Chris Taylor Talks Dungeon Siege II Details

Thanks to GameSpy for its overview of the changes and interview with Gas Powered Games boss Chris Taylor regarding PC action RPG sequel Dungeon Siege II, due out via Microsoft later in 2004. Taylor, lead designer of the classic RTS Total Annihilation, discusses the original Dungeon Siege ("Overall the response was very positive, and most criticism was offered as a call for features in a sequel"), and reveals features for the sequel including (Phantasy Star Online mag-like?) "exotic pets", of which he explains: "You can buy these and develop them by feeding them different items you find in the world."

Comments

Translation:

[WinnipegDragon]

So it's basically the same game, but prettier and the pack mule has been replaced by a more dangerous animal.

How about this. Make me care about the character, the storyline, and give me more than four skills to improve on and then we can talk. The first game in this series made Diablo seem like a deep RPG...

DS 1 = looked pretty, crap game

[DamienMcKenna]

My wife and I bought Dungeon Siege when it came out as we like Diablo-esque games and the previews painted a picture of it being so. After getting it we were overjoyed with the graphics and overall polish, but he game itself sucketh verily:

* You had little to do in the game other than tell the characters where to move - fighting was automatic.

* The levels were quite sprawling with many parts leaving you wondering where to go next.

* The end game was a huge let-down, with the rest of the game being so graphically beautiful, we were expecting something impressive.

* The enemies weren't very difficult so you could get through the entire game in one playing.

* No jump-to-town spells or potions, meaning that you had to walk huge distances to sell your stuff.

* Due to all of the above the boredom factor set in quite quickly.

The multi-player side of the game was actually worse. Take the above faults and add:

* You had to complete an entire world in one go as the save-game didn't record what you had already done.

* Each world was huge.

Put those together and you effectively had to play for 12+ hours straight to finish a world, otherwise it was a waste of time.

After finishing the game once (took a day) we gave up on it altogether.

The only positive side of the game might be the mods, but there weren't any available when we last played it (two years ago).

Damien

Re:DS 1 = looked pretty, crap game

[king-manic]

Regaurdless it was a worse then mediochre game that looked great but played horribly. I never got past the first dungeon just becuase of sheer disgust. It distilled out all the good parts of a lot of other games and the left overs was item management/exploration. Nothing to get excited about.

Re:DS 1 = looked pretty, crap game

[vadim_t]

Requiring the player to keep clicking to attack is a bad thing. As an example, take Nox: you have to do some fancy movements with your mouse in order to defeat some powerful monsters -- click on monster to attack, swing mouse to other side of screen and click to retreat, swing mouse back to attack monster, etc. One wrong move, and you are either dead, or have 90% of your health taken off. Failing to have ultra-1337 mousing skills should not warrent a player's death.

And this is exactly something that I miss. DS is pretty, but that's all that it really is. Nox was very diablo-like but it was fun because it was challenging and actually required some ability - mousing ability as you said.

Games like BG2 on the other hand, are won through thinking - knowing what skills to apply where, how to use your characters the best, etc.

DS requires no ability of any kind at all. Attack is automated. There's no need to think. The campaign is braindead - no real story of any kind I could see from the first few hours. Somehow they made something even more boring than Diablo, where at least some ability was needed.

Dungeon Siege SUCKS

[aeoo]

Sorry, the guy is a brilliant computer game engine maker, but he wouldn't know a good game if it bit him where the sun doesn't shine.

They've never heard of the word "gameplay", never played Nethack or Angband, thus they do not know their roots and in general, they have no clue.

Like many others, I was astonished at how great the engine was, how smooth and pretty and how there was no load time, etc...but THE GAME??? What about the GAME? Where is the gameplay?

I'm not going to buy DS2 unless the reviews rave about *gameplay*.