Cognition Dissemination: Remake Dragon Quest IX

Enix, and Square Enix by natural extension, has a lengthy history of remaking the older numbered Dragon Quest games for modern audiences — several times over in key cases. The trend began with the Super Famicom release of Dragon Quest I & II and continued from there for several years. But this run has hit a small hitch in recent years. The last remake was for Dragon Quest VII on 3DS, later ported to mobile platforms, but Dragon Quest VIII was only given a port job for 3DS with extra content. Maybe it signals that even though the DQ series continues to be one of the biggest Japanese RPG franchises in the world (with a heavy emphasis on Japan), remaking an already-3D game might be too large an undertaking if it siphons resources from other projects.

Even if — if — that’s the case, Dragon Quest IX deserves the remake treatment more than any game in the series before it by a tremendous margin.

This should happen for several reasons, the biggest being how it’s no longer possible to play through the entire experience. DQIX’s main quest is alone a long one that offers many hours of content and plenty of side quests along the way. But Square Enix (and publisher Nintendo outside Japan) also offered a bunch of downloadable content. Some came in the form of dungeons that served as homages to those from previous mainline titles, down to reusing their music tracks. (This was just before music reuse became commonplace for not only DQ spinoffs, but even mainline games like Dragon Quest XI.) New story content was eventually provided that, in too rare an occurrence, took place after the game’s ending. All of this content was remarkably free, unheard of at the time and especially these days.

The DLC was lost to time after Nintendo ended services for the Nintendo DS’ online functionalities in May 2014. Anyone who didn’t download the content before the closure has no way to get it, and anyone who purchased a copy after the DS’ halcyon days never had the chance. This was a lot of content to have vanish into the virtual ether, meaning an important aspect of a remake would be ensuring that all this content will be available with the main game, freely accessible after players have finished the main quest. This would be in addition to having the game available on one or more modern platforms.

The impending existence of Dragon Quest X Offline (which hopefully won’t be left in Japan this time) is possible proof that Square Enix is fine with remaking long games. They’ve still yet to detail precisely what content it will have, but it’s tough to imagine them not adapting all the content Dragon Quest X: Online has received in its nine-year history. It doesn’t look on par with, say, DQXI graphically, but that’s for good reason when the experience will come with considerably more content.

DQX Offline’s art style is reminiscent of DQIX’s, with its use of super-deformed character models for the playable characters and NPCs. But “reminiscent” doesn’t mean “identical,” with DQIX’s models being a bit taller. It still shows how a similar one could work for a DQIX remake.

Level-5 mentioned how they’d love to handle such a remake during a livestream for the game’s 10th anniversary a little over two years ago. Company CEO Akihiro Hino said he’d love to play one even if only the graphics were updated, and thinks it would be nice if this remake had DQXI-level visuals. Hino provided these ideas right in the vicinity of Yuji Horii and Yuu Miyake, the creator/game designer of the DQ series and the series’ executive producer, respectively, including about how Level-5 could make Streetpass functions and online multiplayer work with the Nintendo Switch’s online play. This was a step short of screaming “PLEASE LET US HANDLE A REMAKE” to them.

Level-5’s had a lot on their plate in recent years, including games that have received several delays — especially Inazuma Eleven: Great Road. Too much time has passed since their last hit. They wouldn’t mind working on one guaranteed to sell thousands of copies, even if they’d only be the developers and not the publisher. There’s a chance that Horii and Square Enix could enlist another company to handle a remake if they choose to do so considering they haven’t worked with Level-5 since the original DQIX released in 2009, but letting the original developer handle a recreation would be nice.

That said, the DQ team could still consider it too large of an undertaking to remake the entire experience with all the content, perhaps the reason that DQVIII (also developed by Level-5) was only given a port with extra content instead of the treatment. In that case, simply porting the game with all the content will suffice. This is about making the game available on modern platforms and ensuring that all the content doesn’t remain in the void it was banished to over seven years ago. The original isn’t a bad-looking game, and an updated port wouldn’t have the performance issues the DS version came with when too many characters were present in towns and some dungeons. Every current platform is considerably more powerful than Nintendo’s near-retro handheld.

It’s taking longer for Square Enix to get around to a Dragon Quest IX remake compared to previous games in the franchise, but that’s to be expected. Games require larger development resources and more time to make these days. Square Enix recently announced six new DQ projects, four of which will be new experiences for video game platforms, one being another (albeit very pretty-looking) remake of Dragon Quest III. It would take time, but a port or (preferably) a remake of DQIX should come within the next few years. We need it.