Dungeon Siege comes from the mind of Chris Taylor, the driving force behind
the critically-acclaimed strategy game of several years ago, Total Annihilation.
That game was known for taking the RTS basics and adding a number of innovative
concepts, wrapped up in an excellent interface with great graphics.
Now Chris Taylor has done the same with the action-RPG genre in Dungeon Siege.
The first thing that players will notice about Dungeon Siege is that the
graphics are gorgeous. Its world is populated with 3D landscapes of
varying elevation that give rise to such nice views as vistas of valleys below a
path along a cliff's edge or a waterfall plunging into a gorge, although a
perpetual fog keeps players from seeing too far into the distance. The
environments are also varied, from deserts to heavy woods, with trees that turn
transparent when the player's party moves behind them. Moving from an
outdoor to indoor environment is completely seamless, as roofs and ceilings
disappear as the player move indoors or underground. The camera supports
rotation, tilting, and zooming that works very well and boasts an intuitive
control scheme. The player is never left feeling that he/she is fighting
the camera to get a good view of the action as happens in too many games with
full camera control. When the camera is fully zoomed, the details in the
characters and monsters become apparent. Each party member looks just like
they do in their character portrait, and every piece of weapon and armor that
they have equipped or are wearing looks just like it does when sitting in the
inventory screen. The animations are all fluid and realistic, and it is
fun to sometimes just watch your party move and fight at a very up close and
personal level.
The
seamless transitions from indoors to out, and from one environment to the next, are
further enhanced by the lack of load screens during the game. In fact, the
only load screens the player will have to sit through are those at the start of
the game, and these are pretty fast themselves. Ever have the problem
where after waiting for a level to load a character is accidentally moved back
through a doorway, sending you right back to a load screen? Well, this
will never happen to you while playing Dungeon Siege - you can theoretically sit
down and play the game from start to finish in one very long session without
ever seeing a load screen.
Another of Dungeon Siege's innovative features is its skill and class (or
rather lack thereof) system. When creating a character at the beginning of
the game, the player just needs to select the name, sex, and look of his/her
character. That's it - there is no attribute or skill, or even class,
selection. Dungeon Siege takes the very practical approach that your
characters will improve in the skills they actually use. Want a mage?
Then just have the character keep casting spells until he or she gets good at
it. Similarly, those who concentrate on melee combat will find their
strength increasing at a faster rate than that of other characters. Stat
freaks might beg to differ, but it is a simple and common-sense approach to
character advancement that works quite well. The downside to this system,
though,
is that it hurts the game's replay value. There is no motivation to try to
beat the game again using a different character class to experience it in a
different way.
A lot of work obviously went into the game's control scheme and interface,
and it shows. Control is very intuitive and easy, and almost never gets in
the way of the gameplay. There are a lot of hotkeys, including ones which
let the player select subgroups within the party and multiple weapons
configurations, and they are all customizable. The party can be controlled
quite easily with the mouse, using simple clicks to move and attack, and to set
the party order, positioning, and formation.
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