Dragon Quest XI producer’s dilemma: How to work on a series he grew up with

Art in the 21st century is weird because the past that informs it is, for the first time in human history, preserved to an exhaustive degree and with pristine clarity. George Lucas made Star Wars to mimic and revel in Golden Age Hollywood serial films because those serials weren’t just in fashion anymore. You couldn’t run down to Blockbuster and rent the 1936 Flash Gordon. Both audience and artist were experiencing the work free of the originals; even if they remember the old stuff, it’s not like they can compare it to the new.  But in 2018, anyone who wants to make a new Dragon Quest also has access to the entire history of the series, whether through legal rereleases, remasters, and remakes or through legally gray emulation.

It’s all preserved and present in a manner that compromises attempts to modernize it. The artist can’t tease and toy with the rose-colored haze of memory, and they can’t throw out every convention and start over. They have to walk a tightrope between past and present, new and old. Hence the challenge that Dragon Quest 11 producer Hokuto Okamoto faced. This new PlayStation 4 entry marks not just the Japanese role-playing game series’ 30th anniversary but also the third attempt to make it a globally embraced institution rather than just a Japanese one.