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Preview: Dragon Quest X

There was another Wii U title that was briefly on show at TGS – Square Enix had a stage demonstration of Dragon Quest X on the Wii U. Producer Yosuke Saito jumped up on stage to discuss what had been added/changed and give a quick little demo of the game.

For those of you that don’t know, the Dragon Quest series is one of the most popular in Japan – alongside Monster Hunter and Final Fantasy, and potentially eclipsing even those extremely popular series’. Dragon Quest X, released earlier this year on Wii, was the first step into MMO territory for the series, with Wii users paying a monthly subscription to play.

While there weren’t a great deal of exciting announcements, it was clear that the Wii U version on screen was upscaled and in HD, as it looked pretty damn sharp. (Note: images in this post are from the Wii version – there are no screenshots of the Wii U version.) Apparently, the game is identical to the Wii version, so nothing new has been added, but it looked pretty clear to me that certain assets had been cleaned up. For example, it was mentioned that the shadows had been improved (with dynamic shadows for the Wii U version as opposed to circles in the Wii version), but the animation of the clouds as they passed over the environment also looked quite impressive from where I was standing…

Another boon for the game was the capability to shift gameplay from the TV screen to the GamePad – more titles need to employ this functionality in my opinion, as there are a lot of shared TVs out there, and a lot of families that might benefit from being able to multitask in this manner – mine being one of them.

In all, it looks like Dragon Quest X will be s straightforward port to Wii U, but for Japanese fans, that might be all they need. It’s unclear if players will be able to port their existing Wii game, should they wish to, but it was mentioned that Wii and Wii U players will be on the same server.

At present, there are no announcements for a western release, and in fact, Square Enix are yet to announce the release date for Japan.


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About the author

Greg Newbegin

Proud father of two, and a lover of games. Retro collector, writer, and fan of all things Japanese. I love all gaming machines equally.