Today’s Dragon Quest Day livestream was almost entirely dedicated to sharing updates on Dragon Quest XII, though it’s likely not the news fans were hoping for. We now know what’s been taking the long-awaited RPG so long to make another appearance: its development has been restarted from scratch.
Dragon Quest creator and game designer Yuji Horii and Dragon Quest XII executive producer Yosuke Saito hosted the presentation, and cut straight to the chase; the game formerly known as Dragon Quest XII: The Flames of Fate, first announced in 2021, is no more, as the team has taken the game back to the drawing board.
“We’re hard at work on XII but 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,” says Saito. “Work on the original version, Dragon Quest XII: The Flames of Fate, hit a lot of hurdles along the way. But 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.”
Saito continues by saying that, despite being a major change, the team believes it was the right decision to ensure Dragon Quest XII lives up to fan expectations. The game has been renamed to Dragon Quest XII: Beyond Dreams, and a short teaser trailer shows off scenic environments, such as a castle and Dragon Quest XII’s protagonist sprinting and jumping across what appears to be a large open world. He runs from grassy fields to a beach to a desert, with monsters roaming in the background. We also spot other characters such as a woman fixing a ship, a floating robot, and an armor-clad humanoid lizard.
Yuji Horii reveals that the game’s protagonist experiences strange visions in their sleep. “What lies beyond dreams? Surely not a world of darkness but a bright and exciting future,” says Horii. The creator then says that Dragon Quest XII has gone in a “different direction” than what was originally announced, but declines to share more story details. Horii does, however, confirm that Dragon Quest XII will still feature Akira Toriyama’s character art and Koichi Sugiyama’s music.
Dragon Quest XII: Beyond Dream did not get a release window or confirmed platforms, but Horii says, “The game’s coming along really well, so I hope you look forward to the next announcement.” While it’s exciting to see footage of this new version of Dragon Quest XII, it’s hard not to feel mixed emotions given that its launch still seems very far away. When the game was first announced, it was billed as having a darker, more adult-oriented tone that heavily emphasized player choice. While Beyond Dreams looks a lot cheerier than that initial premise, it will be interesting to see if the choice-driven design and any other ideas from the original version of XII will be re-incorporated in some way.
