long. That makes some sense to me, but I’m still wistful for the good ol’ days of abject terror. Alas.

I spoke with Kinoshita and Oyama on a number of topics related to the Dragon’s Dogma 2 DLC. For instance, they told me that while it should be relatively easy for most players to access the DLC by speaking to Brant in Vernworth, if you’re in the game’s true ending world state (if you know you know), you won’t be able to accept the DLC quests. You’ll have to finish the game, and then start a New Game+ playthrough.

“That being said, in future title updates, we plan to introduce a feature that allows you to start a New Game Plus carrying over your progression even from the middle of a playthrough, and also a feature that lets you skip the opening part of the story,” Kinoshita said. “By utilizing these new options, you will be able to access the new content very smoothly.”

From Oyama, I got confirmation that there are more new monsters in the DLC than have been shown in the reveal trailer, and while some new monsters are reskinned existing monsters, others are totally new. He didn’t offer any further detail on which ones or how many or anything else. I also asked the pair if the player community had done anything that surprised them as devs, and Oyama responded: “Even with the existing character customization parts, we’ve seen examples on social media where players cleverly used tattoos to make them look naturally like bangs. We never anticipated this kind of usage, and we were truly amazed by that level of creativity.

“With the Dark Arisen Expansion, new variations for hairstyles and tattoos will also be added, so we are really looking forward to seeing what kinds of characters players will continue to create with this freedom and share on social media in the future.”

So yes, the devs are watching your creative tattoo usage!

The Dragon’s Dogma series has an interesting pedigree. Both Dragon’s Dogma and Dragon’s Dogma 2 were directed by Hideaki Itsuno, a storied Capcom leader also known for his work on Devil May Cry. Kinoshita, however, directed the first Dragon’s Dogma‘s DLC, also called Dark Arisen, as he is directing this one. Itsuno, meanwhile, departed Capcom in 2024 after 30 years at the studio, and is now leading Tencent’s LightSpeed Studios. I wanted to hear from Kinoshita and Oyama about why the team split the direction of both games in such a way to begin with, and also to hear if anything had changed since Itsuno left.

Kinoshita responded to my first question, though I’m not really sure he answered it:

“Leveraging my experience working as a planner on the base game, I approach this project with the perspective of what an expansion should be, and how we can provide content that players will truly enjoy.

“In the original Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, our approach was to expand on the first Dragon’s Dogma by offering a more combat-focused, deeply replayable experience. Similarly, after the release of Dragon’s Dogma 2, we received a lot of feedback from players saying, ‘We want to enjoy more adventures and combat in this world.’ Because of that, we are developing this expansion DLC with enjoyable combat content as one of its core pillars.

“That being said, simply creating another Bitterblack Isle wouldn’t offer anything new. Therefore, while using a loot-based combat gameplay loop as our base, we developed the game so that players can experience this in the entirely new field of Norgan, rather than through dungeon crawling.

“I believe the most important thing is to preserve the core of that distinct Dragon’s Dogma identity, while striving to create a fun game that answers the expectations of our players.”

Oyama, similarly, was a bit vague, though his response suggested that not much has changed without Itsuno there.

“Led by director Kento Kinoshita, who also directed the original Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, the content of the title updates and new elements took shape naturally as we pursued our vision of what an expansion title for Dragon’s Dogma 2 should be.

“While our approach may differ from the base game in the sense that we are crafting this expansion to deliver the content our players desire based on their post-launch feedback, we have many team members—including the Director—who have been involved with the Dragon’s Dogma series for a long time. Because of this, we believe we’ve been able to move forward with development while keeping the core of Dragon’s Dogma intact.”

Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s Dark Arisen expansion is planned to launch on October 9, alongside a new Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game that will come bundled with the DLC. A title update is on the way later this month that will fix some bugs, improve performance, and *sigh* make adjustments to Dragonsplague.