Dragon’s Dogma 2: What Is The Brine?

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• What Is The Brine?

• Who Controls The Brine?

• What Is The Purpose Of The Brine?

When you first start playing Dragon’s Dogma 2, you’ll quickly notice that the scariest monster isn’t a Cyclops or a Troll, but a slightly deep pool of water. This is because in it lies the Brine, an element of the game that kills you if you submerge yourself too deep.

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But what is the Brine? It seems to be a simple game mechanic to avoid adding swimming mechanics, but in Dragon’s Dogma 2, this goes far deeper, with the Brine being involved not only with the main antagonist of the story, but with the core gameplay of the path to the True Ending.

Spoilers for the ending of the game ahead!

What Is The Brine?

The Brine is an entity that resides in any pool of water that is deep enough to house it. It is represented by a mass of red tentacles, and the only thing that seems immune to it are fish, since any land-dwelling creature dies instantly when they come in contact with it.

And we do mean any creature, meaning this is as much a threat to you as it is to your enemies. If you manage to toss or lure a Drake, Cyclops, or Griffon towards a deep enough pool of water, the Brine will take care of them for you.

You can even use the Brine to kill your own Pawns, either to make room in your party or to deal with Dragonsplague.

This, bizarrely, also applies to all Saurians, even though they look amphibian in nature. In fact, Saurians often make their nests close to the water, which more often than not means a death sentence for them, particularly when they do their backing up animation.

Who Controls The Brine?

While this isn’t explicitly said, we can assume that the Brine is controlled by the Pathfinder, an enigmatic figure that aids you in your travels towards the Good Ending, but becomes antagonistic when you try to get the True Ending.

His control over the Brine can be seen when you enter the Unmoored World, a world much like the base game, but where the seas have risen towards the sky, fully contaminated by the Brine. This makes the entire map tinted in a red hue, with special bosses dropping from the “Brined” sky, all sporting its signature look: red, oily, and with suggestive tentacles.

Even the great Dragon that marks you as Arisen seems to be connected to the Brine, since once you slay it for good, the spikes that come out from it look similar in design to all the other Brine-like enemies.

In fact, the final cutscene suggests that the Pathfinder isn’t just in control of the Brine, he might even be the Brine. His final lines, spoken as someone on his deathbed, are told as the Brine is being absorbed by some sort of container, and the container itself getting cracked beyond repair.

What Is The Purpose Of The Brine?

Gameplay-wise, the Brine seems to be an excuse to avoid any form of swimming mechanics, saving loads of development costs. This was all there was to it in the first game, which always felt odd for players, since other titles don’t bother with an excuse, you simply die when jumping into water.

But with all the lore added in Dragon’s Dogma 2, we can see the Brine taking center stage in the inner workings of the story. First off, a lot of creatures seem to be made from the Brine, from the Dragon to the Purgener bosses.

It could also be used by the Pathfinder to stop the civilizations of the world from expanding beyond the established borders. The loop of Arisens and Dragons seemed to be in service of amusing the Pathfinder, who would want all his playthings to stay neatly in one place.

This is what makes the final scene of the game so important, which shows a boat sailing onto the horizon. You freed the world from the Brine holding it back, allowing everyone to explore the seas and see what lies beyond the horizon.

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