Keeping my Pawns alive in Dragon's Dogma 2 is not always easy. Smart as the AI can be, a busy battlefield leaves plenty of room for the odd misstep. If my Level 26 archer isn't getting repeatedly body-slammed by an enraged ogre, you can bet that a gore harpy is dropping my newly-recruited mage into the brine. I don't have total control over where my party members choose to stand, so naturally, my Arisen and her merry band of devotees have run into many sticky situations that often end with me staring at three corpses, sighing, and quitting to the main menu to save them all the embarrassment of dying.
That being said, I'm enjoying these bots far more than I did many scripted, controllable companions in some of the best RPGs. Pawns are exactly what the name suggests: a vast pool of passionate, somewhat expendable AI companions that can be recruited and dismissed from your DD2 adventuring party at will. I thought I would miss having scripted NPCs accompanying my main character, each with a backstory and stakes in the game's proceedings, but Pawns have proven the best possible sidekicks in the grand scheme of things. They add to your story instead of insisting upon their own, but that doesn't mean you can't grow fond of them. It's making me wonder if Dragon's Dogma 2's more stripped-down approach to storytelling might be the best way forward in party-based RPGs, and it boils down to one thing: player choice coming first.
