Believe it or not, way back in the summer of 2016, Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age became the first title that was announced to be coming to the unreleased Nintendo Switch, then known as the Nintendo NX. This was months before Nintendo had even officially unveiled the console for themselves, though we did at least know of its existence.
Since then, however, there’s been radio silence on the version of this game set to be released on the hybrid console. We did begin to hear rumblings of this title back at Tokyo Game Show earlier this year when it was given the title of ‘Dragon Quest XI: S’, while earlier today at Jump Festa in Chiba Square Enix released the first trailer for this Switch version of the popular JRPG.
Most interestingly for this enhanced version of the game that released for PlayStation 4, Nintendo 3DS and PC earlier this year is the inclusion of Japanese voice acting. While Dragon Quest VIII received English voice acting for the Western release, no title in the series has ever received Japanese voice acting, with an intentional decision being made to retain the traditional qualities of the series through the omission of voice acting. Because of this, this version of the game will be the first in the series to have Japanese voice acting.
At this moment it is unclear whether there are any further additions to the Switch release when compared to the game on other platforms or whether the Japanese voices will be patched into the other versions or included in the Western release. A tentative launch date of 2019 has been given for the title, and it is likely that more details will be made available in the coming months. We’ll be sure to keep you all posted on further updates.