Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen Preview – It’s cold up Norgan

The useful part

It's cold up there, the people are a bit more unusual, there's dragons, and it's great for a bit of thrifting to find relics. Norgan is an icy region of the world, dropping the temperature and with some appropriately frosty foes. We were dropped into this expansion with a level 50 character, a couple of pawns and a blank canvas of the map to fill in through exploring.

How it works

• It could make your adventuring a bit more tentative, seeing how far you can get until your pawns start to fall in battle and your health starts to drop, and then teleporting back to camp to rest up, restock...
• Similar to the Dark Arisen expansion for the original game, Capcom is introducing an infinitely usable Eternal Ferrystone, letting you fast travel as you see fit – you just have the slightly secret shame of...
• There's roving bands out here and the key loop really is to venture forth, defeat enemies, see if they drop any relics and take them back for appraisal.
• It's a familiar loop of hunting for better stats on loot, but compared to the instant gratification of many action RPGs and looter shooters, having this need to head back and have your finds appraised is a...
• There's further gameplay tweaks being brought into the game through this Title Update.

Details worth keeping

There's plenty of stereotypes about the north that Dragon's Dogma 2: