Dragon Quest Builders 2/Removed Story Elements

Old plot and the evolution across development

This is a sub-page of Dragon Quest Builders 2.

Old Tablets

To do:
I added to my old text, but it should probably be rephrased instead of appended to

Originally there were supposed to be 5 tablets inspired by the 5 sigils of Dragon Quest 2, as seen in early screenshots. However, in the final release there's only 3 tablets. The item icons for the 3 sigils of the 3 corresponding tablets can be seen in-game by hacking in the items, which have consecutive item IDs 447, 448 and 449. The next 2 items on the list are unobtainable 'black hole' world objects, followed by normal obtainable objects. This implies that the other 2 tablets with ID 450 and 451 were left as 'vacant' ID spots when they were scrapped and got replaced later in development with other objects.

Their World Item IDs are 1406 for Moon, 1408 for Water and 1409 for Star, leaving 1405 and 1407 as empty.

The last 2 icons are still present in the files. All 5 IDs have no name.

The Sun Sigil is listed first on the icon sheet, followed by the Water, Star, and Moon. Last is the Soul Sigil. Since the Sun Sigil is lower than the Soul Sigil this table assigns the lost IDs according to that order. Note that the tablets were most likely pushed to the top of the 5 ID list once the other 2 got removed, which would make the IDs listed here inaccurate.

Note that there are 2 different sets of icons representing the 5 sigils. The "yellow crest" icon is still used by the tablet items. The "blue sphere" icon goes unused. Its unclear if one is an old version of the other or if they held different purposes.

	Sun Sigil	Water Sigil	Soul Sigil	Moon Sigil	Star Sigil
Icon
Sphere
Inventory ID	{450*} [OLD]	{447}	{451*} [OLD]	{448}	{449}
World ID	{1405*} [OLD]	{1408}	{1407*} [OLD]	{1406}	{1409}
Island	Isle of Awakening	Furrowfield	Malhalla	Moonbrooke	Khrumbul-Dun
島	からっぽ島	モンゾーラ島	破壊天体シドー	ムーンブルク島	オッカムル島

Stage 1 (Februrary 2018)

Here we have 1 unified tablet at the mountaintop, holding the 5 sigil symbols.

Februrary 2018 Footage

(Source: Dragon Quest Builders 2 - Debut Gameplay (HQ) - Gematsu)

Stage 2 (April 22 2018)

This stage has the 5 sigils split off from the central tablet, that is now significantly smaller. All 6 are located at the mountaintop.

	Sun Sigil	Water Sigil	Soul Sigil	Moon Sigil	Star Sigil
April 22 2018

(Source: Gematsu)

Stage 3 (Apr 26 2018)

This video from a few days later show different tablets in the background. The main tablet is gone, and all 5 tablets have distinct colours (different from the colours in the final game). The holes beneath them stay too.

	Sun Sigil	Water Sigil	Soul Sigil	Moon Sigil	Star Sigil
April 26 2018

(Source: Dragon Quest Builders 2 PS4 gameplay - 8 minutes of DQB2 gameplay)

Final (October 1 2018)

This prerelease image shows that by this point the tablets were at their final iteration.

	Sun Sigil	Water Sigil	Soul Sigil	Moon Sigil	Star Sigil
April 26 2018

(Source: Gematsu)

Some unused text can be found in the final release referencing it.

...But what does it mean?
This game has text or audio that needs to be translated. If you are fluent with this language, please read our translation guidelines and then submit a translation!

Japanese	Translation
<星:ほし>の<紋章:もんしょう>が<開放:かいほう>されたぞ！やったね！<key>	Star Sigil has been released! You did it!
<水:みず>の<紋章:もんしょう>が<開放:かいほう>されたぞ！やったね！<key>	Water Sigil has been released! You did it!
<月:つき>の<紋章:もんしょう>が<開放:かいほう>されたぞ！やったね！<key>	Moon Sigil has been released! You did it!
<命:いのち>の<紋章:もんしょう>が<開放:かいほう>されたぞ！やったね！<key>	Soul Sigil has been released! You did it!
<太陽:たいよう>の<紋章:もんしょう>が<開放:かいほう>されたぞ！やったね！<key>	Sun Sigil has been released! You did it!

Skelkatraz

Skelkatraz was a late addition to the game. Evidence of this can be found all across the game.

The debug build menu has Skelkatraz listed as the last main island. (Planet Malroth = Malhalla). It also has no phases, you can only start from the beginning.

(Source: Dragon Quest Builders 2 Debug Menu Translation)

In this same menu, you can select different stages of completion for IoA, for testing purposes. "Before Skelkatraz" is not even an option. Selecting "Before Moonbrooke" makes all of the post-Skelkatraz cutscenes play very shoddily. (Its unknown if it's because of Skelkatraz or if all "before" phases act the same.)

Isle Of Awakening Debug Saves

Debug Menu IoA Translation here! (Debug build subpage).

The island list inside of the files of the game also have Skelkatraz as the last main island.

(Source: LINKDATA Browser (Unreleased fork))

There is text that shows an unused "chapter select" screen, similar to how Dragon Quest Builders 1 handled its islands. In there not only is Skelkatraz absent, but some weirdness with Malhalla's sequence can be found too (Implying that there wouldn't be any "Cerulean Steppe" period originally and it would jump from Moonbroke right to Malhalla). Since a "Before Malhalla" chapter was appended at the end, but no "Skelkatraz" was ever appended, it could mean that this chapter select was scrapped after the Cerulean Steppe plot was added, but before Skelkatraz was added.

(Source: LINKDATA Browser (Unreleased fork))

(Source: Original Discovery)

Each island in the game has its own ID, from 1 to 31. Skelkatraz's ID is quite high, sitting at 10. For reference, IoA is 1, Furrowfield is 2, Khrumbul-Dun is 3, Moonbrooke is 4, and Malhalla is 5. The final battle in Malhalla is 6. Then you have 7 and 8 that are Buildertopias that crash the game [You can see them in the Debug Menu as "Free Build 7/8"]. Angler's Isle is 9, a DLC island. Then Skelkatraz at 10. Usually the bigger an ID, the later it was added. Here it suggests that even Angler, DLC, came before Skelkatraz. This can be seen in the save file data, as the STGDATs (the file that holds island data) will range from 1 to 6, then jump to 9 and 10, then to 12, 13 and 16 (valid Buildertopias).

(Source: All island IDs + Info on them)

Cerulean Steppe Castle

Interview

There is an interview with the developers that shares some info on development. The relevant text for this section is this one:

...But what does it mean?
This game has text or audio that needs to be translated. If you are fluent with this language, please read our translation guidelines and then submit a translation!

――そこはあえて未完成にしたのでしょうか？	--Did you intentionally leave that part unfinished?
新納：そうですね。じつはお城は完全完成形のスゴイのがあったのですが、マスターアップ直前に変更しました。こんなのを作られたら、自分がプレイヤーだったら完全に萎えるなと思ったんです。もう何もすることがないじゃんってなるので（笑）。また、実際に通しでプレイしてみて、自分はピラミッドから連続で巨大なものを勝手に作られるのはもう飽きたよって感じたので、これはさっさと切り上げたほうがいいなと思い、現在の形に切り替えました。あとは、前作の時からゼネラルディレクターの堀井雄二さんには「もうちょっと手を加えればよくなるのに……というものを渡した方が、プレイヤーのみなさんも遊びやすいよ」と言われていたので、そこは今回も守っています。	Niiro : That's right. Actually, we had a completely finished castle, but we changed it just before mastering up. If they made something like that, I thought I would be completely disappointed if I were a player. I'd feel like there was nothing else to do (laughs). Also, after actually playing through the game, I felt like I was already tired of the way they kept making huge things from pyramids, so I thought it would be better to wrap it up quickly and changed it to the current form. Also, from the previous game, General Director Yuji Horii told me, "It would be easier for players to play if you gave them something that could be improved with a little more work..." so I've kept that in mind this time as well.
藤本：我々も開発の途中まであったお城がいきなり消えたので、アレ？って驚きました。本当に完成度が高くてもったいなかったのに、スパっと切り捨ててしまった。思い切りの良さは新納ディレクターの真骨頂ですね（笑）。	Fujimoto : We were also surprised when the castle that was there until halfway through development suddenly disappeared. It was a really high-quality work, and it was a shame to have to cut it off so quickly. Director Niiro's decisiveness is the true essence of his work (laughs).
新納：100あるうちの80くらいを切り捨てましたね。ストーリーではその後も大きなものを作ることになるので、別々にやっている時は気にならなかったのですが、続けて遊ぶとかなり面倒に感じたんです。だから、お城は未完成にして、それをできるだけギャグ風にして欲しいとシナリオの担当者に相談しました。タイミング的にはもう本当にギリギリで、シナリオもいったん完成していたのですが、私とシナリオ担当者と3人くらいで集まってその場で新しいセリフも決めて、中途半端なお城になるバージョンに変更しました。	Niiro : I cut out about 80 out of 100. I didn't mind when I was doing them separately because I would be making bigger things later in the story, but it felt quite tedious when I played them together. So I asked the person in charge of the scenario to leave the castle unfinished and make it as comedic as possible. It was really close to the deadline, and the scenario had already been completed, but I got together with the scenario writer and about three of us, and we decided on new lines on the spot and changed it to a version with an incomplete castle.

(Source: dengekionline)

Design

As a result of the castle being cut later in development, the art for the Cerulean Steppe still shows what could have been the final castle design.

This artwork was comissioned to amelicart, and we can estimate the date of its creation with this other icon.

(Source: amelicart)

This icon shows the floor of the beach room at the prologue to be made of sand. This is true for the room shown on prerelease footage of September 2018, but not for the final release (December 2018).

Pre-release	Final

This shows that the art was made earlier on development, and that it could mean the original castle was used as the reference for the Cerulean Steppe icon.

(Source: Gematsu)

Unused Text

As the interview says, the developers rewrote the text at the very end, and so a lot of unused Cerulean Castle text still remains.

Here is some of it. It talks about the various blueprints and 5 "facilities" that would have gone inside of it.

To do:
There's too much text. Link to area in "Unused Text"