Today, during the second day of the Dragon Quest Summer Festival 2017 at the Big Sight venue in Tokyo, Square Enix revealed a Dragon Quest X anime short that hits you rights in the feelings, and it's not because we're probably never getting the game in the west.

Back in December, Dragon Quest X Producer Yosuke Saito invited players to share their stories on how the game influenced their lives, helping them connect with distant family and friends, or bringing forth encounters that led to life-changing events like marriage.

You hear stories like those in every MMORPG, and all of us who explore those fantastic virtual worlds daily have a few of our own many of our own to tell.

The initiative, called "The Adventurers' Miracle" was to lead to the selection of three of those stories, to be publicized during the celebrations for the fifth anniversary of the game (which happened on August 2nd this year).

In April, the winning stories were announced, and Square Enix also revealed that they would be turned into anime shorts.

The first was "The Feeling of a Name" from a player whose character name in the game is "Yukina."

The anime short was indeed aired today during the Summer Festival celebration, and you can watch a recording at the bottom of the post.

At the beginning, we see the character name input screen of the game, with the name "Yukina" being typed in. The scene changes to a family playing Dragon Quest X in their living room. The father plays a weddie named Yuuri, while the mother plays an elf named Yukina.

Their daughter joins them as they watch the fireworks for the anniversary of the game (the calendar reveals that it's August 2nd, 2016), and the girls tells her father that it's like they were celebrating the birthday of her sister Yukina.

Yuuri is taken aback but his daughter's remark, and tells her that it's late, and she should go to bed. Of course she wants to stay and watch the fireworks. As the festival continues, Yuuri seems to realize something, then looks at a picture showing him, his wife and a kid.

The scene shifts to four years before, when Yukina is creating her character on the old (and now discontinued) Wii version of the game. Her husband asks her what kind of character she is creating, and she wonders if their daughter Yukina would have grown up like that. We learn, in fact, that "Yukina" is actually the name of their elder daughter, who passed away a while before. Yuuri approves the idea of naming his wife's character like their lost daughter, while she hopes to make a lot of friends.

As time passes, the characters Yukina and Yuuri grow in the game, as their players make friends and many memories.

We get back to the present day, as Yuuri is chatting from a cafe on his laptop, and his friends start talking about the 5th anniversary event, and how they're going to watch the fireworks together. That's when Yuuri comes up with an idea.

That evening, Yuuri, his wife and his daughter are watching the fireworks again, and as they start to go off, their friend "Ren" shouts "Happy 15th birthday Yukina!" The real Yukina would be fifteen years old that day, if she was still alive. Of course, everyone else joins in to celebrate Yukina's birthday.

Naturally, the wife is left speechless, and Yuuri admits that everyone collaborated to celebrate Yukina's birthday. His wife responds "thank you" and they both cry as they visualize the elf Yukina as their daughter as she would be on her fifteenth birthday that never came.

The short ends with the whole family wishing Yukina-chan happy birthday.

After the airing of the video, hosts, developers and guests on stage were all moved, some to tears, and if you know what's happening in the video, and that it's indeed a true story shared by players, it's quite impactful on the feelings.

Two more of these shorts are planned. The second will be titled "Beyond Time and Space, Meet me in Astoltia" (Astoltia is the name of Dragon Quest X's world) and will come in the fall. A third episode will also come down the line.

Update: Square Enix has released the direct feed version of the video, which you can see below.

During the same livestream, Square Enix also announced Dragon Quest Builders II for PS4 and Switch (alongside a few more pieces of info), the launch of Dragon Quest, Dragon Quest II and Dragon Quest III as digital releases in Japan for PS4 and 3DS, and  the release date and new trailers for Itadaki Street: Dragon Quest & Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary, alongside new gameplay.

It was also disclosed that Dragon Quest XI shipped over three million units in Japan, and we got the reveal of its original character concepts, some of which are quite different from the final result.

Speaking of Dragon Quest X, yesterday we saw the reveal of the new expansion, that will launch in Japan on November 16th.

Dragon Quest X is currently available in Japan for Wii U and PC, and will soon be released for PS4 and Switch. Unfortunately, a western release is unlikely at this point.