The story of DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Withered World starts with two girls and two sick fathers. Square Enix has published the premise in full English on its own channels, along with a Japanese original that matches it, so the opening of the game is unusually well documented for a title that is still months from release.
The Leaves of Life
Bianca and Nera are each searching for the Leaves of Life, a fabled plant that is supposed to heal their fathers. They are not traveling together when the search begins. They meet by chance while looking for a cure and decide to work together, and the adventure that follows has them clashing with each other as often as encouraging each other.
Fluffy and the Kingdom of Witherwood
One night a strange creature called Fluffy visits the two at their bedsides and tells them to continue the search in another land: the Kingdom of Witherwood, where the leaves are said to grow. What they find there is a kingdom ravaged by malevolent forces, with the Leaves of Life all but wiped out. Fluffy grants the pair the power to befriend monsters, and the quest turns from finding a cure into reviving the leaves themselves. Square Enix sums the goal up as bringing the world of Witherwood back to life, and markets the game with the line "Make the Whole World Bloom".
Fluffy is not the only companion who turns up on the journey. Debora and Fizzy also appear over the course of the adventure, and the profiles Square Enix has published for all of them are on Characters.
Witherwood as a base
Witherwood is not a single level to clear. It is the base of operations you set out from, and the adventure fans out into a range of separate lands from there. Each field is populated by its own mix of monsters, and each one hides contraptions and dungeons that reward searching every corner.
The fields
Square Enix has described the following field types. None of them has been given a published place name, so this is a list of environments rather than a gazetteer.
Field | What has been shown |
|---|---|
Verdant plains | Open green grassland, the baseline field type shown in the earliest material |
Ice-bound land | A region locked in ice |
Everlasting-summer beach | A tropical coast that stays in summer year round |
Giant vegetable plain | A sprawling plain where enormous fruits and vegetables grow. You can jump on top of a giant carrot, though wild monsters have the same idea |
Ocean floor | An undersea area with vivid coral. Square Enix teases a sunken pirate ship somewhere down there |
Day and night
Time shifts between day and night as you explore. The change is not cosmetic: monsters behave differently as the day goes on, and species appear that were not there earlier. That makes the time of day part of how you plan a recruiting trip, which is covered on Scouting and Recruitment.
Looking over the horizon
The fields are drawn so the horizon curves gently away from you, and each step forward opens more of the world than you could see a moment before. Square Enix leans on that presentation in its own marketing, framing exploration around not knowing what lies beyond the curve.
Your monsters come with you. Any monster you have befriended can walk the field at your side no matter its type or size, which is unusual for a party that also includes creatures large enough to take two slots in a battle formation. The formation rules are on Battle and Party.
What has not been named
Witherwood is the only region Square Enix has named so far. The two home towns the leads come from, Roundbeck and Mostroferrato, are named in the character profiles but nothing about the places themselves has been published; they are covered on Characters. No dungeon, town, or area inside Witherwood has been named, and no character has been identified as its ruler.
Bianca and Nera are described by Square Enix as characters who come from DRAGON QUEST V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride. That is the whole of the stated connection. The story above, including the sick fathers and the quest for the Leaves of Life, belongs to this game.
Trailer footage
The trailers released so far carry a first-party note that their footage comes from the in-development PC version, so what they show is not a final capture of any console build.