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The creator of legendary RPG series Dragon Quest has spilled the beans on the mysterious ending to the third game that still had fans puzzled over 25 years since its original release. Read on to find out, but beware – some things are best left a mystery.

Dragon Quest (initially released under the title Dragon Warrior in North America) is series of role-playing video games published by Enix (later Square Enix) since 1986 in various incarnations, and one of the staples of the JRPG genre. In December last year, variety Asahi TV show Ame Talk gathered together a group of celebrities to discuss the topic of ‘things we’d rather not know’. This group included none other than Yuji Horii, the creator of the famed video game series. When he appeared on the show, which was broadcast on January 13, he revealed the inside story of the ending of the third game in the series.

At the end of Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation, the Hero defeats the evil fiend Baramos after a long and arduous journey, but the celebrations are cut short when the true villain Zoma, Baramos’s master, reveals himself. To restore peace to the world, the Hero travels to the Dark World. There he spectacularly defeats Zoma, but the portal back to his own world has closed. It ends with the phrase “The Hero mysteriously disappeared and has not been seen since.” Then, in the ending credits a message appears reading: “To be continued in Dragon Quest I”; a dramatic revelation that chapters III and I are linked.

On the show one of the celebrities, habitual Pokémon box-eater Shoko Nakagawa revealed that she is a big fan of the Dragon Quest series and talked animatedly about the deep impact this ending had on her. Horii, however, said that there was no deep meaning to the ending – something which those in the TV studio audience was shocked to hear. Back in the day, Horii was writing all the lines for everyone character in the game by himself and, without the high-tech computers we have now, he worked entirely on paper. He drew out a map and assigned each character a number, then laboriously wrote out the lines using the numbers for who was speaking. The third game was far bigger than the second, so you can probably imagine the increased stress and workload that came with it. The reason the Hero disappeared at the end of the game was purely because Horii was drowning in such a huge amount of work that he wanted to get it done as quickly as possible.

At the end of Dragon Quest II the Hero returns to the village after defeating the demon and is thanked by the people for saving the world. However, due to the scale of the third game, it was already a much bigger task for Horii to come up with the lines for all of the characters. “If I closed the portal back to the world, then I wouldn’t have to write the lines of the townspeople congratulating the Hero,” he said. This, it would seem, is why he decided to go with the “disappearing Hero” ending.

Those who have played the game were probably left with that phrase lingering in their minds long after beating the game. It conjures up a sense of loneliness and the question of ‘what happened next?’, a tantalizing mystery to ponder for weeks to come. Now that the mundane truth has come out, there are probably a lot of fans who agree that this is something they would rather not have known. But hey, we warned you!

Dragon Quest (Warrior) III ending clip from the official North American release.

Source: MSN Japan News
Feature image via Giant Bomb