Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, an enhanced version of 2012’s Dragon’s Dogma, launched back on April 23rd at retail and on the PSN. Owners of the game quickly noticed that there weren’t any new trophies with Dark Arisen, rather that it just uses the same trophy list as Dragon’s Dogma.
What this means for previous owners of Dragon’s Dogma who load up Dark Arisen is that if you platinumed the original, you’ve platinumed DA, with no new trophies offered in the additional content.
After noticing that some people were quite upset about this, we found a thread on the Capcom forums, with GregaMan, aka Greg Moore, Community Liaison for Capcom Unity, originally posting this on April 22nd (it has since been edited out):
Hey guys, I can confirm that Dark Arisen DOES have additional new Trophies and Achievements for the new sections of the game. Soooo enjoy!
Then on April 23rd, Greg notified everyone that it wasn’t confirmed:
Sorry guys, now I’m getting mixed stories. . . . Going to triple-check on this today and swing back here. Sorry for the confusion.
A week later on April 30th, Greg reported back with the explanation:
Hey guys, apologies for the delayed response. Been out of the country and juggling a lot of different titles. Finally received a definitive response on this though. Unfortunately the verdict on T&As isn’t as you or I’d hoped. Here’s the answer I’ve received:
“Trophies and achievements gained in Dragon’s Dogma will carry over to Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen so adding any new ones would exceed the standard amount of awards that can be received per game. Removing existing trophies and achievements to replace with new ones was not an option given the incompatibility issues with any trophies and achievements carried across in a player’s save data from Dragon’s Dogma to Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen.”
So more or less it’s a combination of industry-wide restrictions placed on T&As (limited number of T&As per product) and technical limitations (couldn’t remove existing T&As in order to implement ones reflecting DDDA’s new stuff).
I think it was a sacrifice made to allow for seamless save data transferring from DD to DDDA. So there you have it.
Also on April 30th, Greg offered up his opinion as to why he didn’t think there were trophies:
I think the additional content in DDDA is not being treated as DLC since, well, it’s not, so DLC rules don’t apply here. Also, the cap on Trophies/Achievements seems to be based on the cumulative point value assigned to them rather than the number of T&As themselves.
The latest updates come from May 1st, where people started going off topic:
Come on guys, let’s stay focused here. You’re mad at us, remember? I still gotta ask you to be cool to one another while you’re here.
It’s not like T&As were excluded from DDDA because they were deemed lame or unimportant; lots of people enjoy them. They just weren’t able to add new ones for this particular product.
On that note though, I wonder if there isn’t some sort of community-led thing we could do as a humble substitute. . . . Thinking. . . .
Someone then offered up their opinion on the trophy matter, by saying, “But that’s for DLC, Dark Arisen is not DLC. That’s the point I feel they are trying to make. Dark Arisen is Dragon’s Dogma with extra features. Unless they plan on releasing Dark Arisen as DLC then I don’t think they can [add] any more t&as [Trophies and Achievements].” This was Greg’s response to it:
That does indeed seem to be the discrepancy. We’ve said before, but the problem is that original DD was not created with the intention of adding expansion content, so the “hooks” weren’t implemented to allow a simple DLC expansion. The market success of the original game led them to revisit the title, creating the Dark Arisen we have today. Unfortunately the rules are different for this game’s case since the additional stuff in Dark Arisen isn’t regarded as “DLC.” From a consumer standpoint the new stuff in DDDA isn’t less of an add-on, but unfortunately the yay/nay of including new trophies was judged by a specific set of industry-wide criteria.
It was initially wrongly communicated to my end that there would be T&As, though I’ve since redacted the statement and apologized on Capcom’s behalf. But no such feature was ever advertised on a broader scale than in reactive statements on this community channel and the DD FB page (which has also since redacted and clarified).
I think Dark Arisen is a pretty unconventional delivery method, which has generated some confusion. But there was no conscious attempt to mislead users about the feature set. We’re trying to clarify confusion as quickly and broadly as possible.
What do you think about the lack of no new trophies in Dark Arisen? Let us know in the comments below.
