Sunlight pours in from the canopy. Blades of grass crunch under the weight of each step. A light breeze caresses your skin and breathes life into the surrounding trees. It’s not the wind. Turn around. Go ahead. I can wait. It won’t. A creature with a toothy maw, sharp scales, and lungs of fire flaps its wings at you. Before you have enough time to think about being the brave Arisen you're destined to be, you remember that your level is still in the single digits and that the monster consuming two-thirds of your screen has six health bars.
That’s Dragon’s Dogma 2. My words won’t do justice to describing the levels of immersion that Capcom delivered in this expansive open-world fantasy RPG. Modern open-world games feel like an endless checklist of tasks to complete — they scratch that completionist itch, but they don't capture the intrigue of the world. Exploration without expectation is adventure. Getting sideswiped by an ogre popping through a clearing in the forest or diving into a pitch-dark cave to discover god’s least favorite creation — each step of your journey as the Arisen is as unpredictable as the last.
