It doesn’t take a genius to guess that Debora’s probably pregnant. I may have mentioned this before, but at any point in Dragon Quest V, the player can choose to have the main character chat with the members of his party. Dan spoke with Debora and she all but confirmed her impending motherhood with a “You know…I might be…never mind, let’s go.”
Further travels to Gotha are marked with few noteworthy events. Now that Dan is rather close to Gotha, he hears from the populace about the king Panrkaz whose travels took him away from his kingdom for near twelve years now. No one seems to know he’s dead. Dan’s mother even makes an appearance in some of the dialogue as some townspeople remark on Dan’s resemblance to Madalena. The recently married Dan is also offered marriage advice by some of the NPCs he speaks with, just to hammer home that family theme.
Dan finally arrives in Gotha only to be turned away at the gates. It’s not the most glamorous of homecomings and it makes me suspicious of treachery in the throne room. Lucky for Dan, there was a house adjacent to the castle. Even luckier, the house belonged to the ever faithful Sancho. I’ve mentioned Sancho a few times in passing throughout my narrative summary, but now it’s time to devote a little more time to this loyal friend. I was prepared to wonder why the localization team bothered to name the jolly companion Sancho, but it turns out that his actual Japanese name does phonetically translate to Sancho. It’s clear that Yuji Horii is trying to made a reference to Don Quixote’s loyal squire Sancho Panza. Thanks to this clear reference to Spanish literature, the localization team decided to give all of Sancho’s dialogue a written Spanish accent. I know they mean no harm with it, so I’m not really offended, especially as I consider that various regions and characters throughout Dragon Quest V’s world have their own respective accents to them. It’s just an odd localization quirk that some hate and I don’t particularly mind. I’m sure that some of the characters in the Dragon Quest universe do have distinct ways of speaking and this seems like an attempt to translate that intent.
Sancho might not be blood family to Dan, but his utter devotion to the royal family and elder status allows him to take on a fatherly role to the hero. If Yuji Horii did intend to create an extended family metaphor with his party and wagon systems, Sancho fits into it perfectly.
It turns out that meeting back up with Sancho was just the key to getting into the castle that we needed. After getting into the castle, Dan learns that his uncle Albert is running the show. Given the rather unfriendly greeting that he received the night before, I’m not certain of what’s going to happen here. Will Albert betray his blood to retain the throne? Is Dan going to have a face-off against his last remaining family? The tension (from my end) behind the meeting is interrupted by yet another collapse by Debora. It’s becoming pretty clear that something may be up with her and it could be a very bad time for it, depending on what Dan’s uncle does.
Leave a Reply