When I was browsing through some back issues of the Penny Arcade cartoons a short while ago, I chanced upon Tycho’s idiosyncratically (non-)diplomatic hatchet job of the latest Star Fox game:
This set me wondering - Panzer Dragoon is a game that cherishes itself on its comprehensive and artistic background world, but nonetheless this world revolves about one pivot - the dragons. What would transpire, then, if a forthcoming Panzer game took the unprecedented step of sidelining Lagi (or at least reducing him to a supporting role) and have a different sort of protagonist come to the fore? Could Panzer Dragoon avoid the ignoble fate of a tongue-lashing by the dreaded and fearsome Penny Arcade?
Orta proved that we could have a decent game that wasn’t in the shadow of the Towers. Could this be expanded? Would following Azel on her trek across a anarchy-stricken Empire in a bid to re-enter Sestren and find Edge, for instance, have the same attractions of the other games, or would the Lagi-shaped void be distracting?
There’s no doubt in my mind that a dragon should always play a central role in a Panzer Dragoon game, otherwise Sega may as well call it Panzer Dragoon Neo.
a spin off game based in the panzer dragoon world might be interesting. but not as a direct sequal to the series.
like a statagy game where you control the Empire or other civilisation and try to take over the panzer dragoon world. just imagin building those ships, controlling excavation sites, searching for ruins and technology etc.
A startegy game like Neo-Kun said would be very interesting, however the empire would be too dominant. A FPS would indeed be very could, it could involve stealth elements and hand to hand combat when you didn’t have a good arsenal of weapons, and in later levels you could hop into different vehicles and possibly the dragon could make an appearence somewhere.
To answer the topic’s question : No.
A PD is nothing without a dragon.But I wouldn’t mind a little twist in the next game like you beeing able to control more than one (maybe two or so) dragon(s) during the course of the game.
One thing’s for sure : the next game has to have some on-foot combat.There’s one image I can’t get off my head : Edge inside Shellcoof between some of those big crates (Shellcoof FMV in Disc2) sneaking behind Imperial soldiers and killing them.
I don’t mean a stealth game but a little feature like that would be nice.
How about a game where part of it is finding your dragon, then “raising” it (not necessarily in the way that Lundi did it, but leveling it up, as it were, like how the dragon changes in PDS).
Damn, and when do people finally realize that the name “Panzer Dragoon” does not refer to a dragon, but to the rider. the rider is called dragoon and he rides on an armored something.
The dragon should of course play a central role, but in Orta it became too much deus ex machina.
The bond between the dragon and orta was much less personal than in the other games. It’s like your in a fight and the a strangers helps you out and say’s “I knew your father/mother/brother”.
Be that as it may, Panzer Dragoon has become synonymous with dragon riding. The two are too closely associated to start making changes.
Isn’t that one of its major selling points? It certainly is for Drakenguard, which is receiving a sequel for reasons I cannot begin to comprehend (why do mediocre games like that sell so well?).
It may be a while, but I don’t believe that Sega will completely abandon the Panzer Dragoon franchise. It’s something Sega might fall back on in a decade or two.
You’re right about Lagi not sharing a strong bond with Orta. He watched over her out of some sense of obligation to Edge, and it didn’t seem to become anything more than that.
Related to the topic though, I wouldn’t mind a spin-off taking place in the same world, but the bond between dragon and rider is a high point for me that I wouldn’t want to see go away.
I thought Saga was a lot less emotional from that relationship point of view than 2wei or PD1.I heard say this aspect of the games should be forgotten : I don’t know.That’s a big part of the reason why I liked the PD games and why their story altho simplistic sometimes was profound.
Realisticly it’s a bit difficult to make a game where you play as a rider thru numberous confrontations and not make the rider care for thr dragon.
The only way out of that is either come up with some cold anti-hero kind of character for the role of rider or maybe make dragon riding seem more usual (by setting the game back to a period were they wer emore common or so) so we would be able to rider different dragons during the game.
I think it would be cool to not have the dragon as a full force for the majority of the game- it would be much nicier tie for you to be alone for a bit and figure out your character before they were a choosen one, find the dragon as a pup, go on an adventure, protecting this weak pup, and towards the end it gets really powerful- that way, you would really see/feel the transition from you helping it to it helping you, etc.
Having a really powerful dragon with you in an adventure for the whole trek always seemed odd, like you should be capable of going anywhere on the world map, and that should pretty much be all powerful right away.
