Dungeon Siege 3

Preview from Jae - Thursday, 21 April 2011 @ 12:16am

Dungeon Siege 3 is a new take on the franchise with a different studio at the helm, Obsidian Entertainment, the makers of the Neverwinter Nights games as well as Fallout New Vegas. Using the well known lores and areas of previous Dungeon Siege titles the game uses the Obsidian flavour to add in an RPG based system and mechanic. The developers have focused much on the story and depth of characters this time round and this is complemented by the different voice actors.

There are four main characters to choose from at the beginning of the game, Lucas Montbarron, Anjali, Katarina and one more in which I was embargoed on mentioning. Lucas is your basic swordsman, Anjali is your most balanced class and Katarina is your riflewoman. Each character has three stances two of which are offensive and one of which is defensive. You will constantly switch between the offence stances in order to maximize your battle wins as each stance is tied to an exclusive set of abilities. For example Anjali has melee spear attacks in human form but when she turns into the female version of the Human Torch her abilities become fire based.

During our preview we were taken through the Town of Stonebridge which you venture through about halfway through the game. In this town goblins have been welcomed as they further the village in terms of technology. After exploring a little of the town we head into a dungeon and start battling with a few monsters. Battles are fast and fluid enough so that you can follow all the action on screen. The problem with many games that have an isometric view is that some of your vision may be impaired due to the angle but Dungeon Siege 3 does the job well. Each ability for each a character is tied to an empowered version that can be executed when a certain number of orbs are collected. The RPG element continues with a fully customizable level up experience. This means you can choose the path of leveling up and what skills you see worthwhile.

I like what I’ve seen so far, the game certainly has depth and looks to be a great multiplayer title. Knowing Obsidian they can deliver great games but they can also deliver games riddled with issues. I hope they’ve given themselves enough time to do this otherwise we might see a worrying trend in top tier gaming. Below is a short interview that I completed with Nathan Davis from Obsidian;

This game can be played by up to two persons locally or four online and will be available on 16th June 2011 on 360, PS3 and PC.