This year’s Dragon Quest Day again had several announcements, most notably a status update on Dragon Quest XII by Yuji Horii.
It’s past midnight in Japan, and Square Enix’ JRPG series Dragon Quest is celebrating its 36th anniversary this May 27, 2022. The date has been rebranded for years now as Dragon Quest Day, which major announcements each year.
We can’t stress enough how important Dragon Quest is in Japan. It’s pretty much the country’s unofficial state religion. It’s not an exaggeration to say all Japanese media has some Dragon Quest in it, as some concepts it popularized like “Yuusha/Hero” and Maou/Demon Lord” are recycled everywhere from children’s picture books to eroge (PC only Japanese games with explicit content). And that’s not even going into all the isekai anime popular nowadays. The JRPG genre as a whole was heavily influenced by Dragon Quest too, so every JRPG fan is awaiting the release of the next main Dragon Quest game.
Dragon Quest Creator Yuji Horii Shares New DQ12 Development Update
Square Enix published a special video on May 27, at midnight JST, featuring Dragon Quest series creator Yuji Horii. In the 2-minutes long video, Horii is seen visiting Dragon Quest Island and sharing several updates on the series’ upcoming releases. In particular, Horii pointed out that the development of Dragon Quest XII is going well, but we won’t be seeing the game soon.
Dragon Quest XII was first announced at the 2021 Dragon Quest Day exactly one year ago. No gameplay or cinematic trailer has been revealed yet.
It’s also interesting to note Yuji Horii did not bring up the Dragon Quest III remake at all. Seeing it’s another HD-2D game, Square Enix might be waiting to first release the Live A Live HD-2D remake before showing more of Dragon Quest III remake. We might see the remake again during the E3 season or later on at Tokyo Game Show 2022 this September.
Lastly, Yuji Horii also confirmed Dragon Quest XII will not be released in 2022, though that’s obviously something everyone had guessed. Square Enix did not announce a release estimate or platforms for the game yet. You can check the full announcement video with Yuji Horii further below, don’t forget to activate the Closed Captions.
