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Fairy tales, like so much fiction, are all about leaving the village. Figuratively, of course, as the young man or woman departs the familiar confines of childhood and strikes out into the wilds of puberty, with its rioting hormones and hair-sproutings. But literally too, with many an acne'd protagonist peeling back the village gate in order to make their way in the terrible world, so full of life, love and painful lessons. The Japanese RPG is no different in this regard. Wake up from a start screen in a wispy hamlet or pastoral town and you can be sure you'll be kicked into the wildernesses before the hour's gone. This is how the digital hero's journey goes.As such, by the time of Dragon Quest 8's release in 2005, we were experts at leaving villages. You got a village that needs leaving? Just leave it to us. Better yet: leave it with us, especially if you're at all handy with a broadsword or know a gutsy magical spell or two. Because if leaving all those villages has taught us one thing, it's that the first thing you'll face on the other side of the gate is a whole lot of fighty trouble. That's the other thing fairy tales are all about: the loss of innocence at the hand of experience (and experience points), the struggling traversal from zero to hero, the fistfights with swamp rats.
Even so, leaving Dragon Quest 8's opening village (the sun-baiting town of Farebury, to be precise) was quite unlike any departure yet experienced. Before Level 5's game, stepping out of the village into the wide world was more usually a case of stepping out of the village into a world map, an abstraction that allowed players to cross miles of terrain in a few short hops across a piece of on-screen parchment before diving into the next location. In Dragon Quest 8 there was no abstraction: you leave the town gates and step into a world fully formed and fully revealed.
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