If you're like me, and you hadn't played the original Dragon's Dogma, when you saw the three characters running around the map in the trailers for the sequel, you likely thought "wow, I can bring my friends with me on my adventures!"
Sorry, but that's not going to happen. Speaking with Automaton, game director Hideaki Itsuno revealed that we're not going to be seeing multiplayer elements in the sequel. "We have not been considering any form of multiplayer for Dragon's Dogma 2," he said simply. "I think online games have their good sides; just as offline games have their own. But the concept of the original game was to incorporate fun gameplay elements not found in conventional offline games while removing all the 'hassles' of online games. This is one of the basic original ideas of the first game that I don't plan on straying from."
It seems that instead of bonding with your friends, you'll instead be bonding with NPCs in Dragon's Dogma 2. In the first game, Affinity was a big aspect, and its role has been made even bigger this time around.
"It's almost the entire reason why we made the game open world. There will be many events that occur/don't occur depending on Affinity, and relationships between NPCs will also be important," Itsuno said. "For example, if you raise your Affinity with the parent of a child, your Affinity with the child will increase as well. On the other hand, NPCs can also fall out with each other."