Dungeon Siege III Interview
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GB: I've seen white-, green-, and blue-colored items so far. Is that the progression? Rich: Yeah, it's pretty much the standard. We have the white, the green, the blue, and then I believe the top tier is orange- or gold-colored.
GB: So the top tier is unique and handcrafted?
Rich: The gold ones? I believe we call them artifact items. Yeah, they're usually from a quest reward or a secret hidden chest you found; each one is specifically placed because the idea was, "Hey, if the player finds this, here's a really nice reward for coming across it." And those will tend to be the gold items.
GB: Will the artifact items ever just randomly drop during a boss fight or even from standard enemies?
Rich: Yeah, they can.
GB: You've previously mentioned that are something like 15,000 different item possibilities in the game. How many of those are artifact items? And are any of them set items?
Rich: You know, I don't have a number, but there are no set pieces. As far as how many are uniquely made, it's well over a hundred, but I don't know an exact number.
GB: Despite the game being very story-driven, have you incporporated the ability for players to do boss runs? In other words, can we farm bosses for gold, experience, and loot?
Rich: There actually isn't. And that's one of those cases where it just doesn't fit the story and the progression through the main quest to be able to go back and keep farming a boss over and over. Normal enemies in the areas will respawn, but typically there will only be a few cases where optional bosses will respawn.
In my head, I'm thinking of two that would be there every time you went there. But on the whole, major story villains are not going to keep coming back. Usually the fact that they're even there is part of an event sequence that you've set in motion, so they're just not going to be there every time.
GB: But it would be possible, with the two you mentioned, to farm for items?
Rich: Yeah. I think more towards the optional bosses, that becomes a possibility.
GB: From what I understand, there's no way to respec a character. Is that correct?
Rich: That's correct. We're looking at about a 15-hour to 20-hour gameplay experience. If you want to try something else, it's best to just start over the game and do another run-through. It's not like you're committed to an 80-hour marathon play-through to try out a different character. We actually hope that people do a quick play-through with another character.
When you beat it once, why not just jump in for a few hours on another character and see if you want to take it all the way with them? Now try out this character, see if you want to take them all the way through. But yeah, we've talked about respecing as a feature. Right now it's not in.
GB: Thank you very much for your time, Rich.
