Dragon Quest XI Western Release Confirmed For 2018

Western gamers have been eagerly awaiting any announcement pertaining to the release of the JRPG darling Dragon Quest XI, which was already launched in Japan. The wait is over, at least as far as information goes as a video was recently released by the makers of the game, which stated that it’s coming to the west in 2018. It’s still lacking specifics, but the information that DQ XI could be coming next year is more than JRPG fans had before.

The video features Yuji Horii, the game’s creator and in the clip, he announced that the title is currently undergoing English translation. The video was posted on Twitter and fans are already expressing their excitement in typical internet fashion; using memes.

“Yuji Horii, famed game designer of the Dragon Quest series, makes an appearance with a swarm of Slimes in tow to share some exciting news!” the Tweet reads.

Horii spoke in Japanese, but his words were translated to indicate that the game will actually feature five language translations. As expected, this is no small amount of work, which explains why it will take a year before it is released in western markets.

"The game is currently being localised into five languages, including English," Horii explained in the video. "There's quite a lot of text, so it's an exorbitant amount of work. But we're doing our best and working hard to get this game to all of you as soon as possible."

As Kotaku notes, Dragon Quest is one super popular franchise in Japan that never got the same love and attention as others such as Final Fantasy and the Chrono series in the west. Even so, it has a dedicated following among those that have played and subsequently fallen in love with the games. These players are now excitedly waiting for more details from Square Enix, which the publisher promised to provide soon.