Drakengard, known in Japan as is a 2003 action role-playing video game developed by Cavia and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 2. The game is the first installment of the Drakengard series and features a mixture of ground-based hack-and-slash, aerial combat, and role-playing elements which have become a staple of the series. The story is set during a religious war between two factions—the Union and the Empire—with the war tipping in favor of the Empire. The player controls Caim, a deposed prince of the Union, in his quest for vengeance against the Empire. Wounded in battle while protecting his sister Furiae, he is forced to make a pact with a red dragon named Angelus as they journey together on a quest to prevent the Empire from destroying magical seals that keep the world in balance.
Takamasa Shiba and Takuya Iwasaki conceived the game as a hybrid between the popular Dynasty Warriors series and Namco's aerial combat game Ace Combat. It was Shiba's first project as a producer. The dark story was created by director Yoko Taro and Sawako Natori, who wrote the majority of the script. The music was written by Nobuyoshi Sano and Takayuki Aihara. A Europe-exclusive mobile adaptation was developed by Macrospace and published by Square Enix for Vodafone devices in August 2004.
Drakengard sold well in Japan and received mixed to positive reviews in the west: reviewers praised the game's story and music, but were mixed about the graphics and criticized the gameplay for being repetitive.
Gameplay
Drakengard is an action role-playing video game featuring three types of gameplay: ground missions, aerial missions, and Free Expedition Mode. In some levels, players can switch between ground-based and aerial combat.
Synopsis
Setting and characters
Drakengard takes place in a medieval dark fantasy world called Midgard. The world is protected from falling into chaos by the Seals, objects magically linked to a woman chosen as the Goddess of the Seal. If the seals and the Goddess were destroyed, malevolent beings known as the Watchers would enter the world to destroy humanity. A key element of the world is the ability for a human and a beast to form a pact, a ritual that ties their souls together and grants great power. Their lives become bound by the pact, and the human pays a price for it in the form of some attribute (e.g. their voice, their eyesight or their ability to age). During the events of Drakengard, the Union, which protects the Seals, is in the midst of a religious war with the Empire, a power led by a cult who believe that destroying the seals will bring them good fortune.
The main characters are , a deposed prince of the Union, and , a red dragon. Joining Caim and Angelus in optional sections of the story are , a hermit who loses his brothers in an attack by the Empire; , an elf woman driven mad by the murder of her family; and , a young boy from the Empire whose village was destroyed by the cult's devotees. Other prominent characters are , Caim's sister and the current Goddess of the Seal; , Furiae's former fiancé; , a priest in charge of protecting the Goddess Seal; and , Seere's sister, leader of the enemy cult and the game's main antagonist.
Plot
Drakengard opens with Caim in the midst of a battle to protect his sister from the Empire. During the battle, Caim is mortally injured, but continues to fight his way into Furiae's castle, where he finds Angelus severely wounded from torture. Despite their mutual mistrust, Caim and Angelus agree to make a pact and save each other. With the attack repelled, Caim is joined by Furiae and Inuart to find safety, encountering Verdelet on their travels. Inuart is captured, tortured and brainwashed by Manah, eventually kidnapping Furiae in the belief that he can save her from her fate as the Goddess and earn her love. Verdelet and Caim travel to each of the three Seals, but each time arrive too late to stop them being destroyed. Eventually, the Union and the Empire engage in battle, and the Union emerge victorious. After the battle, however, the Union's surviving troops are decimated by an unknown force from above, and the Empire's troops return to life. Caim and Angelus travel to an Imperial fortress that has appeared in the sky, where they find that Furiae has killed herself, breaking the final seal. Inuart, seeing her body, is released from his brainwashing and takes her away.
Optional missions allow Caim to find and recruit Leonard and Seere, and take along Arioch to protect others from her madness. Subsequent playthroughs and extra chapters reveal further details about the characters. Leonard's self-imposed seclusion is because he was trying to suppress his pedophilia, and the guilt at his brothers' deaths stems from the fact that he gave in to his cravings and left them unprotected. Arioch's madness takes the form of cannibalism of children, in the belief that they would be safe from harm within her. Furiae is revealed to love Caim romantically, which led to Inuart becoming jealous and vulnerable to Manah's influence. During the events leading to the third ending, Manah reveals Furiae's feelings for Caim, who shows revulsion at the revelation: due to this and the Watchers' influence, Furiae stabs herself. Manah was abused by her and Seere's mother, but Seere was never subjected to the abuse, leading him to feel guilty. The abuse Manah received and her longing for love eventually drove her insane, and she was chosen to become the Watchers' agent. Angelus then offers herself as the new Goddess of the Seal for Caim's sake. As Verdelet performs the ritual, Angelus tells Caim her name before fading away.
- In the second ending. Inuart uses a magical object called a "Seed of Resurrection" to resurrect Furiae: while successful, the Seed turns her into a monster, and she kills Inuart. Caim is forced to kill her, but not before clones of her are produced from other Seeds to destroy humanity.
- In the third ending, after Furiae's suicide, Caim and Angelus stop Inuart's attempt to resurrect her and confront Manah, who is killed by another dragon. With the dragons now being driven to destroy mankind, Angelus breaks her pact with Caim and fights him to the death. Caim then prepares to die fighting the other dragons.
- In the fourth ending, Seere has his Golem pact partner kill the deranged Manah, causing the fortress to collapse. Caim, Seere, Leonard and Arioch escape, while Inuart and Furiae are killed inside. With Manah dead, the Watchers descend on the Imperial capital, with Leonard and Arioch dying at their hands. Caim and Angelus then sacrifice themselves to allow Seere to use his powers to seal the city and the Watchers in a timeless zone, nullifying their threat.
- In the fifth ending, instead of using Seere's power, Caim and Angelus instead attack the queen and the three disappear through a portal. After engaging the queen monster in a rhythm game in modern-day Tokyo, the two destroy it, and are then shot down by a fighter jet.
Development
The original idea for Drakengard originated between Takamasa Shiba and Takuya Iwasaki when they were working at Cavia. It was conceived as an aerial battle game similar to Ace Combat. The team developing the game went under the moniker of "Project Dragonsphere". As development progressed, ground-based battles were also incorporated after the success in Japan of Dynasty Warriors 2. Creating the change from ground to aerial gameplay was exceptionally difficult for the team as they encountered problems with the PlayStation 2 hardware. The game's battle scenes were inspired by films such as the 1999 version of The Mummy and its spin-off The Scorpion King, as well as films like Dragonheart and epic films from Asia. The lead programmers were Toshiyuki Koike and Takeshi Katayama. The CGI cutscenes were created by Studio Anima. During production, the team were asked to make multiple adjustments and changes to its content by Drakengards advisory board. It was annoying enough for Yoko that he decided at the time not to make another Drakengard. Yoko was worried that the dark tone would cause the game to go unreleased, so one of the game's external producers Yosuke Saito went to Sony with a pitch; Sony were so tired of reviewing pitches at the time that they approved the project without looking at it.
The game was originally announced in December 2002, then set to be published by Enix. Its date was announced the following year by Square Enix. It released in Japan on September 11, 2003. Drakengard was first shown off to the western public at E3 2003. Its title was changed for the Western release. The original Drag-On Dragoon title was chosen for its sound, but was not considered right for the western market. Because of this, it was changed to Drakengard. In addition, some of the more mature themes, such as references to incest and sexual taboos, were censored in the western localization. In North America, the game released on March 2, 2004. While Square Enix published the title in Japan and North America, Take-Two Interactive was chosen to publish it in European territories, releasing it on May 21. For this version, the game underwent major debugging and an alteration in the angle of the in-game camera. It was co-developed with London-based mobile developer Macrospace as part of a collaboration between Square Enix and Vodafone, designed to function on the Vodafone live! service. It was first released in Germany, then made available in the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy.
World design
The setting, mythos and landscape were primarily inspired by the folklore of Northern Europe, while other elements drew from Japanese-style revisionism. According to Shiba, multiple elements of the story and world were created to be dark, sad and serious in tone, in contrast to the likes of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. The characters' stories were created by Yoko and Iwasaki, who independently created the character backgrounds: Yoko took charge of Seere, Leonard and Arioch, while Iwasaki was involved in developing Verdelet, Inuart and Caim. In an interview concerning her role in the game, Natori admitted to feeling embarrassed by her writing when hearing Sota Murakami and Natsuki Yamashita, who voiced Seere and Manah, speak their lines.
Caim, the main protagonist, was meant to be an examination of the typical action game hero, which Yoko felt should not have a happy ending in a story focused on violence. The nature of Caim and Angelus' relationship underwent changes during development: Yoko had conceived their relationship as a parasitic one, but Iwasaki wanted to create a different type of romance, and so wrote the love story for the two of them. Furiae was designed by Yoko as both an explanation for Caim and Inuart's rivalry, and as a representation of his distaste for the kind of forgettable character she represented. The relationship between Caim and Furiae, as well as their ultimate fates, was Yoko's response to the standard happy ending found in most role-playing games at the time, which he felt did not fit in with a protagonist who had killed hundreds during their quest.
Inuart was originally designed as the main protagonist of Drakengard, with him being a "useless hero". A pivotal scene in the game, where he first clashes with Caim, became one of the ways Yoko was able to properly project his vision of the game's world. Verdelet was portrayed as the "despicable elder", who cared for no-one except himself: his personality was intended to be both ineffectual and bossy, even in the face of catastrophe. Manah's role in Drakengard was designed to represent unloved children.
Character designs were done by Kimihiko Fujisaka. Drakengard was his first job as a character designer: his designs were firmly seated within the Medieval European aesthetic. To achieve this, he imagined that he had been sent back to that historical period. Caim was one of the earliest characters created for Drakengard. In Inuart's design, Fujisaka incorporated heavy armor into his design to give a more forceful impression for players.
Music
The music was composed by Nobuyoshi Sano and Takayuki Aihara: the two used excerpts from pieces of classical music (selected by Aihara), then rearranged, remixed and layered them. Their main objective was to create music that emulated the gameplay, as well as the story and general narrative theme of "madness". The music was intended to be "experimental" and "expressionistic" rather than "commercial". The theme song, , was composed by Sano, written by Natori and sung by Eriko Hatsune. The soundtrack was originally released in two volumes under the names Drag-On Dragoon Original Soundtrack Vol.1 and Drag-On Dragoon Original Soundtrack Vol.2, released on October 22 and November 21, 2003, respectively. The soundtrack was re-released on April 20, 2011, as a two-disc set under the title Drag-On Dragoon Original Soundtrack.
Reception
Drakengard sold more than 122,000 units in its first week of release in Japan, taking Mobile Suit Gundam: Encounters in Spaces place at the top of the sales charts. By the end of 2003, it had sold 241,014 copies. Gaming magazine Famitsu ranked it as the 50th best-selling title of 2003, and sold well enough that it was made part of Square Enix's Ultimate Hits series, re-releases of popular titles. Its strong sales were attributed by the team to its cinematic story and similarity to the popular Dynasty Warriors series.
According to GameSpot, Drakengard received favorable reviews in Japan. The game received "average" reviews, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. The game's events were retold again in a special story titled Drakengard 1.3, which followed on from the spin-off manga Drag-On Dragoon: Shi ni Itaru Aka. In March 2014, Hardcore Gamer's Jahanzeb Khan favorably referred to the game as a precursor to Game of Thrones in its handling of taboo themes and violence. The game was considered successful enough in Japan by Square Enix that a sequel was commissioned. Drakengard 2 was again produced by Shiba, but Yoko was replaced as director by Akira Yasui, resulting in numerous thematic changes. Originally set following the first ending of Drakengard, it was later retconned into an isolated timeline. A prequel, Drakengard 3, was released in 2013, with multiple staff members returning to their original roles.
An attempt to create another title in the series resulted in the spin-off Nier, which retains links and themes from the main series. Nier takes place over a thousand years after the events of Drakengards fifth ending. A sequel, Nier: Automata, was developed by PlatinumGames in collaboration with previous Nier staff and released in 2017, taking place after Niers fourth ending.