SweetieGames

The most recent Nintendo Direct confirmed the suspicion of many Dragon Quest fans; Dragon Quest VII is getting a HD remake as soon as February next year, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, PC and Xbox. Although I’m disappointed that Dragon Quest IX still isn’t seeing any love from Square Enix, I am still intrigued by this reimagining of a classic game and I’m hoping I can play it when it launches!

Something that stuck out to me when seeing promotional artwork for this game was… well, the artwork. It seems to have taken a bit of a turn from the classic DQ style, even diverting from Dragon Quest XI a fair amount. It made me wonder if this is the art style we will see from Dragon Quest in the future, as it seems to bear more resemblance to the 2019 Dragon Quest film, Your Story. I don’t dislike this art style, in fact I think the film looked great, but there were some moments when researching for this article that made me question if this art style is best for Dragon Quest going forward.

I will preface this by saying the scenery and landscapes in this game look gorgeous in the trailer. This is exactly what I would want to see in a remake; Dragon Quest VII was once remade on the 3DS, which didn’t give it a chance to be seen in stunning HD like this. Close ups of the characters have exquisite detail while still maintaining a lot of Dragon Quest charm; while creating this game, the artists made dolls in real life in order to give the game a hand-crafted style. However, there were other moments where the characters almost look as though they’re in the uncanny valley, or where they look completely blank and expressionless. I understand that DQ has silent protagonists, but sometimes VII‘s hero in certain artwork and screenshots looks like there’s nothing going on behind his eyes. Quite strange as DQVII‘s hero appears to be particularly younger than other Dragon Quest heroes we’ve seen.

The majority of characters look fine in this new art style, but some of the more cartoon-y faces like Kiefer and Ruff look slightly uncanny in this new look. This may just be the ultra HD renders I’ve seen for still photos and they may look better in motion during the game, but these characters in particular made me feel as though some characters are 2D for a reason. They just don’t translate well into a super smooth 3D model without looking ever so slightly creepy or strange.

I will be reserving judgement for when the full game is released, as I have been meaning to give VII a go for a while now. I’ll be going in completely blind, as I have no idea what happens in the plot of this game. I’ve got a little bit of time to get the Zenithian trilogy finished!