Dungeon Siege III Previews

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Written by Brother None on March 19th, 2011

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When the combat kicks in, it's fast, fierce, and satisfying. This particular setting is inhabited by skeletons and other ghostly figures, some of which wielded melee weapons while others, specifically giant bat-like creatures, favored long ranged attacks. Luckily, because Anjali and Lucas favor similar tactics, the battles have a great sense of flow and variety and really push you to work together. Since Lucas doesn't have a ranged attack, dodging is vital, especially because it, like the dash attack, it lets him get to enemies quickly.

There were a couple special abilities on display in our demo, for example, one that makes Lucas spin violently and deal mucho damage on anyone in his path, but the standouts was Anjali's Aura of Immolation. This ability creates a deadly circle of fire that not only damages enemies but can also be upgraded to allow it to heal your teammates as well. It definitely felt counterintuitive to run towards fire to heal, but it kept us from death quite a bit, so we learned to accept it with haste.

The mini-boss I squared off against had a number of abilities which I had to figure out the hard way. The first laid down an effect on the ground which spawned skeletons if I walked through it. Another was an aura the boss activated which dealt huge damage to me if I attacked her. She also teleported around the room and had a frontal cone spell to keep me moving.

When the story elements kicked in, the evidence of Obsidian's heritage emerged. Dialogue options and morality choices appeared in the familiar form of a wheel centre-screen. As you would expect, the choices you make have an impact on the type of abilities you are awarded and the quests that eventually become available. In multiplayer your teammates can highlight their preferred choices on the wheel, but ultimately it is the lead player that has the power of veto. It's an unusual system that betrays the game's single-player focus, but it could lead to some invigorating headset squabbles in four player mode.

However, the power of Dungeon Siege would certainly lie in its gameplay. This game felt like a very up-to-date and polished version of some of the more old-school hack-and-slash titles like: Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance or yes, even some of the older Dungeon Siege titles. What I was impressed most by was the way they took all of the best RPG elements, such as gear and skill specialization and had made them feel vast, yet acceptable all at the same time. You will get quite a bit of gear in this game which means you will always have a lot of specialization options. Yet when choosing gear the UI does a great job of showing exactly what you will gain/lose from it, which keeps it accessible to the less math-minded amongst us.

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