May 272026
When we discussed the announcement of today’s Dragon Quest 40th Anniversary live stream, I suggested that they might announce “a completely different Dragon Quest XII” instead.
And… that turned out to be exactly what happened.
Dragon Quest XII: The Flames of Fate was announced exactly 5 years ago, described as having a new combat system and potentially being darker in tone, and updates about it after that were few and far between.
So it wasn’t a huge shock to learn they changed directions with it, although I’m a little surprised at how up-front they were about it. In today’s short live stream, they said outright that development was restarted. They started from scratch with a new direction, and now it has a logo (pictured above) and title, Dragon Quest XII: Beyond Dreams.
After a short teaser that gave a glimpse of the main characters and the world (which admittedly is more than we ever saw for Flames of Fate, they said it’s about a hero who has strange visions while asleep and that beyond those dreams is “surely not a world of darkness, but a bright and exciting future.”
It really sounds like the darker direction planned for Flames of Fate turned out not to be popular.
Anyway, Beyond Dreams sounds like it’s still early in development, but here’s hoping we don’t have to wait another five years before we hear about it again. In the meantime, they closed out the stream with the announcement of a new Dragon Quest Monsters game, The Withered World.
I still haven’t played any of the Dragon Quest Monsters games (besides the demo for the previous one), but I’m curious about this new game as well.
How do you feel about the latest Dragon Quest announcements?