Dungeon Siege II Preview
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The World If you had asked me prior to the release of Dungeon Siege whether it was possible to create an interesting RPG world that was essentially one long road, I wouldn't have believed it. But developer Gas Powered Games did it -- at least to some degree. The world was distinctive and interesting, but it didn't lend itself to telling any sort of story. And how could it, when you never stayed anywhere long enough to get to know the characters involved?
Well, things are a little bit the same and a little bit different in Dungeon Siege II. From what I've seen, the world will be one long road again, but now the game comes with teleporters. Much like the set-up employed by Diablo II, it looks as though each act in Dungeon Siege II will feature a hub town connected by teleporters to the rest of the areas in the act. That means, while new areas will progress linearly from explored areas, you'll be able to jump back to the town at any time (there's even a teleport spell for this) to sell items and to check on quests. And that means you'll be able to talk to people more and get to know them better, which is paramount in telling a story that people might care about. In fact, despite a similarly linear world, Dungeon Siege II feels much more like a regular RPG than its predecessor did.
Combat and Control
If developer Gas Powered Games heard one criticism of Dungeon Siege more than any other, it was probably that characters worked so well on their own that people barely had to do anything to play the game. Perhaps as a result, they've changed the way that combat and character control work.
For starters, (stance) orders (such as holding ground) can only be given to the party now, rather than to individual characters. That makes things easier, especially since there are only four stances rather than the 27 possible combinations of orders available before. The four stances are rampage (attack at will), guard (attack only when attacked), mirror (attack whoever the leader is attacking), and wait (do nothing). However, from my experience, only rampage really worked well, and it basically mimicked how characters behaved in Dungeon Siege.
And so perhaps the only real difference in combat and control involves the currently selected character. That character won't do anything unless you explicitly tell it to do something, and, worse, in order to attack, you can't just click on an enemy once, you have to right click on it each time you want the character to attack. Thankfully, you can hold down the right mouse button to cause the character to continue to attack, but that didn't work very well in the press build I played, and combat as a whole turned out to be a clunky mess.
I hope Gas Powered Games changes their mind about combat before they release the game. It's nice that you actually have to be more involved during battles (although I didn't mind letting my party do its thing in Dungeon Siege), but there's no good reason why you should have to click on an enemy more than once to attack it. The extra clicks just add stress to the hands of the players, and as somebody who plays games a lot, that's stress I don't need (I can't even play the original Diablo anymore; that game just wears my hand out).
Conclusion
The press build of Dungeon Siege II that I played was released in late March, and since the game won't hit stores until later this summer (knock on wood), things are certain to change. But so far at least, Dungeon Siege II is looking good. The graphics engine is superior, there are more options for character development, it appears there'll actually be a story, and more. I'd be shocked if Dungeon Siege II doesn't turn out to be a good game, and better than the original.
