And Yes, Dragons Too
Gematsu reports via the latest issue of Weekly Jump that the upcoming Dragon Quest XI: In Search of Departed Time will feature several options for monster mounts that go beyond traveling faster and flying. To get these mounts, players will first need to defeat them in battle. After that, the mounts give abilities that help you traverse the landscape, and some can even be ridden in dungeons too.
Weekly Jump has a look at the following:
- Dragon Rider – If you mount a Dragon Rider, you can travel to places you couldn’t reach by walking.
- Skull Rider – If you mount monsters like the Skull Rider, you can climb up cliffs and dungeon walls only scalable by six-legged creatures.
Image Credit: Gematsu
The dragon is easy enough to make from the scan above, but the creepy Skull Rider, pictured bottom right, is shown letting you scale that cliffside.
Two new monsters are also introduced:
- Pearl Mobile – A mysterious machine made of a beautiful, pearl-like metal. Its body releases numbing gas. You can ride inside these machines and use them to leap to higher ground.
- Bee Rider – The elites of the Ocobolt world ride supergiant bees. They attack with a needle and lance. You can ride these bees and use them to cross over lakes.
The “Pearlmobile” on the left is shown jumping to great heights like Jumping Flash! which should be fun. The “Bee Rider,” on the right is shown helping you fly over a lake. Both are pretty unconventional mounts for a JRPG and it is great to see Dragon Quest XI putting some charm in this game mechanic.
If you’d like to see a monster mount in action, check out the video below at the 4:47 mark where the player has defeated a skull-beetle creature and mounts it in the dungeon:
While riding the beast, it can charge forward and defeat enemies and you can still open treasure chests without having to get off. That last feature is something I would have killed all the rabbits in Horizon: Zero Dawn for as it would have saved a lot of time. It’s unclear if the mount can straight-up kill any other monster or if there are limits to each mount’s strengths.
Dragon Quest XI is not the first in the series to have mounts, but it looks to incorporate them in fun ways, provided you’re able to beat them first.
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