There Is A Penalty For Pointless Violence In Dragon’s Dogma

Dragon’s Dogma, Capcom’s open world action game, puts players up against mythical beasts like the Cyclops and a laser shooting golem. Slaying monsters is OK. Slaughtering innocent people in Dragon’s Dogma is not. According to the ESRB, you can brutally kill helpless villagers, but if you do your character’s charisma level will go down. Capcom has not revealed how the charisma stat affects your character in the game.

This is an action-adventure game in which players assume the role of Glynn, a militiman on a quest to kill an evil dragon. As players traverse through fantastical “open-world” environments, they complete missions and quests that impact the storyline and eventual fate of their character. Players use swords, bows and arrows, and magic attacks (e.g., fireballs, ice blasts) to kill various enemies (e.g., zombies, goblins, human soldiers) in melee-style combat. The frequent combat is accompanied by slashing sounds, cries of pain, and large splashes of blood; attacks sometimes result in dismembered limbs and/or scattered body parts. Some sequences allow players to injure/kill non-adversaries, including unarmed villagers; such acts are penalized by lower “charisma” levels for players’ character. Other acts of violence appear in cutscenes: a man strangling a woman in her bedchamber; a character impaling himself. The dialogue sometimes includes innuendo and suggestive material (e.g., “I would never violate His Grace’s privacy while he violates milady’s privates” and “. . . perhaps you seek . . . a turn in the sheets with His Grace’s own wife!”). During the course of the game, players may also encounter female harpies whose breasts are fully exposed at certain camera angles.

Dragon’s Dogma and its half-naked harpies comes out for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on March 27.