Square Enix is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the venerated Role-Playing Game (RPG) Dragon Quest (DQ). To celebrate, Japanese broadcaster NHK has featured a video which gives a look into the development of the next title in the series, Dragon Quest XI. The video not only shows some of the behind the scenes development, but also some new gameplay footage which reveals the ability to ride dragons in the upcoming game. Check out the video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9aVIlHlDFc

It has been quite some time for us in the States to be able to play a Dragon Quest game on a home console, but fear not fellow Questers, the eleventh title in the series will eventually be headed to our PlayStation 4 consoles, as well as the Nintendo 3DS and the forthcoming Nintendo Switch.

We can see in the footage that developers are hard at work on the project. Footage shown shows gameplay on both 3DS and PlayStation 4. More importantly, the video shows the ability to mount and ride dragons! This is definitely a new feature for us in the states. Our Japanese gaming brethren gained dragon riding capabilities in the Japanese Wii exclusive MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) Dragon Quest 10.

The DQ series is one of the few long-running series to keep its key development team members. Story writer and game designer Yuji Horii has been accompanied by character designer Akira Toriyama and music composer Koichi Sugiyama from the very beginning of the series. The team continues to strive to advance the playability of the titles while also advancing the series for the modern age of gaming.

There is still no official release date for Dragon Quest XI, but the Japanese release is due out some time in 2017. It may be much longer for a western release, but if you’re a fan of the series the wait will definitely be worth it. What do you think of the added dragon riding mechanics? Are you a fan of the long running RPG series? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to follow us on Twitter to catch all of your gaming news as it is published.