The Making of Dungeon Siege

[GameBanshee News]

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has published a new "Making of" feature for Gas Powered Games' original Dungeon Siege, in which they offer quite a bit of commentary about the game's overall design from project leader Chris Taylor.

“We were really big fans of Diablo,” explains Chris when asked to explain where the concept for Dungeon Siege came from, “We really enjoyed that. In our business, we really do build on games ideas from one to the next. So if we see a game we really like we try and work out ways to improve it. When I saw Diablo, I was like “Awesome!”. Because I didn’t even know there was a market for that kind of game. I played Wizardry back in the 80s, and I loved it. But what happens is if no-one makes a game we don’t know if anyone wants to buy it. So we sometimes think a genre is dead. When Diablo was successful it was like: “AWESOME! Let’s build an RPG game… and let’s really go after the things which we think make RPGs great.” That is, exploration. Cool loot. Fantastic spells, and all that kind of thing.”

“We started there, and then decided that we wanted to go into 3D,” he continues, “We wanted to innovate in terms of experience, reduce some of the micro-management and make the game a little more strategic orientated with less of a click-fest.” Not that a more hands-off approach proved universally popular. “Some of the people criticised and said that the game played itself,” Chris explains.