Dungeon Siege III Preview
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The Characters
Dungeon Siege III features four characters, and in what is a bit of an unusual twist for Obsidian Entertainment, their models, genders, histories, and advancement opportunities have all been pre-determined. Aside from selecting your equipment and choosing which character-specific proficiencies, talents, and abilities you'd like to take during a level-up, there are no customization options to speak of. While that news came across as somewhat disappointing to me, I suppose it only makes sense considering that the game is much more story-driven than the previous titles in the series.
Only two of the characters have been officially revealed at the time of this writing: a melee-focused Guardian named Lucas Montbarron and a fire-controlling Archon named Anjali. These two characters play considerably different to one another - Lucas sports sword-and-shield and two-handed weapon stances, while Anjali has both a polearm-swinging human stance and a fire-tossing elemental stance. The team describes Lucas and Anjali as the more easy-to-play hack 'n slash types, while the other two characters (a male caster and a gun-wielding woman, based on my sleuthing) will be a bit more advanced and require more skill to play. Whether or not that proves to be the case is yet to be seen.
Character Development, Dialogue, and Lore
As is standard fare for virtually any action RPG, experience is gained by finishing quests and dominating hordes of creatures. When your character levels up, they gain one proficiency point, one talent point, and, at specific level intervals, they're given a choice between one of nine abilities that are split up between Recruit, Legionnaire, and Master tiers. For the sake of sharing some examples, Anjali can pick between the Recruit abilities of Spinning Kick, Aura of Immolation, and Inner Warmth at low levels, the Legionnaire abilities of Hurl Spear, Summon Jackal, and Ignite at mid-levels, and the Master abilities of Fall From the Heavens, Pillar of Fire, and Volatile Barrier when she's high level.
Once you've started to pick up some abilities, you can assign your proficiency points to either of the two child proficiencies that accompany each. Using one of the previous examples, points can be allocated to either the Crushing Impact or Fire Dance proficiencies below Anjali's Spinning Kick ability. Essentially, each proficiency enhances the ability's effectiveness in some way, such as increasing its damage or range, or adding a lifetap or stun effect. On top of any added proficiencies, character abilities can also reach a "mastery" stage after a significant amount of use. Once you've achieved mastery with an ability, you'll be able to take advantage of its limited-use special attack. Using Anjali's Summon Jackal ability as an example, once you've unlocked its mastery, you'll be able to send the jackal into a group of foes and detonate it as some kind of four-legged suicide bomber.
Talents are a mixture of passive and active skills that your character can possess. There are a total of ten talents per character, but like abilities, they are not all immediately available to you (Anjali had four talents to pick from at level 2). As many as five talent points can be allocated to each one, so you can either spice your character up with some variety or keep them specialized within a specific skillset. Some talent examples for Lucas include Devastating Criticals, Force of Will, Victory Rush, Wrathful Might, Focus Rage, and Death Defying. Most of these do exactly what they sound like - Devastating Criticals, for instance, increases his critical damage by 10% for each point that you allocate to it and Victory Rush will inflict damage to any foes within Lucas' path when he's propelled forward.
I didn't see any way to manually adjust my character's stamina, agility, or will (other than to don an item that affected my attributes), and it would have been nice to see the addition of some non-combat abilities, but it looks like we're still going to get enough customization across these three categories of development to keep us satiated. The specialization options are fairly diverse, and since you'll never receive enough points to max out all of the proficiencies and talents (the build I was shown had a level cap of 30), there will most likely be a variety of interesting builds that people will be coming up with. The only real issue I foresee is that experimentation will be a bit difficult, as there's currently no way to respec in the game.
If you've ever played an Obsidian-developed RPG before, then you should have a pretty good idea of what to expect from the dialogue. When you speak to an NPC, the camera zooms in on the conversation (which serves as a great opportunity to check out the impressive character models and lip synching technology) and you're given as many as four dialogue options to pick from. The options are all fairly short, though, so what you choose will not be directly reflected when your character speaks. For example, when being offered a quest by a friendly fisherman, I chose a response of "Who are you?". Instead, Anjali spouted out something like "I need to know more about you before I can commit to this task."
I didn't see any reason to think that the game's dialogue options are influenced by a character's attributes, talents, or proficiencies, but during my interview with George Ziets, the creative lead confirmed that at least some of the choices we make during quests and in dialogue will have consequences later on. I also didn't see any way to trigger dialogue with my companions outside of scripted cutscenes; however, they do provide a small amount of banter as you travel through Ehb. When fighting my way through one of the game's dungeons, for instance, Lucas made a few remarks about the history of the location we were in and even suggested that I try pulling a lever to lower a bridge when I reached an otherwise impassable river.
There's something to be said about the ample amounts of lore and history that Obsidian has packed into this game, too. Even though I played through both Dungeon Siege and Dungeon Siege II on multiple occasions, I honestly couldn't tell you a whole lot about their settings or storylines (other than they both took place in Ehb). With Dungeon Siege III, however, there's a designated lore tab in the main menu that was already brimming with information shortly into the game. As I walked through one of the earlier keeps, there was an assortment of notes I could read, bookcases I could examine, and desks full of papers that I could sift through. I'm sure there will be plenty of people who spend little to no time in the game's lore section, but I for one am glad it's there.
Combat, Loot, and Inventory Management
Since your character's stance determines which weapon you're wielding and which talents are mapped to your primary controls, it's going to be the most important decision you make during combat. Playing Anjali as a kicking, staff-swinging human is a much different experience than playing her in the ranged combat-oriented fire elemental stance, so you'll always want to make sure that you're in the most useful stance for the environment that you're in. It's also important to switch between stances to make sure your health and focus (mana) don't get too low - you might find that some of your abilities are great for keeping enemies at bay, but only the game's base attacks will replenish your focus. There are also green (health) and blue (focus) orbs to be nabbed from fallen enemies, but based on my experience, you'll need to come up with a good rhythm of stance switching to maintain a healthy character. Remember, there are no potions!
In addition to your repertoire of attacks, you can also make use of blocks and dodges. Dodging saved me from certain death on a couple of occasions and blocking tends to be very useful, as it will cause the blocked attack to damage your focus rather than your health. Regardless of how often you mix up your attacks, blocks, and dodges, you'll always know how effective your strategy is, as the screen is filled with hovering damage numbers and large screen-shaking "CRITICAL" alerts whenever a critical hit is scored.
Boss and lieutenant (mini-boss) fights are of particular importance in an action RPG, and I'm happy to report that there is no shortage of them in Dungeon Siege III. You'll know when you encounter either type, as a health bar will show up in the middle of the screen and a glowing aura will appear around the larger-than-life monster. This aura isn't just for looks, either. When the team went to battle a massive spider called Palefang that was inhabiting Shadowrift Cavern, its aura imbued a haste effect on all of the smaller spiders within it. Combined with the bite, lunge, and projectile attacks that Palefang was making use of, the 10+ minute battle looked very difficult and even forced our demonstrators (including project director Rich Taylor) to comment that balancing was still an ongoing process.
It was during this boss fight that I picked up on a few interesting points. First, some bosses are vulnerable and resistant to particular attacks - Palefang, for example, was immune to stun and would simply become dazed for a short period of time when a stun attack was used. Secondly, there is no inherent health regeneration of any kind. If it exists at all, it's clearly only activated through talents, proficiencies, or equipment bonuses. Thirdly, all the enemies in the game have a static level and associated difficulty. Therefore, if you're having trouble taking down the standard or boss enemies in a region, you may want to backtrack to gain additional experience or purchase some new equipment before pushing forward.
Somewhat surprisingly, inventory management isn't handled by the grid system that we saw in the original titles or other popular RPGs (including the upcoming Deus Ex: Human Revolution). Instead, all of the equipment you pick up or purchase is categorized by slot and then displayed as a sorted list with the highest gold value item in that category shown at the top. Hovering over any of the items in the list shows you a statistical comparison to what you currently have equipped, so it should be a fairly quick process to figure out which items aren't worth carrying around.
If you decide that an item will never be used, you can either haul it back to the nearest merchant or immediately transmute it into gold. The former route will obviously net you a better profit, but if you want to press on through a dungeon and don't want to take the time to visit a merchant just to free up some inventory space, then transmuting is a better choice than simply dropping an item (keep in mind that there is no packmule or similar pet this time around). To give you an idea of what sort of returns to expect from the process, I transmuted some boots with a gold value of 30 and ended up receiving 3 gold. It's not much, but it's better than nothing.
Speaking of gold, it's worth mentioning that you simply walk over any gold that's littering the ground after defeating a group of enemies or smashing a handful of barrels. On occasion, you'll receive a gold bar as loot, in which case you have to actually pick it up to add its worth to your gold amount (a small bar that I found was worth 143 gold, for example). I really didn't get to play enough of the game to get a sense of the game's economy and how much of a role gold will end up playing, but I did notice that some merchants even sell high value unique items, so my guess is that every gold piece will be coveted.
Item drops in Dungeon Siege III follow the traditional white/green/blue rarity color scheme, with the aforementioned unique artifact items sporting a goldish orange color. If Palefang's death is anything to go by, bosses will traditionally drop 4-5 random items when they die. The equipment that drops is highly skewed in favor of the character(s) playing (rifles and muskets will rarely drop if you're playing Anjali, for example), but it's not impossible to receive an item nobody can use. All item types, save for rings and amulets, are designed with a specific character in mind. That means that Anjali won't be able to equip items meant for Lucas, and vice versa. This decision could prove to be controversial, but I suppose it also means that the only point of contention during a co-op game will be who gets to use the Amulet of the Gods that flew out of a barrel.
From what I saw, weapons have dozens of statistics and effects that they can possess, including Doom (increased critical chance), Momentum (bonus attack speed), Block (better blocking ability), Chaos: Lightning (all four elements are supported, of course), Chaos: Bloodletting (inflicts bleed wounds), Chaos Vampire (chance to drain life), and many more. Defensive equipment shares many of the same attributes, though it's also worth mentioning that all armor animations are tiered and character-specific, meaning that no character will ever wear the same-looking armor and all armor you find at level 30 (or whatever the level cap ends up being) will look very impressive regardless of its stats.
The Onyx Engine and Art Design
Without a doubt, Dungeon Siege III is the best-looking Obsidian-developed game to date. Not only do the animations and buzzword-laden effects look amazing on PC (and slightly less so on consoles), but the camera swivels and zooms in smoothly and comfortably, too. There are two separate zoom modes (near and semi-far), and both suit their purposes well (the former being something of a vanity cam and the latter being your standard action RPG vantage point). You can tell the Onyx Engine suits this type of third-person RPG very well - it reminds me of a modernized version of the Snowblind Engine that powered the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath titles - and based on what the team told me during my visit to the Obsidian offices, the toolset that accompanies it sports all of the options they've found to be most valuable through years of RPG development experience.
A colorful fantasy art style is utilized when moving through the game's early overland regions, but the castle, caves, and dungeons I saw had a foreboding and moody style to them. Some areas even had a steampunk feel to them, and as you might have expected, they were filled with automatons and bomb-tossing goblins (that flew across the screen when struck hard enough). The subterranean levels are fairly dark, but doorways and important objects are illuminated by deliberately placed candles and torches. The light being shed from such sources realistically dances on any characters that pass by and, in one of the dungeons I was shown, will even paint a sparkly sheen on underground rivers as they pass through.
The artists at Obsidian had specific design goals in mind when they approached each of the four characters, too. For example, Anjali's art design called for propane-inspired colors, so a vast majority of her attacks are comprised of a blue, white, and orange color mixture with an inky black perimeter. And to ensure that all of the weapon and spell effects fit such design goals, they were painted by hand and the 2D art was then converted into 3D and injected with the appropriate physics. The smoothness of the engine combined with this attention to detail is what really makes the game stand out in the graphics department.
Multiplayer
I've tried my hand at quite a few action RPGs over the years, but the titles that drew my interest most were those that featured cooperative multiplayer. Thankfully, Dungeon Siege III follows the tradition of the first two titles in the series by allowing as many as four players to team up and battle their way through the game start-to-finish. There are some notable differences in the way the game plays when you're adventuring with a friend or three, though, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to devote a section to the multiplayer mechanics.
One of the main focuses the team had when developing the co-op multiplayer mode was to make it as drop-in and drop-out friendly as possible. Essentially, this means that if you're playing through the game with an AI-controlled companion, and your friend/brother/whatever sits down next to you and wants to play, they can immediately take control of the companion (and switch to any of the other characters that have been recruited during the story at that point) regardless of what you're doing at the time. And they won't be jumping in three levels behind, either - experience sharing is always kept in sync across all characters so that everyone levels up at the same time. If that same player decides they've had enough of the game after an hour of playing, they can drop out at any time and let the AI resume control. In fact, the AI automatically takes over if a player isn't responding within a set period of time. This will no doubt be a bigger boon to online co-op than couch co-op, but it's a nice addition nonetheless.
Once you're in the game with a player-controlled companion, you'll discover that you can no longer swivel the camera. Rather than giving all of the players control over the camera (in what would no doubt be a seizure-inducing nightmare) or implementing a split-screen mode, Obsidian designed the game's multiplayer in such a way that the game procedurally shifts the camera in what it feels is the best position for the action taking place on the screen. This might sound a bit worrisome, but if you've ever given the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance titles a whirl, then you'll know that it can work pretty well.
Should you or your companions be defeated in battle, any players still standing can attempt to resuscitate their fallen comrades. This doesn't require a particular talent or that you have any specific resources in your inventory - it just takes time, which may be something you have very little of during a boss fight. If a player is successfully revived (and you can be revived by AI-controlled companions, too), they return to the fight at 50% health. If all the characters die before a successful revival can be performed, you'll have to load a saved game. And while I'm on the subject of saved games, it's worth noting that players can only save their game at what I can only describe as golden pillars of light that stream from the ground at convenient locations (in town, near major battles, etc.).
One final aspect of multiplayer that I feel is important to touch upon is the way characters are carried over (or, well, not carried over) after a co-op game is disbanded. If you've joined someone else's game, none of the experience, gold, loot, or story progress that you gained during the play session will be retained on your local PC or console. It seems a bit strange for a co-op game to be designed like this, but assuming the mechanics used in the early build I was shown are carried through until release, only the hosting player will be able to save the game and keep the goodies that the group was able to find. Those of us who already intend to play through the game from start to finish with a friend or two won't have much of an issue with this, but I can't help but think that it will discourage strangers from jumping into random games online when there are only some fond gaming memories to be gained. Of course, we know very little about the game's online matchmaking at this point, so it's possible that this could turn out to be a non-issue by the time the game is released.
Another Obsidian Experience Coming Soon
And there you have it. Ultimately, I feel that Obsidian is taking Dungeon Siege III in the right direction, particularly for those of us who are fans of their previous titles. They're retaining the hack n' slash combat and loot mechanics that have become a staple of the action RPG, but then they're also pushing things a bit further by layering a hefty dose of lore, dialogue, and thought-provoking quests on top of an interesting storyline. There are some important aspects we still don't know much about - how the keyboard/mouse control scheme will turn out, how the multiplayer lobby system will work, whether replayability will be an issue, and so forth - but I suspect that we'll be hearing a lot more about these topics over the next couple of months as the game draws closer to its May 31st release date. And I'll be listening intently.
