Developers Pearl Abyss recently showed off their newest project, DokeV, during 2021’s Playstation Showcase. The game looks like it’ll be familiar to Pokémon fans, giving players the opportunity to explore a large island populated by Dokebi, monsters based on spiritual beings in creative folklore which can be captured by the player to fight alongside. However, DokeV is chock-full of its’ own personality, with plenty of vehicles to traverse the world with and some notably goofy monster design.

IGN recently talked to Sangyoung Kim (the game’s lead producer) about how players will interact with these monsters. He explains that battling and capturing these Dokebi takes a backseat to exploration and immersion into the world of DokeV. “As players progress in the game,” he explains, “they will get several hints about Dokebi, and eventually, befriend them after meeting special conditions using information from these hints and reading through each Dokebi’s unique backstory.” These special conditions might be battles, but Kim also implied that there will be more to do with befriended Dokebi than just making them fight.

When there are battles on the course of the adventure, players can fight with the help of Dokebi, but there are many activities where they can use the skillset of Dokebi.

These activities will be scattered across an open world that the producer says is going to be far larger than fans expected. “I’m not sure how to express the island’s magnitude,” Kim said, “but you can think of it like this: the parts of town you’ve seen in the trailer are less than 10% of the actual island.” For reference, two different towns have been shown off so far, and both look sizable enough to get lost in. This doesn’t mean travel will be slow, though, as DokeV is filled with plenty of creative traversal methods, including a rocket skateboard, jet skis, bicycles, cars, gliding umbrellas, and even some friendly ridable alpacas. Kim also mentioned that there are even more ways to get around the island that have yet to be seen.

Finally, the game is no longer classified as an MMO, now simply referring to itself as an “open-world action-adventure.” Kim told IGN that the change was simply a shift in priorities. At the beginning of the game’s development, an MMO made more sense, whereas now it doesn’t. This also doesn’t mean there won’t be any multiplayer, though. Kim explained that players will be able to engage in both co-op and PvP multiplayer, either against larger boss-monsters or against each other in “friendly competition that encourages good sportsmanship.” DokeV does not yet have a release date, but you can watch the extended gameplay trailer below.

We’ve had a lot of discussions about the game’s direction while working on DokeV and as the result, we concluded that making it an open-world action-adventure game allows us to best express our vision for the game.