What We Hope to See From the Dragon Quest 35th Anniversary Livestream

With the Dragon Quest 35th Anniversary Stream taking place this Thursday, there is quite a bit of hype surrounding it, thanks to Square Enix heavily promoting it alongside said stream being a simultaneous English broadcast. This demonstrates that the news being delivered during this stream will impact the western market, which is hopeful for potential simultaneous global releases of future titles.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though, as the upcoming contents of this stream are certainly worth speculation. Firstly, a tweet from series creator Yuji Horii translated by Gematsu has cryptically mentioned “that game,” which is assumed to be Dragon Quest XII, given the purposeful vagueness.

I think this is the safest and most apparent announcement to expect from the stream. Dragon Quest XI, across its various iterations and re-releases, has performed strongly, even in the west, so this announcement seems more than feasible.

Ports of Dragon Quests IV-VI are also in the realm of possibility due to the mobile versions of the first three titles recently releasing on Switch. After the success of Dragon Quest XI, I believe that Square Enix would want to make more of the main series accessible because aside from the mobile ports and the first three on Switch, none of the mainline games are on modern platforms or PC.

Another possibility that comes to mind is a port of Dragon Quest VIII because this is arguably the most popular mainline entry next to XI. This was also the first title of the franchise to be localized in North America. Due to the celebratory nature of this upcoming live stream, a port of this revolutionizing classic would be well deserved. Ideally, this port should contain the orchestral soundtrack present in the original PlayStation 2 release and the additional content from the 3DS version. An announcement of this coming to modern consoles, and hopefully not just Nintendo Switch, would certainly excite fans both new and old.

This is more of a personal pipe dream, but I would love to see an announcement of Dragon Quest Heroes III. These are Musou spinoffs that unite many fan-favorite characters from the collective franchise and introduce original characters in new worlds. These are more methodical Musous, and the sequel was an exceptionally grand step up with it being more akin to an action RPG rather than the standard fare of the first title.

The second entry also weaved in characters from the other games into the main narrative relatively smoothly. Having an open map and vocations added to the identity of Dragon Quest Heroes II as well, so seeing the third entry potentially reinforcing what made II so enjoyable and unique would be rather thrilling.

There are other game announcements I would love to see, such as a modern platform return of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker and perhaps a Dragon Quest Builders III. When it comes down to it, though, Dragon Quest is such a monumental, gargantuan franchise that there are endless possibilities for what can be shown, and at least personally, that is what makes the act of speculating so fun.

Regardless of if any of my hopes and predictions are shown off during this upcoming live stream, we can all be confident that substantial announcements will be made during this event.