Square Enix has announced that Dragon Quest 12: The Flames of Fate is now Dragon Quest 12: Beyond Dreams after the game's development was restarted.
In the Dragon Quest 40th anniversary video, hosted by series creator Yuji Horii and series producer Yosuke Saito, we finally got another look at Dragon Quest 12, five years after it was first announced at the series' 35th anniversary celebration.
Saito explains, "Due to a reshuffle of the team and a restart of development, it's going to be a bit longer till it's in your hands." He adds that "work on the original version, Dragon Quest 12 – The Flames of Fate, hit a lot of hurdles along the way," before saying, "As we kept talking with Mr. Horii and pinned down what a mainline Dragon Quest game should look like, we decided to move things around and start over from scratch."
This was followed by a brief trailer showing a bit of the game in action, with a hero running around a wide open area filled to the brim with iconic monsters like Slimes, Hammerhoods, and Healslimes, alongside some cutscenes showing what are presumably the party members who will be joining them on this quest.
"It's the story of a young hero who is beset by strange visions in their sleep," Horii explains, adding that what lies beyond those dreams is "surely not a world of darkness, but a bright and exciting future." Crucially, Horii adds, "the game has gone in a different direction to the one we originally announced." Dragon Quest 12 was originally set to take the series into darker territory with a bit of a tonal shift, so presumably this refresh puts it more in line with the Dragon Quest people know and love.
Finally, Horii added that Dragon Quest 12, "like every game before it, will come with Akira Toriyama's characters and Koichi Sugiyama's music." Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama passed away in 2024, with series composer Sugiyama passing in 2021, four months after Dragon Quest 12 was announced.
Ahead of Dragon Quest 12 why not check our list of the 10 Best Dragon Quest games of all time, ranked
