One question kept coming to mind while playing the first section of Dungeon Siege III. Who gets to name all the loot? Seriously. Can any rubbish old blacksmith hiccup while forging a sword, end up with some distorted, twisted piece of metal, and still happily sell it to the nearest adventurer as the Rapier of Transcendental Virtue or the Bastard Sword of Maihrse? It would explain why most of it just ends up being dumped in unlocked chests for any passer-by to get their hands on.

But Dungeon Siege III isn’t judgemental. It loves treasure. Any treasure. All treasure, from the overambitious swords to the deeply unflattering pauldrons. Its treasure chests don’t so much hold gold and trinkets and all the other RPG trappings as belch them out, ready for you to hoover them all up into a big sack and hurl them at the nearest shopkeeper.

What? Heroes don’t count. They LOOT.

Being a Dungeon Siege game, this obsession for anything that can be sold, equipped, or used to stab people won’t be a surprise. The first game gave you a sturdy pack-mule companion for a reason, and it wasn’t in case felt peckish in the middle of your quest. Oddly though, that’s about the only connection I really saw to the original games while playing a taster slice of the sequel. Here’s the other. The action is still set in Ehb, the fantasy kingdom named after an apathetic sigh, but takes place long, long after both the original games and that dreadful Uwe Boll movie have faded into history. And actually besieging a dungeon played no part in things. Again.

Everything else though? Changed. The characters are new. The look is new, with a new engine, and some strikingly strong and omnipresent depth of field that makes the new heroes look like they need a trip to Specsavers before they even think about heading out to save the world. Even the developers are new, with those RPG heroes and plucky entomologists at Obsidian now handling the franchise for Square-Enix, and original creator Chris Taylor only consulting.

The most noticeable change though is that while this isn’t the first Dungeon Siege on consoles (there was Throne of Agony on the PSP, which I’ve never played because I don’t even want the smell of that thing in my house), Dungeon Siege III really, really borrows from the Xbox and PS3 arcade-RPG playbooks. Where the old ones were like Diablo, this feels closer to Fable.

The result is a completely different game – or to be more exact, about four or five different games, thrown into a blender and pureed. From every other console hack-and-slash, we get the new camera and control systems – now up close (with the option to pull back a bit) to better follow your hero as you mash buttons to swing your sword and unleash the fury. Talk to a character and the Mass Effect conversation wheel pops up. Facing multiple enemies? You can switch between multiple combat styles, just like The Witcher. Get lost? Fable’s golden breadcrumb trail will point you in the right direction – although unlike Fable, it only appears on command, so you shouldn’t have that same sense of being dragged by the nose from encounter to encounter. Etc.

None of this was bad in itself. Really, it all seemed fine, I thought, as I picked up green health orbs and slammed my shield into enemies hard enough to leave an imprint of the crest on their ghosts. Still, it felt underwhelming. I wanted something new. Something… more.

I didn’t really see it in the bit of the game I got to play, nor was Square talking anything they weren’t directly showing, but there were a couple of hints at things that might be coming later on when I got to the first proper town. Its name is Raven’s Rill, and it’s your entirely generic fantasy village with a slight Slavic flavour, surrounded by a terrifying army of walking experience points called the Lescanzi. A good starting point for an quest, at least, and when you’re a hero, you go where you’re needed. My will was strong, my sword was true. And my bags were empty.

In true RPG style, the place was quiet, but combat clearly wasn’t going to be very far away. For starters, as soon as I showed up, I was met by a ridiculous looking girl called Katarina in an incredibly hardworking +2 Corset of Holding, who warned me of a nasty ambush just outside the town gates. Since ambushes in RPGs only ever mean “Yippee! More loot!”, that didn’t seem like a huge problem, but I figured heroic honour demanded at least chatting to the locals and doing their inevitable odd-jobs first. Needless to say, they had plenty – but the style was slightly unexpected. I was expecting quick and dirty mission briefings, like the ones most hack-and-slash games throw in to pad things out. Instead, the appearance of the dialogue wheel quickly reminded me that I was playing an Obsidian game, and that they like their talky bits.

Dungeon Siege III offers far, far more dialogue than most hack-and-slash games, with full conversations, optional subjects to chat about, and proper back-story. This is good. Most of it is clearly optional, but its presence hopefully means a bit more narrative weight behind the later hack and slashing, as well as a return of Obsidian staples like proper relationships with companion characters and maybe even some decent choices. I doubt we’ll see the villain of the piece delivering lectures on Hegelian dialetics like in New Vegas, but every little helps.

The most intriguing bit though came once I’d been given a mission, dutifully headed off to put my sword through its face and take its stuff, and returned. Now, in a game whose name is synonymous with ‘give me more stuff’, I had the option to… turn down a reward. How… odd.

Selecting this option purely in the name of scientific investigation, the conversation ended with my hero brushing off my act of heroism on the grounds that maybe the person I was talking to would speak well of the noble 10th Legion he was trying to rebuild to challenge Ehb’s current Big Bad. It may be nothing. It may just the Lawful Stupid option, and whenever you choose it, a little red light may flash in Obsidian’s office so that everyone to laugh at the pathetic little boy-scout. But let’s hope not. The way it was presented least smacked of the possibility of some kind of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood type metagame involving building the Legion later on, if only to grow it to the point that it can’t fit in the back of a Ford Cortina and still give everyone a window seat.

The rest of the demo area stuck to pure hack-and-slash though, kicking off by getting directions from one of Katarina’s friends, another girl who apparently put all her talent points in Dual Weapon Specialisation, and then taking on a few of the Lescanzi witches and paid goons in traditional one-on-twenty combat. This being an action RPG, this was still lousy odds for them, and it didn’t take long to get to their leader – an evil-eyed crone who was willing to chat for a quite a while, even if attempts to defuse the situation with words instead of swords didn’t quite work out. We fought. I lost. I blamed it on a bug. And that was the end of the demo. I may not have saved the world, but at least I died with lots and lots of its gold in my pocket.

So overall, I think I’m calling it a win.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/28/still-not-a-dungeon-siege-iii/

hmm I still have hopes for this game if Obsidian can keep the bugs down and the quality of writing up with a good level of loot and decent combat. Oh and also Diablo 3 doesn't come out this year lol.

Any chance of splitscreen or onscreen co-op for this game?

sounds fantastic.

SvennoJ said: Any chance of splitscreen or onscreen co-op for this game?

"Drop-in, drop-out cooperative play is a big talking point, though the entire game can be played solo. When working with two players, you can set up types of attack that take buildup time like an area affect spell and certain boss fights are a little easier. You can also revive a downed co-op buddy a la Left 4 Dead where you have to sand with them and hold down a button to resurrect them. Right now, the mode only works for two local players, no split screen."

"The camera pulls back naturally when in two-player mode like Diablo and fixes itself behind the main character in a traditional action game view when playing solo -- it sounds like you can edit the camera to default to either view regardless of which mode you're playing."

http://www.gamepro.com/article/previews/215574/e3-2010-dungeon-siege-3-impressions/

Also on consoles = PC version will be gimped as well... Dammit, I really enjoyed the first two.

Mummelmann said: Also on consoles = PC version will be gimped as well... Dammit, I really enjoyed the first two.

yea that's what I thought at first, but this is sounding like an entirely efferent game than the first two and if it's executed right could be a great action RPG even on PC with many aspects being better than the first two (story, combat, more open world etc) well keeping the loot. It's a pity we are losing the more strategic multi member party aspect but 2 was already heading in that direction and the combat system should make up for the loss. I would have been interested in seeing a Dragon age Dungeon siege mix from Obsidian mixing Dragon age party system and story focus with Dungeon siege loot system etc could have been great IMO. 

a slightly less optimistic preview 

Dungeon Siege III is the latest in a long line of Dungeon Siege games, certainly, but also in the ever-growing lineage of sequels that seem to have become Obsidian’s bread and butter these days. Fallout: New Vegas, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2 precede Dungeon Siege III as examples of well executed torch-passing from the IP’s originator into the hands of Obsidian. Their gig as the go-to guys for fast-paced sequel building has been hit-and-miss thusfar, but Dungeon Siege III is clearly shaping up to provide a solid – if not paradigm shifting – RPG experience to hardcore RPG fans. 

You can feel the shift almost immediately. The third chapter in the franchise has something of a lighter touch with some visual and contextual shifts to fall more in line with recent fantasy RPG’s like Dragon Age. Conversation trees abound, albeit with less game-changing impact than we’ve seen in Bioware’s titles. The game’s coloring seems a bit brighter, as well, the environments a bit less oppressive. Visually speaking, the game appears more inviting than our memory of previous chapters, but it’s hardly aiming to redefine the archetypical fantasy universe as we know it. 
 

 

In the short demo, we played as Lucas, a descendant of the Legion intent on restoring the organization to greatness. We began in our burning ancestral mansion, battling our way through an onslaught of thugs intent on torching the sprawling château to the ground. After a fair amount of barrel smashing, randomized item drops and slain enemies, it’s here where we got our first glimpse of the game’s rather intuitive combat system. Alternating between heavy and light attacks – and eventually magic – fighting is really just about a series of well executed button presses. 

What’s unique about the system is the concept of stances – the slower, more powerful two-handed stance or the more defensive, one-handed sword-and-shield combo. Each stance has its own series of attacks which, in turn, vary depending upon the chosen weapon. You can switch between stances on the fly and the mechanic ultimately adds a surface-level degree of strategy, a welcome addition for those of us who prefer to exercise some level of mental agility without having to constantly micromanage our battles. 

While the enemies we encountered were admittedly a bit addle-minded – rushing at us, screaming, seemingly ready for death – the combat proved both compelling and fun, especially once we journeyed into a dimly lit cave filled with more monstrous opponents. On a mission to rescue an eventual ally held captive by the witch Vera, we descended into the subterranean caverns, lit purple by magical torchlight, and found that the battles required a substantially more deft approach even with an admirable load-out. We even found ourselves gladly switching between the standard overhead, top-down view and a more console-friendly, over-the-shoulder perspective depending upon the situation at hand – a nice touch in variety if you ask us. 
 

 

Leveling up works much the same as anywhere else, according to the sum total of your accumulated XP, but players are awarded with abilities that also offer customizable proficiencies. For example, the Shield Pummel ability can be leveled up along two paths, one which increases its damage and another which increases its likelihood to stun an opponent for an all-out assault. Skill trees and talents also play a part, although any low-level RPG fan will find these instantly familiar. 

Experience, as in all RPG’s, is best gathered by sub-questing and there’s no shortage of additional missions to be found along the way. We spent some time in a small village on the edge of a perilous forest – go figure – and picked up a few quests from beautiful, busty villagers that required us to backtrack in order to defending missing husbands or murder marauding brigands. Either way, the mechanic for gathering quests is tried-and-true and will hardly surprise anybody. 

In fact, that’s a fair way to describe Dungeon Siege III in general. It’s certainly fun to play at this stage and it looks as impressive as the series has ever looked, but it’s virtually indistinguishable from similar, albeit better, games within the genre. Only the full game will tell us whether this lack of inspiration is systemic, but regardless, what we played had us willing, if not necessarily wanting, to pick up the controller and do it all again. 

Read more: http://www.g4tv.com/games/xbox-360/63853/dungeon-siege-3/articles/73455/Dungeon-Siege-3-Preview-Another-Obsidian-Sequel/#ixzz1CTxgULjj

Over the shoulder view in a Dungeon Siege game? Lord...

This sentence kind of stuck out to me;

"What’s unique about the system is the concept of stances – the slower, more powerful two-handed stance or the more defensive, one-handed sword-and-shield combo. Each stance has its own series of attacks which, in turn, vary depending upon the chosen weapon."

Have these people not played the brillant The Witcher?! This type of mechanic is certainly not groundbreaking, it has been used for ages in 3rd person action games and, as mentioned, The Witcher brought it for real into the RPG genre.

Mummelmann said: Over the shoulder view in a Dungeon Siege game? Lord... This sentence kind of stuck out to me; "What’s unique about the system is the concept of stances – the slower, more powerful two-handed stance or the more defensive, one-handed sword-and-shield combo. Each stance has its own series of attacks which, in turn, vary depending upon the chosen weapon." Have these people not played the brillant The Witcher?! This type of mechanic is certainly not groundbreaking, it has been used for ages in 3rd person action games and, as mentioned, The Witcher brought it for real into the RPG genre.

yea some people lol, I have seen it compared to the witcher a few times in other previews actually...

Which reminds me I really need to finnish the witcher so I can buy and play the increasable looking Witcher 2, now that game is shaping up to be an amazing game. This year is a wrather packed one for RPGs there are tones coming and it's a devirse bunch with everything from indies like Avadon: The black fortress, Torchlight 2/Grim Dawn, The Witcher 2, Diablo 3, TES 5 Skyrim, Dragon age 2, Dues Ex: HR, kingdoms of amalur and more not to mention the outside chance of DIablo 3.

But I am rambling...

Gamespot's take 

Since its initial release back in 2002, the Dungeon Siege series has always been about two things: exploring dungeons and collecting loot. It was a series revered for accessibility, addictive gameplay, and cooperative multiplayer. After getting our hands on Dungeon Siege III, we are excited to see that developer Obsidian isn't deviating from the elements that made this series great.

 

 

Our demo began in the shoes of intrepid adventurer Lucas Mont Barron. As an orphan, Lucas has finally come of age and is ready to assist in rebuilding the Legion after its near destruction by the villainess Jeyne Kassendar. Right away, Obsidian's in-house-developed Onyx engine made the game's fantasy setting pop with color, lending a storybook feel to our surroundings. We set out across a mountain pass on the way to our birthright, the Mont Barron estate, to meet with the few remaining Legion members. Naturally, things went awry almost immediately. Cresting a rise in the pass, we spotted the estate--or what remained of it--engulfed in flames.

Horrified at this turn of events, we plunged into the inferno. A few stray barrels caught our eye, and we stopped just long enough to try out Dungeon Siege III's combat system on these wooden targets before facing the inevitable danger that lay ahead. Combat is conducted through stances, with different sets of abilities tied to each stance. By default, our character looked every part of the adventurous rogue, with a quick-hitting sword and sturdy shield in hand, as well as access to a shield-bash ability. As the name suggests, this maneuver let us smack an opponent upside the face, knocking him prone and occasionally stunning him.

The next stance substituted our current armaments for a massive, two-handed broadsword and a dash ability that was handy for nabbing pesky ranged units behind enemy lines. Finally, a defensive block stance allowed us to--you guessed it--block hostile attacks while conferring the ability to regenerate health. As the barrels crumpled beneath our blade, a few home invaders took notice and attacked. We quickly switched to the sword-and-shield stance, which excelled at cutting down individual foes, while the slower-hitting broadsword caught multiple enemies in its wide arc.

With flames licking our ankles, we cut through the smoke to find Martin Guisgard, a fellow Legionnaire. A dash of exposition later, and we were assigned to seek out Odo, the man in change of organizing this failed event, at the chapter house in the woodlands of Rukkenvahl. However, the path there was littered with bandits and other malcontents. But the one good thing about bandits is that they're always loaded with loot. As we hacked our way from one villain to the next, color-coded treasures spilled out at our feet--some in the form of currency, others as weapons and armor.

The acquisition of loot played a large role in our time with Dungeon Siege III. Every piece of armor we equipped changed the appearance of our hero, and a detailed equipment screen clearly displayed the statistical differences between the various pieces. And should you run out of inventory space, unwanted items can be broken down locally into cash rather than simply thrown away. Six pairs of boots, three chest pieces, and one flaming sword later, we located the chapter house and met with Odo.

 

 

Without even giving us a chance to rest, Odo sent us in search of survivors who might have fled to the nearby village of Raven's Rill. By this time, we had done enough stabbing to reach the next level. Leveling up lets you unlock new abilities for your stances, modify the effects of those abilities, and upgrade your hero's stats. Our shield-bash ability, for instance, could be modified to do more knockdowns or have a higher stun chance. You may choose to advance through either of these ability trees--or both if you have enough skill points to spend--but you'll have a limited number of skill points throughout the game.

We arrived at the sleepy village of Raven's Rill, and after a stern word with the town's gatekeeper, we promptly got sidetracked by side quests. After aiding a merchant who had been robbed and helping a vengeful elderly woman, we were set upon by the mysterious Katarina who--despite her introduction--was anything but subtle. We interacted with her, as well as the other locals, using a dialogue wheel. After some questioning, she turned us on to a nearby cave where some Legion members were being held captive.

Inside, we finally located our brethren and their captor: Vera, a powerful witch who served as our first boss encounter. Versed in the arcane arts, Vera preferred to teleport around the arena and pepper our hero with some nasty offensive spells. She also sported a nasty aura designed to impede our movement. Ultimately, all it took was a liberal application of cold steel to fix it. Once she was defeated, we turned our attention to the prisoners.

Among those captured was our first would-be companion Anjali, a spellcasting ranged hero who is supposedly an Archon of legend. The way you talk to and interact with others can influence your companion's opinion of you, for better or worse, manifesting in small performance boosts for content cohorts. However, our demo ended there, so her power remained untapped. In the full release, you'll be able to manage a party of up to four heroes, either in a single-player game where you control all four characters, or with a group of three other people in co-op mode. Two players may share the screen locally, and you can bring in two more players online. The other players will serve as assistants to one main player, and no progress will be carried over to their game.

While our time with Dungeon Siege III was spent on a PC, we played it using a Xbox 360 gamepad. The controls were simple to understand, with movement tied to the sticks and stance-specific abilities tied to the face buttons. Combat flowed fast and frantic as enemies would charge us in large numbers with ranged attackers supporting them in the rear. Tapping the X button unleashed the broadsword's dash ability which proved invaluable by letting us quickly cut through the center and dispatch two, or even three, ranged attackers at once with the sword's wide reach. After that, a simple click of the shoulder button let us switch to our sword and shield stance. We had to keep moving to prevent our numerous foes from encircling us. And if one did start hitting our flank, the shield bash could incapacitate them long enough for us to regain the advantage. For the duration of our admittedly short play session, we had only these two offensive abilities at our disposal and no party members to command--but the game will have other skills you can learn and companions who can join you later.

 

 

To help curb potential living room fisticuffs, items and equipment you find during your travels are unique to the individual characters--meaning only one character may wear a particular pair of gloves or wield a specific staff. Inventory is also shared among the party members. Players may drop in and play and drop out when they're finished, with the computer retaking control of their discarded hero. In addition to co-op play, Obsidian is pouring a lot of effort into crafting a robust story. Creative writer Geroge Ziets, author of the moody Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer expansion, is penning this tale, with series' progenitor Chris Taylor serving as a project adviser. Be on the lookout for Dungeon Siege III this May.