Dungeon Siege II: Broken World Preview

The guys at IGN PC have put together a detailed preview of Gas Powered Games' upcoming Dungeon Siege II: Broken World expansion pack.
On the bright side, there are two new character classes to offset these new challenges somewhat. They're "multiclass" characters, which in Dungeon Siege jargon means that they combine the abilities of two pre-existing classes, while having their own abilities and gear tailored to them. The Fist of Stone is a fighter with proficiency in nature magic; he makes heavy use of seismic attacks and flying rocks, as his name suggests. Although a nature mage can temporarily enchant his weapon, the Fist of Stone's combat prowess drastically increases the quality of these enchants. Using a weapon enchant also allows the FoS to split his experience between nature magic and pure melee (a player increases his proficiency through repetition), so this way the FoS can swing his weapon most of the time but still be able to heal, buff his party members, and do other things a nature mage can.

The other new class is the Blood Assassin, a ranger who also uses some combat magic. In the tradition of a warlock, she uses her own health as a pool from which to draw some devastating attacks and crippling debuffs. Sometimes it's just an devastating trap that destroys everything within a certain radius, and other times she might boost the party's attack power for a brief time, and the cost of health regeneration. Her most interesting ability is Execute, which works in tandem with a batch of "rune" spells that have different effects. Depending on which rune she's marked an enemy with, triggering Execute will have a different effect -- it could be poison, fire, or pure damage.