My party was on the verge of catastrophe. The roaming pack of bandits we’d started fighting had run headlong into a herd of goblins, but the catastrophe wasn’t over. Suddenly, a deafening roar echoed from above, followed by a Griffin careening into the battle like a meteor. Things had just gotten so much worse.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is an awe-inducing roleplaying game, a marvelously detailed world highlighted by a staggering focus on freedom and exploration. It’s an experience that doesn’t hold your hand, trusting the player to follow their own path at every turn. That idea, and some heavy simulation elements, can sometimes make Dragon’s Dogma 2 feel obtuse and frustrating, but it’s part of the process of creating an experience wholly unlike anything else. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is destined to go down as a defining moment for open world design, mentioned in the same breath as Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring.

In the 1984 film Ghostbusters, Dr. Ray Stantz chastises Dr. Peter Venkman for his lack of real-world experience. “You’ve never been out of college,” Stantz says. “You don’t know what it’s like out there... they expect results!”

The idea that people like Stantz and Venkman have never done anything resembling real work is a great metaphor for a Ghostbusters sequel. Because the foundation of the beloved franchise already exists, a new film in the series doesn’t have to do any real work to become a crowd-pleaser. If you’re cynical about a lack of original blockbuster movies, then the ghost of Ghostbusters — the new film Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire — might leave you cold.

But because Frozen Empire never pretends to be anything but what it is, it’s probably a waste of time to be too hard on this movie. This sequel didn’t need to exist, but it’s working very hard to make you like it, and only the iciest of hearts won’t crack a smile at least once.