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tal onzy

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Shaun Prescott pcgamer http://store.steampowered.com/app/367500/


I for one am pretty bloody excited that Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is coming to PC. I've already played it through on console, but as the trailer above demonstrates it's going to look and run a lot better on PC. Look at that silky framerate. It brought a tear to my eye.

If you've already played the game nothing in the video will surprise you – it's a simple runthough of the game's unique systems, including pawns. These are fully-customisable companions that can be shared online. If other users take one of your pawns on an adventure, you reap some benefits.

Not shown in the trailer is that you can pick people up and throw them off cliffs. That's what initially sold the game for me. Oh, and the menu theme for Dragon's Dogma is one of the best ever committed to tape Assuming the port is good, this will definitely be one to play. It's due in January 2016.
 

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Dragon's Dogma system requirements released; will have uncapped framerate

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is set to release on January 15, Capcom announced today. Not only that, but the system requirements are out too, and it's good news for anyone with a superb rig. The framerate is unlocked, and if you want to play the game in 4K, you can. Controllers are supported, in addition to mouse and keyboard.

Minimum Specs:

OS: Windows Vista or newer
Processor: Intel Core i5-660 CPU or equivalent
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: Radeon HD 5870 or equivalent
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Storage: 22 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX-compatible sound card or onboard audio chip

Recommended Specs:

OS: Windows Vista or newer
Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K or equivalent
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 or equivalent
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Storage: 22 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX-compatible sound card or onboard audio chip
 

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Dragon's Dogma devs on bringing the 2012 RPG to PC
Samuel Roberts pc gamer

The intriguing, innovative RPG Dragon's Dogma will finally arrive on PC on January 15, but what does the game's sudden re-emergence mean for the series? And how will the PC edition differ from the original console release? We put a few questions to DDDA producer, Minae Matsukawa, director Kento Kinoshita, and PC producer Jon Airhart.

PC Gamer: Between this release and Dragon’s Dogma Online, it seems like the series still means a lot to Capcom—where is Capcom at in terms of considering a sequel?

Matsukawa: Thanks for your interest in the series! The Dragon’s Dogma development team members often talk about the possibility of a sequel. We’d love to hear the opinions and feedback from players of the upcoming PC port of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, as that will increase the chances that we can look into the possibility of continuing the series.

PC Gamer: Is the team that made the original game still together?

Matsukawa: Of course! The team from DDDA worked together in 2015 on Dragon’s Dogma Online, which was released for the Japanese market.

PC Gamer: For those who don’t know, what was the origin of Dragon’s Dogma’s development? What was the idea that drove development to begin with?

Kinoshita: It all started with an idea by the Hideaki Itsuno, the director of the original Dragon’s Dogma. He wanted to create a game with an online system that you could use asynchronously, like an internet forum rather than a live chat. His initial ‘pawn’ system concept was the starting point, and from there the open world of Dragon’s Dogma was fleshed out, and its fluid and flexible combat system.

PC Gamer: I remember people wondering if the pawn system would successfully replace a co-op partner at the time of release, but people really embraced it—why do you think that idea was so popular?

Kinoshita: Probably a big reason for the popularity of pawns is that we really wanted to design them so that they were always making the player’s game experience more enjoyable, whether they were lost in a dungeon, battling enemies or exploring towns. Giving pawns different voices and personalities was the way we made them feel special and unique.

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PC Gamer: The creature design always felt a little different to other fantasy games to me - what were the team’s influences in creating creatures for the game?


Kinoshita: We based the creature designs on the real-world legends and fairytales that most people are familiar with. Rather than taking that basis and making the creatures even more fantastical in order to make them impressive, we felt there was more value in giving players the feeling that these were real, living, breathing beasts. So, one of our key concepts was to give players around the world the chance to feel like they had genuinely encountered and taken on these mythical beasts that we all have in our collective consciousness. Our art directors and designers tried not to stray too far from the imagery found in ancient legends and iconography. In this direction, we were influenced by other works which take the same approach, such as Kento Miura’s Berserk, and Mike Mignola’s Hellboy.

PC Gamer: What was behind the decision to bring Dragon’s Dogma to PC now? Has something changed with the PC market since release that makes this the right time?

Jon: A PC version of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is something we had been planning for some time. We know it’s been a long wait, but we’ve brought the right team together to create the version of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen that our PC fans deserve.

PC Gamer: It’s interesting, because recent Capcom remasters like Resident Evil made it to consoles, too—but this is PC-only. Why is PC such a good match for Dragon’s Dogma?

Jon: This is a game that already looks great on Xbox 360 and PS3, but increased draw distances and uncompressed textures on a powerful PC makes it look absolutely beautiful. It’s also a game that includes many elements inspired by classic RPGs released on the PC. Those reasons plus the requests from our fans make this a perfect fit for a PC release.



 

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game can be pre loaded now on steam the pre load is 13.9 gigs
 

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dragons-dogma-dark-arisen-review by Leif Johnson pcgamer score 81/100
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

The PC port doesn't introduce much new and certain elements could be stronger, but Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen still shines as a uniquely enjoyable RPG.


Dozens of feet up, my gauntlets digging into the mane of a livid griffin, I knew I'd made a huge mistake. The beast was grounded when I'd hopped atop his back in the hopes of introducing his eyes to my sword, but he'd shot up so high afterwards that I could have seen the main character's hometown if I'd dared to look (and if it popped in in time). One slip, one splat, and it'd be game over. Below, though, a mage's spell set my group's weapons aflame. My ranger companion let loose a mighty arrow, alighting the monster's wings and bringing us slamming back to earth.
I already knew how all this would end: I spent many sleepless nights with Dragon's Dogma's appealing mix of Western RPG stylings and Monster Hunter-inspired combat years ago when it first dropped for the Xbox 360. Graphics have advanced, scores of better and lesser RPGs have come and gone, but there on the stones of the Bluemoon Tower, I still relished the return of the same rush of victory that overcame me in 2012.
Now, at last, we have the PC port, which takes its guise from 2013's Dark Arisen, a retooled version of the initial release with a ridiculously tough endgame zone and numerous tweaks to various annoyances. It's a port, all right, which is to say that it's here and it does little to distinguish itself from its console forebears aside from nifty features like better textures and uncapped framerates. (A single crash over 50 hours aside, it ran beautifully.) Still, that's cause for celebration. Scarred with imperfections but entertaining to the end, Dragon's Dogma is easily one of the most memorable RPGs of the last decade.

It achieves this distinction almost in spite of its story. It's not bad, and it's capped on one end by a dragon who eats your heart as though he's sucking Nutella off his claw and on the other by a deliciously bizarre conclusion preceding the New Game that still makes for good discussions when less than sober. In between, though, it relies excessively to backtracking and indulges too many humdrum sidequests. It clings to predictable Western RPG conventions: in one corner there's the dastardly secret society, in another, the artifact-stuffed ruin.
It works, though, because it's all told with enthusiastic gravitas. For all the chimeras and dragons, Gransys is a land that tries to stick to the real, favoring utilitarian armor designs over flamboyance, and the interactions impart a dutiful ‘let's do this’ sense I admire. This extends even to the open-world landscape, which boasts coastal cliffs, mountains, and towering Norman architecture but never quite inspires the kind of visual rapture you get from, say, The Witcher 3. (Worse, it's prone to pop-ins and muddy details at long distances.) Saving the world is a job, dang it, and Dragon's Dogma makes you feel it.
Jobs can be fun, of course, and Dragon's Dogma delivers a challenging brand of action that's rousing regardless of whether it's played on the keyboard or with a gamepad. Greatswords crash with hefty weight, arrows fly with satisfying thwapps, and spells impale ogres with icy tendrils. So many RPGs could learn from how fun this is. The appeal isn't just the fighting (which could benefit from a lock-on); it's also the way it lets you scramble up the arms of cyclopes and slice off the tails of lizard men. Sick of one of the main three classes of Fighter, Strider, and Mage? You can easily switch out to another and level its skills or those of six hybrids. Some fare better than others; Warriors, for instance, perform pitifully in Dragon's Dogma's many ranged encounters.

Enter the pawns. Nothing sets Dragon's Dogma apart quite like them. They're mysterious beings with classes and skills that fill the blanks of what you need, thus allowing my Warrior to bring along, say, a bow-toting Ranger, a healing Mage, and a powerful Sorcerer—for a price. You get a main pawn that other players can summon, and you can summon up to two of theirs as well. There's a satisfying Pokémon-like appeal to trying them out (which you'll need to since they don't level with you), and having to let go of a well-geared, well-skilled pawn sometimes stings like the death of a fleshed-out character in another RPG. Alas, they're prone to spouting obvious, ceaseless chatter such as "These stairs serve as a useful route in their own right," but happily Dark Arisen lets you switch that off.
If that's what it takes, do it. It's rough in parts, and numerous other RPGs tell a better story or inspire greater awe. But Dragon's Dogma still feels enjoyably unique four years on and that's something few of its genre cousins can claim. And the best thing I can say? Even now, I'm already itching to get back in.
81/100
 

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Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen's PC draw distances are "three times the console distance," says Capcom producer Phil Iwaniuk pcgamesN

Capcom's strange and wonderful RPG Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is out on PC this very day - and from over in last-gen console land, the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions are exchanging baleful glances and feeling pretty bad about themselves. PC producer Jon Airhart spoke to PCGamesN about the process of migrating the game to a new and let's face it, better, platform, and revealed that the game's 'high' draw distance setting extends the horizons three times further than in the original console release

We have low, medium and high distance settings in the game," Airhart tells us. "Low is the same draw distance as the console versions, medium is roughly twice the console distance, and high is roughly three times the console distance.
"We were able to push the distance out quite a bit! We also have made strides to increase the number of objects visible such as interactables, enemy NPCs and so on."
Airhart isn't able to give us a similarly specific figure about the LOD in a given scene though, because the nature of the game means there's a huge amount of environmental variation in both interior and exterior spaces: "It’s hard to be specific about exactly how much the number of objects increased because that’s highly dependent on the level design." The Bitterblack Isle's a pretty big place, after all.
It's clear the game's had a lot of work done to it, under the proverbial bonnet, since 2012. The intention on Capcom's part clearly isn't just to send a role-playing curio out into the wild, cold and shivering, but to bridge the gap between the graphical standards of then and now.
"The biggest challenges included adding modern graphics effects such as hardware-optimized HDR," says Airhart, "ambient occlusion, and other effects into a game whose assets weren’t built with those bells and whistles in mind. Balancing the final look of these new effects took quite a bit of tuning. Also, we had to make sure that the online portion of the game was fully ported over to Steam."
A particular difficulty in porting the online component is the Pawn system, whereby players create their own companions who learn from quests and get smarter as they're used more, then share those companions with the rest of the community. If you can find a shrine, you can download someone else's Pawn into your game and have them offer handy tips on how to beat a particular boss.
Airhart tells us that while the online code has been reworked for Steamworks, "the actual server code itself is identical to what’s on console, and that was all written in Japan" by the game's original developers. At one point the PC team in the US thought they'd unearthed a glitch when one of their testers discovered that their Pawn kept bringing back rocks rather than items. Not so: "Our Japan team confirmed that his in-development Pawn was being recognized as a hacked Pawn, so the items all turned to rocks, which is exactly how the server is intended to function." The moral: say no to hacked Pawn.
The texture assets Airhart and his team used to build the PC version qare the original, uncompressed texture assets created for the 2012 release. Is it common practice then to keep hold of those assets for years after a game hits the shelves on its originally intended platforms?
"It is indeed!" says Airhart. "These source assets become part of the 'game works archive', which is like of like the 'gold master' recording of a song. For just about any modern game, assets are created at a higher quality than what appears in the final game.
"Then, as the memory and performance budgets become clear and the game is optimized, the assets are run through a pipeline that is designed to retain as much of the source quality as possible while ensuring great performance on the target platform. When we have an opportunity to release a game on a new platform, having these original assets makes it possible to create something even better than the initial release."
That's an interesting insight, isn't it? Because it means that, in theory, all the modern games you'd quite like to play prettier, remastered PC versions of (or even play at all *coughRedDeadRedemptioncough*) have their original assets sitting around collecting digital dust in a game works archive somewhere. And that if the publisher who owned the rights to those games was so inclined, they could revive those titles. Just a thought.
 
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