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So it's basically the same game, but prettier and the pack mule has been replaced by a more dangerous animal.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

Exotic pets eating items? reminds me of something

[*weasel]

It reminds of the classiest 'garbage collection' design I encountered in early gaming.

Back in the day there was a frickin awesome game, Alternate Reality, published by Datasoft. Being an very old game, and having fixed memory limits, the developer had to keep players from hoarding too many items.

Thereby 'the devourer' was added to the game. It was a mean-and-nasty that would track down and attack the player. During combat, the devourer would eat random items from the player's pack.

The thing is, (unknown to me at the time) the devourer only came out when the player was getting dangerously close to the item limit.

Sure, you could eventually get powerful enough to fend one off before you lost an item - but another would always come.

It was just a real classy, practical design solution to a hardware limitation.

Though this has only tangential bearing on Dungeon Siege at best - Damn I loved that game.

(There were in fact 2 connected AR games, of a larger planned series. The City, and The Dungeon were the released games. I played primarily The Dungeon, and am only certain of the devourer in that context. I'm not certain if it was present in The City.)

You peta watch out, you peta not cry...

[stienman]

"You can buy these and develop them by feeding them different items you find in the world."

Oh great, now PETA's going to be 'weighing in' on the video game violence debate:

"And next in our presentation you'll see test subject B abusing his virtual kitty..."
"EAT THE STAFF YOU STUPID CAT! IT'LL GIVE YOU MORE POWER! EAT IT! EAAAAAAT IT!!!!! "
"As any idiot can see, congressman, this is going to lead to a world where children will abuse animals for special protection from trolls and hellhounds."

You are in a governement full of twisty laws, all alike. You are likely to be eaten by a lobbyist.

-Adam

Re:Hmmm

[Pizzop]

they already have the game screensaver, check here: Progress Quest

Multiplayer?

[Sylver Dragon]

I just hope the multiplayer is better implimented in DS2 than it was in DS1. My group tried playing this one at a LAN party, and the lack of thought in MP really showed. The entire method of scaling the game for more players seemed to revolve around giving the enemies a ton of hit points. So you'd end up hacking at a single enemy like it was a damned redwood tree. It eventually got so bad that the fighters of our group would set thier character to attack an enemy, and then go out to the kitchen to get sodas. We even had one person take a break by having his character follow another character. The nearest person would just reach over occasionally to hit the "take a healing potion" button. And (insert diety here) forbid that you were stupid enough to be a mage, you would sit there blasting off the most powerful spells in the game repeatedly, chugging mana potion after mana potion, and be lucky to drop an enemy before you ran out, or the enemy got a hold of you and killed you.
In all, the multiplayer just didn't seem very polished. It eventually broke down into everyone being a fighter type, with just enough magic to cast a heal spell now and again. And far too long chopping at the same damned enemy. Some of the elements in the game were great, and I really wanted to like it, but I just couldn't get past the obvious problems.

Re:Argh! Another Pokemon/charabom/capsule!

[Quarters]

Yeah, and that whole holding a weapon while running around in 1st person mode while shooting things is just a major fad.

Don't even get me started on the hackneyed "top down, resource management, build a building to build a unit type, mass them and attack your enemies" game type. Man is that worn out!

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

[Sigma 7]

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

Why exactly is that a bad thing? I have seen that feature reproduced in other games, and find it to be quite convienent since you do not have to stop fighting in order to prime one or more of your spells.

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.

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

Didn't notice the problem in either single or multi player. The single player campaign is considered linear enough that you can generally tell which direction is forward or backward. The multiplayer campaign has signposts scattered through the dungeons/map that you can tell which direction to head next.

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

Are you sure? I've attempted to complete the game with one character, and ended up having to recruit NPCs because of the difficulty in single-handedly killing off the monsters. Not only that, but I've had cases where monsters actually managed to knock out (and even kill) some of my characters.

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

For single-player, that is a problem. However, that's why you hire packmules - you can purchase two at the first town in single player, and thus have a lot of carring capacity for magical items you can pick up.

Multiplayer, as you know, implements statically placed teleporters - if you reach a distant teleport pad, you can return to town without too much problem.

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

To complete the official multiplayer campaign, all you need are the eight city stones and to ensure the primary quest triggers have been primed by talking to the priests that hand out the primary quests. The HUB system allows teleportation between cities, thus allowing you to easily tag the quests as complete with minimal problem. As a result, you don't need save the world state in multiplayer.

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.

DS I, Mac Version: C

[Spencerian]

GPG actually ported DS to Mac OS X. It's playability was stronger due to a typical Mac's better-than-standard-issue video card (in my case, initially a GeForce 4MX 32MB).

It wasn't much different than Diablo II in playability, although I appreciated the ability to blend abilities to create characters, unlike in Diablo II where the character type is quite fixed.

I, too, was disappointed with the overall plot (the word "contrived" fits well) and lacked Diablo and Diablo II's storyline that kept its rigid universe interesting. Weapons, armor, and graphics were very nice, including the use of a true mule for loot (no other game since that has been popular enough for me to play on Mac OS X has duplicated this), the wide, wide world that had lots to explore (particularly the MP map), and showing definitive changes to the character's appearance as armor and weapons are added.

The bad news: The Mac version lacked an inherent MP game list system, since DirectPlay is not available for Mac OS X. Thankfully, GameRanger, a free game access service for some Mac games, worked well to link up Mac users. Next, while the Mac and PC versions essentially did and used the same resources, the use of DirectPlay for the PC version and coding changes with the Mac version made it impossible to play with PC users, nor was it possible to port character or game files from PC version to Mac, or vice versa.

That, and stability was a problem in some configurations. Overall, I enjoyed it for many months--it was actually the first game that broke my routine play of Diablo II, after I played that game and its expansion for almost 3 years.

Neither Diablo II nor Dungeon Siege hold a candle to Neverwinter Nights and its 2 expansions. Being an online adaptation of the D&D world, this game was designed for storylines, but does not slouch on game play in the slightest. And, although the official Mac versions of the two game expansions are not yet available, Mac OS X users can install the Linux game components to play both expansions without issue. Character and game files are easily transportable, and Mac, Windows, and Linux users can play and host without issue (only the Windows users can create worlds as the toolset was made only for this platform).

Still, I would appreciate a DS II if it arrives for Mac OS X. However, since GPG (and the Mac company, MacSoft, that ported the game) has not worked to bring its single expansion of DS I, called Legends of Arrana, to Mac OS X, I doubt it may show any earlier than 1 year--if at all--after DS II arrives for the PC. And, after enjoying the diversity of NWN, I'd be more cautious on the quality and usability of a GPS game.

Re:DS I, Mac Version: C

[Quarters]

It's playability was stronger due to a typical Mac's better-than-standard-issue video card (in my case, initially a GeForce 4MX 32MB).

I can't tell if you are being funny or if that is some misguided Mac zealotry. A GeForce 4MX 32MB as standard issue? Such a card is standard issue on a Mac? That somehow qualifies as a way to make the playability of DSI on a Mac better than on a PC?

A GeForce 4MX (64Mb, as the 32s aren't available any more) goes for a paltry $40.00. It's not even a GF4 level card as it lacks pixel and and vertex shaders. It's a renamed GF2 card.

It was behind the curve when it came out 2+ years ago. It was strictly a budget card. If that is "better-than-standard-issue" for a Mac I'd hate to know what you consider to be standard issue.

Wow - good game!!!

[JMZero]

I like the large selection of races/classes. I think there's some interesting possibilities there - although I'm going to try to get through it with my Runeloremaster before I play with any other stuff (it won't be easy, but it'll be worth it!). I like the streamlined game mechanics. The interface is very well thought out - and loads of variety.

Thanks!

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*.