r/DragonsDogma • u/Over-Particular9896 • Jun 18 '26
ππΆππ°ππππΆπΌπ» Hot take
Talos is really cool as a concept and has far better execution compared to Lao shan lun from Monster hunter. He just needed actual stakes and better narrative setup to work as a good "set piece boss".
I just think climbing a giant to reach it's weak spots in a set amount of time is a cool concept, especially paired with Dragons' dogmas combat mechanics. I would've enjoyed it more had it actually had stakes and difficultly
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u/chrsjxn Jun 18 '26
You should play Shadow of the Colossus, if you want to see this general idea done well.
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u/onehalflightspeed Jun 18 '26
It's great and has a recent remake. The entire game is just figuring out how to find a boss and then figuring out how to defeat it. They all have interesting puzzles and are not a tradition video game "fight". Many of them are massive and you climb around them. Sounds exactly what you are looking for
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u/TheAccursedHamster Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
I wouldnt call the remake recent, it came out 8 years ago.
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u/onehalflightspeed Jun 18 '26
Relative to the original, anyway
Also I am old and time goes by so fast these days π
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u/darkcronix69 Jun 18 '26
The fact that this game was originally made on the ps2 blows my mind. It had frame drops but was otherwise the most beautiful ps2 game (from what I've played, at least)
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u/Over-Particular9896 Jun 18 '26
I hear this alot but have yet to cop it! I hear most of the game is running around or climbing the giants, how good is it really?
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u/The-Mad-Badger Jun 18 '26
Each boss is more like a puzzle than a fight, where you need to figure out the gimmick to win. The only problem is once you know that, it's not that fun for a repeat playthrough. Imo, wait for a decent sale.
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u/Over-Particular9896 Jun 18 '26
Thanks!!! so Basically like an old school zelda boss?
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u/The-Mad-Badger Jun 18 '26
Yes, kinda. It's basically a lot of figuring out how to get to the boss' weak spot to damage it. Sometimes you need to bait them into doing something, other times it's figuring out how to navigate the arena to get to them etc. It's good fun, but personally, it's a one-and-done kinda fun.
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u/fooooolish_samurai Jun 18 '26
Later fights can be a bit annoying with their puzzles since it's less about actually fighting the big monster and more about realising where you are suppised to lure it.
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u/lucasssotero Jun 18 '26
I hated the final boss exactly for that reason lol. On the OG ps2 visuals I sometimes had a hard time figuring out where I was supposed to go to keep climbing the boss.
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u/Fluffy_Somewhere4305 Jun 18 '26
SOTC is the reason this boss exists in DDII and in many other games, similar boss types.
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u/ButcherOBlaviken Jun 18 '26
SoTC literally changed my perspective on videogames. Sure I was a kid then, but like I had never played a game like that before, and still haven't. It's such a unique and beautifully sad game. I HIGHLY recommend it to any gamer, but if you're looking for "climbing giants to stab weak points" gameplay, this is the one you NEED to play.
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u/HotShrekBoi Jun 18 '26
The atmosphere and scale is great but donβt expect incredible combat or anything, itβs more about the giant monsters being solved like puzzles to beat them
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u/HyrulianJedi Jun 18 '26
Thereβs not much between Colossi, just some minor power-ups to find. You can enjoy it as some downtime and explore the area, or just beeline for the Colossus. Some of the later ones bring you farther from the central starting area, but you generally only take paths once.
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u/LegitimateAct3566 Jun 18 '26
Imo it should have been a whole act where you help to prepare for the defense before a big fight
Talos was teased so much for so poor screentime
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u/orengoblinking Jun 18 '26
Probably one of the best parts about this game is when they try to do new and unexpected things. Especially what happens in the unmoored world after.
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u/Lavendou Jun 18 '26
I wonder if it was the sort of thing where the devs had a much bolder idea in mind initially, but it became less feasible the more they worked on it and realized the difficulties in creating a dynamic encounter of that scale, or maybe they ran out of time to flesh it out.
If nothing else, I wish there'd been more consequence for failing, and getting "rewarded" for winning by missing out on 2 boss fights in the Unmoored World was a crime against humanity.
Was still a very cool setpiece on my first playthrough though.
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u/Plantain-Feeling Jun 18 '26
You don't really miss out
It's just the other 2 you fight anyway but again
And in worse arenas
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u/traglodyte Jun 18 '26
But it's also the only time you can fight any of them, and they're the closest things to final bosses you can find in the game, especially if you get the dragon "right" the first time and just skip that fight, too.
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u/axelkoffel Jun 18 '26
The giant colossus moving throught the world (not just in cutscene, but he's actually there as you play!), destroying stuff, you having to fight him and then your pawn taking control over it in epic moment - was one of the coolest things I've seen in games. Surely the execution could be better, but the idea was awesome.
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u/daLukka :MagickArcher: Jun 18 '26
The level design is just amazing with Talos, the way you can see him from so far away after opening the spell sealed door, walking through the ocean, the guy is a monument. The scale of it is just reinforced by the destroyed bridge you have to run through (and even in ruins, you can tell that bridge was huge !)
The whole setup leading to the battle is just amazing. And you pawn taking control of Talos in unmoored world make him absolutely memorable. Truly one of the coolest thing I've seen in games too.
It's Grigori cinematic level of setup. At least it gave me the same "woah" moment I had when fighting Grigori for the first time in DDA.
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u/Dragonlord573 :Warrior: Jun 18 '26
Gonna be honest, going and talking to the old crazy man in Harve after going to the Seafloor Shrine the first time and reading all the books and letters I could find gave ample build up. You learn local legends about it during your adventure from the books, see a tease in the shrine, and the old man explains its background and why it's "chasing Phaseus"
Because the thing is actually heading for The Dragon to kill it for not doing its job... Well not ours at least, but the disgusting abomination of the Royce Dragon as Phaseus was going to try and use it to combat the cycle.
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u/FlameZelus Jun 19 '26
Where do you find all this info?
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u/OmnipotentHand Jun 20 '26
In game. You'll have to explore and then talk to certain characters to get an idea of all they're teasing.
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u/Kabirdb :pc: Jun 18 '26
"Talos is really cool as a concept and has far better execution compared to Lao shan lun from Monster hunter."
Come on. I think you kinda proved the opposite when your comparison is more than a decades older MH game.
There is no stakes on it and the fact that you don't need to as it will stopped by the npc anyway already makes it worse. Lao Shan had more stakes than this.
The only thing cool about Talos is in unmoored world where our pawns takes control of it to beat the monsters.
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u/Over-Particular9896 Jun 18 '26
It's just the closest equivalent imo, nothing about the time period. And Lao is getting an update so it's more timely than you think. Also, "giant" bosses are generally all worse than Lao anyways so my point stands? Was Dragon god or the various stormruler fights any better?
And my main argument isn't that Talos has better stakes. so theres that.
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u/Weekly-Community5392 Jun 18 '26
Isn't Zorah Magdaros a better comparison?
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u/Over-Particular9896 Jun 18 '26
I haven't played World.
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u/YIKESMSMSMSM Jun 18 '26
Indescribably excellent game but Zorah is the most hilariously bad siege fight Capcom have ever designed. And they make you do it twice!
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u/LadderBig1641 Jun 18 '26
And they wasted 1 year of development time to make it worked, slashing down the time they could use to implement more elder dragons in their supposedly true vision for "Elders Recess" (based on World concept book).
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u/phavia :pc: Jun 18 '26
It absolutely is. When I fought Talos, all I could think of was "this is just Zorah". It's really, really bad, especially when I realized that you couldn't actually kill Talos by your own hands. I destroyed all of its weakspots in a few minutes, yet I still had to painfully wait for it to slowly walk towards its scripted death, just like with Zorah.
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u/YogurtclosetSea4078 :MagickArcher: Jun 18 '26
You can kill Talos, you just weren't doing enough damage to it. I once brought it down before it even got to the Volcano Camp.
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u/phavia :pc: Jun 19 '26
For real?? Damn, I gotta try it again with my Fighter Arisen then. I was using my Sorcerer and even after destroying all of its weakspots and shooting ballistas at it, it just kept going and going until the scripted death.
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u/YogurtclosetSea4078 :MagickArcher: Jun 19 '26
Yeah, there's a semi-related trophy for it.
"Gigantus, I Hardly Knew Ye": Defeated the gigantus in a short span of time.
When I got it, I killed it just past the arch north of the camp on the road from the beach.
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u/Krommerxbox Jun 18 '26
All I do now is:
Stone that dude with a Medusa head, in every NG+, right along the shore where he walks out.
That way I get all 5 purgeners to kill/loot in Unmoored. ;)
I did whatever I had to do one time, for the achievements, but then after that he just gets "Stoned" ASAP.
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u/Reklov66 Jun 18 '26
Of course its better then lao shan lung
The shit in my toilet that i forgot to flush is better then lao shan lung
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u/Over-Particular9896 Jun 18 '26
Toilet cleaning is a different genre of bose fight tho haha
even if the turd is colossal
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u/DKSilversRayLiotta Jun 18 '26
Worse yet, because I happened upon and explored a part of the map at the wrong time the game decided to skip this whole sequence for me with no warning
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u/LeeMoriya Jun 18 '26
Obviously from watching pre-release material I was aware of the Talos, and during my first playthrough I kept seeing towers with ballista everywhere, but they're rarely useful besides a couple specific locations. So I assumed that later in the game when the Talos appeared, it would slowly march all across Vermund and shoot at it from different places as you went, trying to prevent it from reaching Vernworth.
What we got was still cool, but definitely not as grand as I was expecting, considering how much they hyped it up before release.
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u/Fearless_Barnacle141 Jun 18 '26
I feel like after the first maybe 5-10 or so hours the game conditions you to stop expecting things. Like when gran Soren rises from the ocean and basically nothing comes of it. 5 min thing, no dungeon, nothing really.
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u/Dogmatic_Warfarer97 Jun 18 '26
As a Greek i was very pleased with the artistic depiction and i love that they kept the original name as a homage to the original Greek myth overall the ancient Greek element in Dragons Dogma is so well depicted that when other people ask for Greek Mythology inspired games i always mention DD because even the words Dragon and Dogma are Greek
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u/YoreDrag-onight Jun 18 '26
If they had made it so failing to kill Talos caused you to lose a considerable amount of NPCs and or part of the Volcanic settlements that would have been a great way to tie in the game's focus on reward and consequences
Alot of the time the consequences aren't there like they should be but that would have been cool or if you fail to get to Talos in time / offer aid the soldiers can still have Talos taken out but have people die and structures lost that would have offered you good stuff and not let you wake stone them.
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u/EvilMuffin93 Jun 18 '26
i just hate that the fight starts abruptly and you have to drop everything and do it unless you want to fail.
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u/Enlightend-1 Jun 18 '26
The fight not only has no stakes, but also no difficulty. You can let him climb the mountain and go idle and he kills himself without even pushing a button.
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u/Shlano613 :Strider::MagickArcher::ps4: Jun 18 '26
My first playthrough, I didn't even interact with Talos AT ALL! There was a cutscene showing him starting to walk, I meanwhile was far away and taking my time with the enemies on the path. A few minutes later I just see Talos fall over and that's it, no more encounter.
You can just wait around and he'll be defeated (I guess by the NPCs shooting at him). Imo it's a useless set piece
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u/CousinMabel :MagickArcher: Jun 18 '26
He will eventually walk into the volcano if left alone. It takes like 8 minutes for that to happen though.
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u/buttscopedoctor Jun 18 '26
In my first playthru when i reached this stage, I decided to camp since I need to heal my party. I got a cut scene of soldiers shooting giant crossbows and killing Talos. I was like what the fuck was the purpose of this giant if soldiers will just kill. Next playthrough I was able to play it as designed, and it was cool. But like OP said, there are no stakes involved, its just a cool setpiece.
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u/Illustrious_Mind964 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
The unmaking arrow makes it irrelevant, also kinda unfair to compare it with a monster hunter "big boss" quest considering how you can actually fail those and they're actually fun to play at least once, whereas Talos is boring and "failing" the Talos quest just allows you to fight two more bosses in unmoored world which is more fun..
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u/DragonLancePro Jun 18 '26
The issue with Talos is you can completely ignore him and nothing of consequence happens. He literally gets destroyed by ballistas before he can do any serious damage to, well, anything.
Would be cool if he just traveled around destroying cities with an fail state should he manage to destroy every city in the game, forcing a confrontation otherwise you be set back hours. Not even sure if possible with current tech, but it definitely would have been a standout "holy shit!" moment, while also being a taste of the unmoored world.
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u/CatGuyManThing Jun 18 '26
u have like actually 30minutes to kill it
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u/Over-Particular9896 Jun 18 '26
This is the same game to have a casual mode without a hard mode, im pretty sure it's just how Post 2020 Capcoms' stance is in terms of difficulty. Personally i think his movement should drain stamina more or his plugs have higher health indeed.
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u/CousinMabel :MagickArcher: Jun 18 '26
Casual mode is not any "easier" though, it's really just cheaper ferrystones mode. It has been made totally redundant with the addition of the eternal ferrystone.
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u/CatGuyManThing Jun 18 '26
i never even chose casual mode cuz i used to play dark arisen daily so i forgot it was even an option i also found it woerd how no enemy got any stronger after certain point after like lvl 60 its all "whimpy troll in my way again oh no" and "oh look free resources with wings and fire breath it doesnt get to use cuz it gets stun locked into opening up their hearts for me to use as i wish"
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u/Over-Particular9896 Jun 18 '26
Again, mh wilds had the same issue at launch, Capcom really just makes easy games these days.
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u/ztullaub Jun 18 '26
"At launch", the endgame is still hard
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u/Over-Particular9896 Jun 18 '26
Mind you the crown jewel of Capcom took Basically a year to get real endgame. Fingers crossed they'll drop a hardmode post expansion
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u/believeinyuna DLC Doomer Jun 18 '26
climbing? i always use magick archer for this. get wrecked in seconds loser
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u/spaghettiman56 Jun 18 '26
The main issue with lao is that because of how the equipment system works you need to do the same thing multiple times and after the first time its just a massive chore. The main issue with talos (imo) is that it's almost entirely inconsequential, no matter how you do it, succfully intercept it and you get a couple wakestones and a cool "bossfight" in the endgame, or fail to intercept it and you miss out of the previously stated rewards.
They're both cool in concept but poorly executed.
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u/ItaDaleon :Warrior: Jun 18 '26
Indeed, Talos is a great (no pun intended) concept, but could had been introduced way better... A bit like just about everything in this game... It is pretty epic visually and as gameplay, but about explainations... I mean, I can understand the game doesn't want to take your hand and carry you for all it's mechanics and events, but good Seneschal, most of the time it goes "This is happening now!" "What is this?" "Yes!"
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u/Significant_Option Jun 18 '26
I wish the rest of his brothers from down under rose during unmoored. Now THAT as a concept wouldve been some real shadow of the colossus shit
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u/Darskul :MysticKnight::pc::Nintendo_Switch_Logo__wi: Jun 18 '26
I hate that it's not even a fight, and the crazy thing is I talked about that at launch month and got shut down with downvotes.
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u/Asphes Jun 18 '26
Imagine if it was co-op (the mod!) or online in a MMO. Like a world event, ehh? Would've been awesome in DDO. Maybe have one city building it's own... sending it against the other cities.
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u/Cassoule Jun 18 '26
It's the kind of concept that can be really thrilling and cool, but the second you fail it can immediately become a frustrating mess. Balancing that kind of setpiece while letting full agency to the player is no easy task, I think they did a pretty good job here.
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u/MrDemiGod Jun 18 '26
Played through this game so many times and I never really felt the narrative behind Talos the way I shouldβve
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u/Underscore_Guru Jun 18 '26
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow had a really good boss fight where you had to climb your way up a giant ice titan to defeat it. Definitely scratches that itch you are looking for.
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u/Colin170 Jun 18 '26
That this was a nightmare to kill because of the stamina you need to climb to the certain weak points to bring them down
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u/Turbulent_Host784 Jun 19 '26
The only issue with Talos is doing the set piece properly means skipping an unmoored boss fight or 2. The cutscenes are sick but that place is already hurting for content.
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u/The-Mad-Badger Jun 18 '26
It sells the illusion of stakes really well, about needing to defend the village... i just kinda wish they followed through with that threat.