Dungeon Siege III Previews

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Written by Brother None on June 17th, 2010

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A few new previews of Obsidian's upcoming Dungeon Siege III have hit the internet. The general consensus seems to be that people are positively impressed by Obsidian's Onyx engine, though the gameplay seems fairly predictable. Joystiq.

As I was taking in the perspective, the next thing I noticed was the high level of polish -- impressive considering that this is a game that's traditionally been able to trade detail for an expanded field of view. Within the first few moments of the demo Obsidian showed off an imposing vista that's both decorative and practical, giving you an accurate sense of your location in the world. You've also got all the character detail and dynamic lighting you'd hope for, but not necessarily expect in an isometric action RPG.

The third-person action-RPG looks stunning: from the subtle details of fish swimming in ponds to the distant towns on the horizon, Dungeon Siege III is full of ambient, rich and colorful environments that all load in seamlessly (no loading time seen from outside world to cavernous depths!). The lighting looked particularly spectacular. You have a variety of classes to choose from (Archon, Druid, Guardian and more), all of which offer a different gameplay experience.

There's a bit of controversy around developer Obsidian taking over the franchise from original developer Gas Powered Games after publisher Square Enix bought the intellectual property. To keep the game true to its roots, Obsidian makes sure that Gas Powered's Chris Taylor sees every milestone and has input on overarching decisions that play into the lore of Dungeon Siege.

Graphics aside, the actual game play matched up with what I've come to expect from this kind of game. Enemies appear and you hack/slash/magic them to death. As this was a hands-off demo I didn't get to actually see how well the game controlled, but it certainly didn't look to involve an overly complex control scheme. Additionally, combat seem to be as automated or macro heavy as earlier entries had been, so players were dNot too much detail was given, but Obsidian said that inventory management for the console version wouldn't be a tedious and unbearable chore. One little feature that they've added to help with this is that whenever you stand next to item before picking it up, you'll see the name of the item, it's color (to indicate quality/rarity), and then it's sell value right below that so you can see right away how much it's worth and whether or not it would be worth picking it up to sell later.

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