Dungeon Siege III Review
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Though the Dungeon Siege franchise was originally developed by Gas Powered Games for Microsoft (and later 2K Games), Obsidian is known for taking on sequel projects from other developers, most notably the sequels to BioWare's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Bethesda's Fallout 3. Their sole wholly original property to date, Alpha Protocol, underperformed, though arguably for reasons tangential to the game itself. Every Obsidian game preceding DS3 has suffered from technical issues of varying degrees: from the literally unfinished KOTOR 2 to the crashes and corrupted saves of Fallout: New Vegas.
Yet these glitches and rough edges have largely been balanced by the excellence of each of these game's stories and characters. Fortunately, from my experience so far, having played through this game twice as different characters while doing every side quest and vacuuming up every bit of coin and loot I could lay my hands on, it appears Obsidian have maintained their winning tradition in the writing department, while also delivering a solid and highly polished technical experience. Playing the PC version, I experienced absolutely zero significant issues: no crashes, no unfinishable quests, no pathing weirdness, and no corrupted saves even though I never passed a save point without using it. It also ran smoothly and looked gorgeous on maxed settings even on my fairly mid-range PC.
But yes, I said (save point.) Even on the PC, you can't just save wherever you wish. Luckily, the save points are logically and generously placed, so it wasn't too much of an issue. The fact that one was located immediately before (and after) every major encounter was nice, but also took some of the element of surprise and danger out of it. Seeing a save point in a dungeon became like seeing a chest-high wall ahead in Mass Effect 2, (Gee, I wonder if this means I'm about to be attacked?) On (Normal) difficulty, experienced players will hardly need any saves anyway. Normal was just hard enough to force me to use most of my abilities to my best advantage, but not so hard that I was ever likely to throw my controller. Like Dungeon Siege 2, you only (die) if everyone in your party is dead simultaneously. Throughout the game on Normal, there were a few moments where my character was knocked out, but luckily my AI party member was useful enough to hold their own until they could resurrect me. Only a few times in Normal did we completely (wipe) and have to reload. Hardcore was a different story entirely. I wiped hard and repeatedly, particularly in the early game before I picked up any party members or learned many abilities. Even ordinary packs of mobs had to be kited and hit-and-run tactics applied.
