“The Sphinx was one of the monsters I most wanted to add to the game,” says director Hideaki Itsuno.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is promising to be an absolutely massive experience, and while it doesn’t look like there will be any shortage of excellent content even if you decide to stick to its main story, Capcom is still tucking away a bevy of optional content for players to find and engage with. The developer has unveiled another slice of that – courtesy of a new video by IGN – in the form of Sphinx, a completely optional and mysterious enemy that will test players in entirely unique ways.

“The Sphinx was one of the monsters I most wanted to add to the game,” says director Hideaki Itsuno.

In dealing with the Sphinx, your primary objective will be to solve the riddles it presents to you, and since Dragon’s Dogma 2 is an action RPG, you’ll be doing that largely through action and combat.

“The Sphinx is all about riddles, right?” Itsuno says. “I wanted players to solve the Sphinx’s riddles, but through action, as this is an action game. We came up with lots of ideas for riddles solved through action gameplay.”

That’s not where the riddles end though, because apparently, even whether or not you can fight the monster in combat is going to be a riddle in and of itself.

“Whether or not you can defeat or even fight the Sphinx is a riddle too,” Itsuno says. “We’d like that to be a part of the fun players have dealing with the Sphinx and its riddles. The journey to finding it might actually be the biggest mystery of them all.”

Interestingly, lead game designer Kento Kinoshita says that even though Sphinx is “one of this game’s feature attractions”, it’s completely optional and “has nothing to do with the progression of the main game.”

“It’s such a special part of the game, but exists way off in its own corner,” he said. “There are other large monsters like that, too.”

“We can’t go into too much detail, but we’ve really gone all out,” Itsuno added. “I imagine there will be a lot of players who beat the game without even encountering the Sphinx.”

Itsuno and Kinoshita also went on to talk about other similar optional content in the game, saying that there will be plenty of completely optional things to find in Dragon’s Dogma 2’s massive open world that many players may never encounter. Read more on that through here.

Recently, gameplay footage of the action RPG’s Trickster Vocation was showcased, while prior to that, 18 minutes of footage showed off the Fighter, Thief, Warrior, and Sorcerer Vocations.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 launches on March 22 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.