Dragon’s Dogma 2’s Pawns seem to have a death wish

While otherwise reliable and powerful, Dragon’s Dogma 2 Pawns seem to have a bad tendency to walk off cliffs.

Being a truly open-world game, Dragon’s Dogma 2 gives players the ability to travel almost anywhere on the map. Many chests, hidden collectibles, and points of interest are out of your reach, so it’s often necessary to find a creative method to reach a high or a low ledge. While most players find a way, that isn’t always the case with the faithful Pawns. Whether they are trying to reach the player quickly or leading to a quest objective, it’s quite common for Pawns to forget about the laws of gravity and walk off high ledges. Dragon’s Dogma 2’s Reddit community is filled with videos and posts about Pawns walking to their doom, sometimes for no apparent reason.

For the most part, the community’s reaction to such posts is lighthearted. Even though these occurrences can be annoying, most players seem to laugh them off and claim that it’s just part of the game. And, of course, sometimes an annoying Pawn jumping off a cliff saves players from having to throw them off themselves.

The issue also occurred in the previous Dragon’s Dogma games. Given that many gameplay mechanics were copied straight from previous titles, it’s no wonder Pawns sometimes behave questionably. 

Perhaps Capcom should have invested some more time into improving NPC pathfinding rather than adding microtransactions to their single-player game. On the other hand, had they actually ironed out this NPC behavior, the Dragon’s Dogma 2 community would have one less thing to share and laugh about. Maybe the devs knew exactly what they were doing all along.