Yeah, Dragon Quest X is an online game with a paid subscription, but Director Jin Fujisawa didn’t want that to be a barrier for long time fans of the series. Speaking in an Iwata Asks interview, Fujisawa said he didn’t want to tell fans because Dragon Quest X was online they couldn’t play. A slogan Fujisawa kept in mind is it’s the same, everyone can play.
Yuji Horii thought online billing would be a problem for kids who wanted to play Dragon Quest X, but didn’t have any money. He started thinking of way online play could be free. While daily free play periods are called "Kids Time," Dragon Quest X does not verify your age, Producer Yosuke Saito points out. Horii said people might lie about their age to play the game and he didn’t want players to do that.
When you start Dragon Quest X you will play with a brother and sister – offline only. Fujisawa wanted to introduce players to the world of Dragon Quest X and the real time battle system before stepping online, which you have to do to continue the story. What’s interesting is Dragon Quest X splits processing between a remote server and the Wii. For the offline part, the Wii will act as both the client and server. This caused some hiccups in development since there were slowdown issues the team needed to tackle.
Fujisawa reflected on some of the features in the Dragon Quest series that might have led to the online game evolution. In Dragon Quest IV, you had AI characters acting as if they were people and in Dragon Quest VII you could talk to party members which gave players the sense of communicating while sharing an adventure.
Published: Jul 30, 2012 03:00 am