Recently, Yuji Horii, the creator of the Dragon Quest series, gave an interview to Famitsu, discussing some past experiences with Dragon Quest 11. He stated that the protagonist of this game was the "most difficult to bring to life" in the entire series, to the point that he and the late manga artist Akira Toriyama went through five or six rounds of discussions and revisions before finally shaping the current protagonist of Dragon Quest 11.
"Mr. Toriyama always said, 'The protagonist is the hardest to design.' Indeed, it's very difficult to depict a protagonist's traits. Basically, I would explain to Mr. Toriyama what kind of protagonist we wanted to create, and then he would draw it for me. If the drawing didn't quite match our vision, we would explain again and have him redraw it... That's how it went. The most difficult one to draw was Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age (released on July 19, 2017). I remember going back and forth with revisions five or six times, always feeling something was off..."
Yuji Horii then stated that the difficulty in designing a protagonist lies not just in creating a cool look: "Subjective factors are the key elements that need adjustment, such as the character not feeling like a protagonist, being too ordinary, too eccentric, or not eccentric enough... It's truly hard to craft a protagonist because they must be a character players like, straightforward, and possess just the right amount of charm and a calm personality—neither too strong nor too weak."
Incidentally, just before the release of Dragon Quest 11, it was revealed during an official roundtable discussion held in 2017 that the protagonist's design underwent repeated attempts. Since the concept of this game was "a hero being pursued," Akira Toriyama initially drew the protagonist in ragged clothes based on this imagery. However, this idea was ultimately rejected.
Akira Toriyama recalled at the time: "It's hard to express that sense of being pursued... I feel that around Dragon Quest III, I had exhausted all the variations of the 'good guy' type. So in the later parts of the series, I tried to avoid designs similar to previous works, which made the drawing process increasingly difficult."