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Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest have long stood as the twin pillars of the JRPG genre, two franchises that shaped the childhoods and teenage years of generations of players, but which now face a common and uncomfortable challenge: how do you stay relevant and attract new audiences in a market more saturated than ever? Square Enix appears to have made up its mind on the answer. The FF7 Remake trilogy and, more pointedly, FF16 have pushed Final Fantasy decisively toward action-driven gameplay, and early signals suggest Dragon Quest 12 is being steered in a similar direction, a significant departure from the turn-based foundations the series has always called home.
The franchise has also been busy revisiting its back catalog with a string of faithful remakes, but the future direction of the mainline numbered entries remains genuinely uncertain. And the latest “innovation” is unlikely to reassure a fanbase.
Dragon Quest X is getting generative AI
Four remakes released in relatively quick succession have done a solid job of returning Dragon Quest to the cultural conversation, and likely introduced the franchise to a fresh wave of players along the way. One entry, however, has stubbornly remained beyond the reach of Western audiences: Dragon Quest X. The MMORPG, which launched back in 2012 across consoles and PC, has never left Japan, and Square Enix has just revealed a sweeping new addition intended to “modernize the experience”: the full integration of Gemini, Google’s generative AI platform.
It will manifest as an in-game companion called Oshaberi Slimey, roughly translating to Chatty Slime. Players will be able to hold free-flowing conversations with this AI-powered sidekick, which will produce entirely AI-generated, AI-voiced dialogue, read and respond to what’s happening on screen in real time, chime in on new outfits, flag rare item drops, and function as a fully fledged in-game assistant, dispensing advice, guidance, and directions on the fly.
Square Enix frames the initiative primarily as an accessibility measure, designed to ease new players into Dragon Quest X’s dense systems and prevent the sense of being instantly overwhelmed. “New players will no longer feel alone, the game will become their personal companion,” said Takashi Anzai, the game’s development director. In the West, the announcement has landed like a lead balloon. Resistance to AI integration in games remains fierce, and many players are openly dismayed by the path Square Enix appears to be walking, a frustration only sharpened by Google publicly hailing the move as a milestone on the road to mainstreaming AI in video games.
The community’s reaction is anything but measured
“Have they not figured out we don’t want this? Instead of giving us a translation we’ve been waiting over 10 years for?”, one longtime Dragon Quest fan vented on social media. “How long before players just break it and it starts throwing slurs?” added another. The contrast with Japan, where generative AI tends to be received with considerably less alarm, is striking.
And it raises a question that will linger long after the initial controversy settles: is this a one-off experiment, or a preview of where Square Enix intends to take the Dragon Quest franchise more broadly? Given the studio’s track record of doubling down on whatever technology happens to be in vogue, NFTs and blockchain being the most glaring recent example, it would be unwise to assume this stops here.
Source: sankei
