Dragon's Dogma 2's upcoming Dark Arisen expansion is shaping up to be a proper feast for those of us who've been waiting for an excuse to subject ourselves to more doomed oxcart rides. The last 24 hours have brought a number of fresh interviews with the developers of the DD2 expansion, and from the sounds of it, they've been doing plenty of cooking.

In a talk with Automaton, DD2: Dark Arisen director Kento Kinoshita and producer Naoto Oyama laid out a hefty feature list: When the expansion lands in October, it'll add a new northern region for high level characters featuring new story content and a repeatable, randomized loot chase. The base game, meanwhile, will get 12 new "Last Rites" dungeons, offering powerful gear and experience gains that can catapult low-level characters up to expansion parity.

And that sounds great and all. I love a hostile frozen wasteland populated with nightmarish creatures and storied artifacts as much as anyone. But I'll confess that the most appealing addition was revealed in an interview with Korean gaming media outlet Inven, where Kinoshita said Capcom wants DD2:DA to be primetime for Pawns.

"I believe the joy of traveling with Pawns is the core identity of the series. In this expansion, we focused on the fun of cooperating with Pawns during adventures," Kinoshita said. "New actions, such as Pawns blocking attacks for the Arisen or pulling them up when climbing enemies, will be added in Title Update 3.2 at the end of August. We also plan to add commands for exploration and high-fives, along with further adjustments to Pawn behavior and AI."

Pawns, in short, are Dragon's Dogma. They're my treasured, hyperactive, half-alien warrior children with a peerless talent for identifying ladders and the elemental weaknesses of wolves, and a version of Dragon's Dogma that loved them less would be an infinitely lesser product.

Which is why it was so painful whenever I'd finish a battle and couldn't clamber over to my Pawn fast enough to partake in the thunderclap camaraderie of their congratulatory high five—both Dragon's Dogma 2's best feature, and its greatest source of heartbreak. Even if I'll never truly be able to repay the karmic debt of leaving my Pawn hanging, I'm glad Capcom is at least giving me a button to push that'll lessen the deficit.

A prompted high-five with a spellcasting cat man can't beat the quality of a spontaneous one, but I'll do my best to make up for it in quantity.

Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen launches on Steam on October 8.