Dungeon Siege Preview

After months of anxious anticipation, the highly-awaited Dungeon Siege inches it's way closer to retail shelves, and PC fantasy fans everywhere. We've been tormented, tortured, and teased with details on the game for a while now, and when we got in a limited content build of the title in our hot little hands - we were stoked! So now we were going to get a chance to see first hand how Chris Taylor and the Gas Powered Games team were planning on taking us on a siege of our own...

Welcome fantasy gamer, to the world of Ehb. Dungeon Siege is set in a fantasy/medieval world with a most unlikely setting, on the isolated farms of a young woman whom is toiling away at the soil when we are first introduced to her. Of course, before that, you get to have some fun with picking out things like hair color, face type, clothing, and more to personalize your experience. There's no stat rolling before you begin, as in striaght RPGs. On that note, it won't take long for you to realize what a remarkably interesting combination of RPG and action this game really is. It should be interesting to see how many different types of gamers this game gathers under its wings. 

But, back to the storyline... So, you're tending your fields, minding your own business when your elderly neighbor, Norick, crawls wounded on to your land. He explains he has done everything he could, but he could not hold back the enemies who are overrunning the lands. He provides you with directions to the nearest town where you can converse with those who might be able to stop this invasion. It's up to you to get there, however, and it's a good thing you've not wasted all your muscle on farming skills alone!

At first glance, the task of understanding all of your available commands and menus may seems daunting to the inexperienced RPG gamer, but fear not adventurer, it won't take long for you to figure it all out. Helping you along with the familiarization of the keyboard controls is an optional  tutorial which will walk you through your many commands and menus. As in games like Baldur's Gate, you have menus to control the formation of your party (you get up to 8 party members in Dungeon Siege!), as well as a multitude of other commands, like a quick reference menu for frequently used spells/attacks, and of course your inventory and equipped items. You can also save as frequently as you want; always a nice feeling.

One of the things I was immediately in love with about Dungeon Siege is something that I have always felt made the most sense when building skills. Instead of distributing skill points into certain areas, you gain experience in different areas by how often you use them. Practice makes perfect only makes sense, and in this case, you should be able to set up a party to your liking as you go along. Also, experience points in certain skills are important because various items require certain experience levels before they can be used. I found myself, fairly early in the game, picking up some good armor that I had to keep in my inventory until I could use it. Good thing I didn't need a lot of potions, because some things are worth holding on to for later use. This is especially true for items that have special enchantments/abilities on them - like "chance to block" or magical effects.

In light of this, an interesting addition to your party is the pack mule. As you know, if you've played enough RPG's, this whole pack mule idea is a BIG bonus. We all know how it gets to have a limited inventory and having to drop half a dozen otherwise valuable things in order to make room for others. Hmmm... do I want these potions, or do I need to bring back some more goods? Yes, this is indeed a welcome addition. What's even more interesting about it is that your pack mule will build strength as you go along too, which is extremely helpful in keeping him/her from getting eaten by hungry minions of evil who are up for a rousing game of pin the claws/fangs on the pack donkey. 

The next thing I noticed about Dungeon Siege is just how quickly I was able to start playing. Rather than getting bogged down in stats, numbers, and the like, you can just take off and begin carving your path through enemies, and finding new characters to add to your party. All of the environments, both indoor and out, are integrated, so you don't have to open doors, sit through the transition phase (or loading time) and then enter the alternate environment. Another thing that adds to the quickness of gameplay is the fact that you can select 4 different primary actions/attacks for each character, and those remain visible on the gameplay screen for SUPER quick access. Want to change from a bow to a melee weapon or spell? One click and you're there. You can also change the character you are controlling with one simple click, making it easy to switch to the character who needs the most attention. As you grow familiar with your characters and you choose their skills, you will know which ones work best with AI.

Speaking of AI, another really useful menu is the menu which determines character's behavior and your party's formation. Amongst facets of character behavior you can chance are which targets they will aim for (closest, weakest, strongest), and how they behave (defending, attacking freely, etc...). You really must pay close attention to these settings as you don't want your melee fighters hanging around in the background waiting for something to do while your mages and ranged fighters get hammered. It's also good to get those same vulnerable party members in the back with a proper formation. But this is all common sense, and in Dungeon Siege, it doesn't take a lot of fancy configuration to get those behaviors set. 

Some characters will join your party freely, but others will demand dough for their services. It does end up paying off since the mercenary characters tend to be higher levels than the ones you build from the ground up, but it does mean for a lot of money gathering to build the best party possible. 

Magic is regulated by mana, what else? Spells are collected and placed into the spell books that each character holds. You can determined which spells will be your primary attacks from the spell book screen, and it's a good idea to put those frequently used spells up to for quick reference. Each character will need to maintain their own spell books as well, so don't throw those extra spells away! Mana gauges (and the life gauges for that matter) do regenerate, but you'll become quite familiar with life and mana potions to really make the difference.

The storyline itself allows for a lot of extra exploring, and there are plenty of quests to keep you busy. To help you along on your expeditions is the ability to go to a "bird's eye view" map which actually lets you fight on it. Granted, it's like controlling ants from that angle, but at least you don't have to hurry up and zoom back in before you lose half of your life. Speaking of camera angles, it's up to you, the gamer, to set these angles you want, running the mouse pointer to the far fore, back, left and right to either change your view left, right, up or down. This does feel pretty familiar, and it gives a much less linear feel to the game that a restricted view. 

There are still some things which I cannot comment on at this point, such as the full impact of graphics and sounds as this was a limited content build, but even as it stands now - the game just feels great! The music so far has a very deep feel to it, with some real effort being shown in creating a score that wasn't single-layered. It was nice to have a game that had so many of my favorite gameplay elements merged seamlessly into one game. I know we've been waiting a while for Dungeon Siege to hit the market, but given what I've seen so far... It will be worth the wait!

Want to know more? Check out the Dungeon Siege site - Click Here!