Dungeon Siege was supposed to be the Diablo killer. It was a much hyped, action orientated CRPG where story took a back seat to some great hackin’ and slashin’, with lots and lots of looting on the side (with the much talked about pack mule party member, can you expect any less?). The question becomes, after all this time waiting, does Dungeon Siege deliver on the goods?
Story
You start off as a young farmer in the world of Ehb. Then evil rears its ugly head and, pitchfork in hand, must discover and ultimately thwart this threat to the land. Wow… story really did take a backseat here.
Gameplay… Click?
The game is patterned after the successful Diablo series. Actually, it’s more like playing Diablo 1 than its sequel, with some modifications to make Dungeon Siege a unique game. For the most part, you run around the game’s beautiful landscapes (with up to seven party members, the pack mule acting as a member), bashing in the skull of most everyone and everything that just looks in your general direction, searching every nook and cranny for the Next Most Powerful Item (TM) to equip and use on the next piece of demonic fodder. There is some semblance of a story here, told via books and cut scenes, but it overall fails to capture the mystique and imagination that Blizzard has with Diablo. The quest is fairly linear with a few side quests present to get you more experience and items.
Your character starts off as being very generic. Your stats (standard attributes such as Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence) are pretty much set at the beginning. From that point on, your character is akin to a piece of Play-Doh – mold it as you see fit. Want to create a bruiser? Start hacking away with that axe and build up your melee skills. Looking to create Death from Afar? Pick up a bow and string up some ammo. Need a healer or a portable human flamethrower? Keep casting those spells, nature or combat, whatever floats your boat. Just as in the classic Wasteland and Fallout games, your skills increase as you use them.
To help things along, Dungeon Siege allows you to set up four active slots, one each for melee and ranged weapons, and two for spells. Switching between each is easily done, but it hardly becomes an issue once your party is established, except for spell casters. Because of the numerous encounters and the frantic pace of battle, it becomes cumbersome to use a mage’s entire spellbook. As Dungeon Siege does not emphasize the strategic use of spells, you will eventually find two spells that work for most general scenarios and stick to them.
The character development model, however, didn’t help me get into my character. From the generic background on, nothing is done to add any flavor to your character. While characters tend to become specialized in the party, they still have a very generic feel to them. The flexibility is nice, but it also would have been better to add traits, special abilities, or something to make the characters more unique.
Pretty soon in the game, you will gather up some friends and embark on a tour to clean up the kingdom (both of monsters and of loot). The game offers a nice selection of party formations and character AI presets. For the most part, battles turn into giant brouhaha, especially since the creature AI is set on a permanent rush mentality. Formations are thus only useful for keeping the melee fighters up front to guard the archers and mages before combat truly degenerated into absolute chaos.
Dungeon Siege allows you to adjust your party’s AI, letting you adjust how aggressive they are, who they attack, and when they attack. Ultimately, the AI presets will let your fighters engage every hostile within two feet of them, your archers fire at anything within range that moves (note your party is immune to friendly fire), and your mages to heal the above two when things take a turn for the worse, all with minimal input from you. Every now and then, you may want your mages to cast some offensive spells and devastate the landscape, but it’s rare to actually need to do so.
Combine that with the one click combat interface (basically click on an enemy to start a fight), and you have a RPG that plays more like a Real Time Strategy game such as Warcraft or Total Annihilation. This shouldn’t be too surprising as the developer, Chris Taylor, also made Total Annihilation. No thinking is involved. Battles generate little tension as you are fairly withdrawn from them. I could remember frantically clicking away in Diablo as my warrior was surrounded by death knights with succubi bombarding me from afar with spells. Dungeon Siege didn’t get me too involved; I just clicked and watched. At some points, I found myself wishing for the equivalent of a mammoth tank to control. You can go back to the old Diablo days and click like mad, but with up to 7 other friends along for the ride, it becomes tough and almost pointless, especially with the AI presets. You can also pause the game and issue orders, but that is hardly ever necessary. While its nice to say that the AI is good enough to fend for itself, it does a poor job getting you into the game.
Graphics and Audio
While Dungeon Siege fails to impress with its story and gameplay, it does excel in the audio and visual departments. Gas Powered Games did a marvelous job with the art. The game is played out on a 3D landscape that is teeming with life, ranging from a beautifully animated forest to icy mountains to arid deserts. Little details such as insects and animals (that you don’t need to kill) scurrying around abound. Characters and monsters are also very well done. The “paper doll” models for your characters are quite detailed and reflect well the bounty you have equipped. The animations are very smooth and crisp, especially when fighting. Battles, although they often become very chaotic, are still quite visually appealing. And the adjustable camera helps you to better soak up the ambience. On top of all this, there is minimal load time when traveling.
The music is also very well done, capturing the mood when questing or engaging in a brutal melee. There are plenty of ambient sounds ranging from chirping birds, blowing winds, and rushing water. And of course, there’s the always satisfying sound of your pack mule grunting and snorting when you start packing up the loot.
Multiplayer
Just as with Diablo, Dungeon Siege has a multiplayer component to it. The game offers up to 4 players via modem, up to 8 via LAN. To spice things up, extra quests and areas to explore that are not present in the single player. I have not put as much time into this, but things do get more involved as your party is not on complete autopilot. Perhaps it is early to say, but the online world feels more like a free for all. Adventuring companies fight together, but the members scurry quickly afterwards to hog up the loot. Online play is fairly stable so far, but there is some slow down during play (and I’m using a cable modem). Note that the online servers just became available on April 5, 2002. Service should get better with time.
Other Tidbits
I played Dungeon Siege using a Pentium 4 133MHz machine with 256MB RAM. The game used up about 1GB of hard drive space without save files. Overall, the game was very stable with minor graphical glitches.
Final Thoughts
Dungeon Siege is one beautiful looking and sounding game, but it lacks the personality, story, and engaging gameplay that will have keep coming back for more. While you could make similar arguments about Diablo, at least Blizzard spent some time in crafting that game world. It was hard to keep playing as I was always hoping for more, and always found myself disappointed. In the end, I went back to Baldur's Gate 2 (actually, I went back to Virtua Fighter 4, but we are talking PC games here).
I'm probably going to be a lone voice here, but in the end, I felt Dungeon Siege missed the mark. It may appeal to those looking for a hack 'n' slash, Monty Haul type of RPG, but looking for story and character development should pass on this one. There are plenty of other CRPGs out there like Baldur's Gate 2 and Wizardry 8 to keep you occupied.
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