Dragon Quest 12 announced

May 27 is Dragon Quest Day and for the 35th anniversary of the series, Square Enix hosted a live broadcast showcasing Dragon Quest games currently in the works. It wasn't a super exciting broadcast for us, with a mobile game, an update of an online game that won't be released worldwide, a remake of Dragon Quest 3 that's only coming to consoles, and a spin-off called Dragon Quest Treasures for unannounced platforms.

And then, the final announcement of the broadcast was a teaser that announced the next mainline game in the series—Dragon Quest 12: The Flames of Fate. The trailer, less than a minute long, showed the logo appearing in burning letters on cracked volcanic rock, and a voice asked in Japanese, "What is the purpose of life?"

Back in the studio presenter JOY tried to pry some details out of Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii, who gave only vague answers. "It's about having options," he said. "You have to choose your own way of how to play." He did confirm "We're gonna change the command battle," though they're not getting rid of the system completely.

When asked what hardware Dragon Quest 12 would release on, a dramatic whistle blew to signal the question was not allowed. So no, we don't know if it will be coming to PC for sure, though Dragon Quest 11 did. A simultaneous worldwide release is being aimed for, though no release date was announced.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.