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PC Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Chris Taylor Talks Dungeon Siege II Details 41

Posted by simoniker from the not-just-an-overview dept.
Thanks to GameSpy for its overview of the changes and interview with Gas Powered Games boss Chris Taylor regarding PC action RPG sequel Dungeon Siege II, due out via Microsoft later in 2004. Taylor, lead designer of the classic RTS Total Annihilation, discusses the original Dungeon Siege ("Overall the response was very positive, and most criticism was offered as a call for features in a sequel"), and reveals features for the sequel including (Phantasy Star Online mag-like?) "exotic pets", of which he explains: "You can buy these and develop them by feeding them different items you find in the world."
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Chris Taylor Talks Dungeon Siege II Details More

Chris Taylor Talks Dungeon Siege II Details

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  • Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WinnipegDragon ( 655456 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @03:09PM (#9021542)
    So it's basically the same game, but prettier and the pack mule has been replaced by a more dangerous animal.

    How about this. Make me care about the character, the storyline, and give me more than four skills to improve on and then we can talk. The first game in this series made Diablo seem like a deep RPG...

  • Exotic pets eating items? reminds me of something (Score:5, Interesting)

    by *weasel ( 174362 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @03:10PM (#9021556)
    It reminds of the classiest 'garbage collection' design I encountered in early gaming.

    Back in the day there was a frickin awesome game, Alternate Reality, published by Datasoft. Being an very old game, and having fixed memory limits, the developer had to keep players from hoarding too many items.

    Thereby 'the devourer' was added to the game. It was a mean-and-nasty that would track down and attack the player. During combat, the devourer would eat random items from the player's pack.

    The thing is, (unknown to me at the time) the devourer only came out when the player was getting dangerously close to the item limit.

    Sure, you could eventually get powerful enough to fend one off before you lost an item - but another would always come.

    It was just a real classy, practical design solution to a hardware limitation.

    Though this has only tangential bearing on Dungeon Siege at best - Damn I loved that game.

    (There were in fact 2 connected AR games, of a larger planned series. The City, and The Dungeon were the released games. I played primarily The Dungeon, and am only certain of the devourer in that context. I'm not certain if it was present in The City.)
  • I still think that Taylor make millions created a TA-like game and simply update the graphics to a 3D engine.

    Is the RTS genre dead? Do we we really need another RPG game?
  • "You can buy these and develop them by feeding them different items you find in the world."

    Oh great, now PETA's going to be 'weighing in' on the video game violence debate:

    "And next in our presentation you'll see test subject B abusing his virtual kitty..."
    "EAT THE STAFF YOU STUPID CAT! IT'LL GIVE YOU MORE POWER! EAT IT! EAAAAAAT IT!!!!! "
    "As any idiot can see, congressman, this is going to lead to a world where children will abuse animals for special protection from trolls and hellhounds."

    You are in a governement full of twisty laws, all alike. You are likely to be eaten by a lobbyist.

    -Adam
  • This is a highly-overused play mechanic these days. At least Nintendo keeps adding weird-ass features to Pokemon, like secret hideouts and real-time clocks.

    The whole rasing-a-pet mechanic is overdone. It might still be made to work if the player were given a significant chance of killing the pixelbeast in question, and if he could somehow become attached to it, but often it just results in another set of numbers to max out.

    Which is also a problem with RPGs in general these days.

    • Re:Argh! Another Pokemon/charabom/capsule! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Quarters ( 18322 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @04:10PM (#9022155)
      Yeah, and that whole holding a weapon while running around in 1st person mode while shooting things is just a major fad.

      Don't even get me started on the hackneyed "top down, resource management, build a building to build a unit type, mass them and attack your enemies" game type. Man is that worn out!

      • But pet ownership has been tacked on to SO many games. That's the important element here, tacked on to.

        However, I'd largely agree with your joking argument concerning FPS games and follow-the-leader RTS games. Not that they're a fad mind you, because sadly they're probably not.
        • ya know, Diablo 2 had pet ownership; at least in the sense that it was described in the article. You could hire a minion (4 different types?), level them up with you, whereupon they gain new abilities according to their occupation, plus you can give them weapons for additional power.

          So, really this isn't all that different from D2, except that it's a "pet" rather than a minion.
          • Hmmm... interesting comparasion, you might be right on that. However, Diablo 2's minions are a bit more complicated than the basic pet model, aren't they? (Not having played it, I can't say.)

            You can get Diablo 2 companions resurrected endlessly and easily, correct? Compare that to Nethack's pets, who are usually dead forever once they snuff it. That at least brings an element of risk into it, which better aids the player in grow ing attacked to the little ASCII character.

            (Well, they're dead forever un

  • Hmmm (Score:2)

    by JMZero ( 449047 )
    Dungeon Siege distilled the modern CRPG into its purest, simplest, lamest form yet. Its like Diablo without as much clicking and many fewer stats and combinations.

    Now it looks like their going to gradually add on the kind of muck they took off. I would have preferred they went the other way. Screw all the stats except Level. No skills, nothing. Kind of like Gauntlet, only your player moves and attacks on his own if you don't touch anything. It could be both a game and a screensaver.

    • Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Funny)

      by Pizzop ( 605441 )
      they already have the game screensaver, check here: Progress Quest [progressquest.com]
      • I like the large selection of races/classes. I think there's some interesting possibilities there - although I'm going to try to get through it with my Runeloremaster before I play with any other stuff (it won't be easy, but it'll be worth it!). I like the streamlined game mechanics. The interface is very well thought out - and loads of variety.

        Thanks!

  • Multiplayer? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Sylver Dragon ( 445237 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @03:49PM (#9021958) Journal
    I just hope the multiplayer is better implimented in DS2 than it was in DS1. My group tried playing this one at a LAN party, and the lack of thought in MP really showed. The entire method of scaling the game for more players seemed to revolve around giving the enemies a ton of hit points. So you'd end up hacking at a single enemy like it was a damned redwood tree. It eventually got so bad that the fighters of our group would set thier character to attack an enemy, and then go out to the kitchen to get sodas. We even had one person take a break by having his character follow another character. The nearest person would just reach over occasionally to hit the "take a healing potion" button. And (insert diety here) forbid that you were stupid enough to be a mage, you would sit there blasting off the most powerful spells in the game repeatedly, chugging mana potion after mana potion, and be lucky to drop an enemy before you ran out, or the enemy got a hold of you and killed you.
    In all, the multiplayer just didn't seem very polished. It eventually broke down into everyone being a fighter type, with just enough magic to cast a heal spell now and again. And far too long chopping at the same damned enemy. Some of the elements in the game were great, and I really wanted to like it, but I just couldn't get past the obvious problems.

  • DS 1 = looked pretty, crap game (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DamienMcKenna ( 181101 ) <damien@@@mc-kenna...com> on Friday April 30, 2004 @04:12PM (#9022178)
    My wife and I bought Dungeon Siege when it came out as we like Diablo-esque games and the previews painted a picture of it being so. After getting it we were overjoyed with the graphics and overall polish, but he game itself sucketh verily:

    * You had little to do in the game other than tell the characters where to move - fighting was automatic.

    * The levels were quite sprawling with many parts leaving you wondering where to go next.

    * The end game was a huge let-down, with the rest of the game being so graphically beautiful, we were expecting something impressive.

    * The enemies weren't very difficult so you could get through the entire game in one playing.

    * No jump-to-town spells or potions, meaning that you had to walk huge distances to sell your stuff.

    * Due to all of the above the boredom factor set in quite quickly.

    The multi-player side of the game was actually worse. Take the above faults and add:

    * You had to complete an entire world in one go as the save-game didn't record what you had already done.

    * Each world was huge.

    Put those together and you effectively had to play for 12+ hours straight to finish a world, otherwise it was a waste of time.

    After finishing the game once (took a day) we gave up on it altogether.

    The only positive side of the game might be the mods, but there weren't any available when we last played it (two years ago).

    Damien

    • * You had little to do in the game other than tell the characters where to move - fighting was automatic.

      Why exactly is that a bad thing? I have seen that feature reproduced in other games, and find it to be quite convienent since you do not have to stop fighting in order to prime one or more of your spells.

      Requiring the player to keep clicking to attack is a bad thing. As an example, take Nox: you have to do some fancy movements with your mouse in order to defeat some powerful monsters -- click on mon

      • Regaurdless it was a worse then mediochre game that looked great but played horribly. I never got past the first dungeon just becuase of sheer disgust. It distilled out all the good parts of a lot of other games and the left overs was item management/exploration. Nothing to get excited about.

      • Requiring the player to keep clicking to attack is a bad thing. As an example, take Nox: you have to do some fancy movements with your mouse in order to defeat some powerful monsters -- click on monster to attack, swing mouse to other side of screen and click to retreat, swing mouse back to attack monster, etc. One wrong move, and you are either dead, or have 90% of your health taken off. Failing to have ultra-1337 mousing skills should not warrent a player's death.

        And this is exactly something that I mis

        • Nox was very diablo-like but it was fun because it was challenging and actually required some ability - mousing ability as you said.

          That's the problem right there - Nox's only strong point was mousing (especially whan it was released.)

          However, this strong point isn't really strong since the rest of that game is pretty weak as well. First off, there were plenty of instant kill attacks that take out 80-100% of your health, even when you are supposed to be resistant to the fireball. (Even if there were a

          • I never played Nox, but back when I was in college, there was this game Die By The Sword [gamespot.com].

            The claim to fame was, it was a 1st-person "melee", where you used the keyboard to walk, but the way you moved your mouse caused the hero's sword to swing in odd maneuvers. Very dynamic poly models could capture any movement of the arms, and depending on swing speed, direction, and where you hit, that's how you did damage to the enemies.
    • Good analysis. My only caveat is that, in single-player, I thought this was one of the MOST linear games ever designed. The majority of the game was (1) you have a town/safe zone where you can sell things and recruit partners and (2) you have a linear stretch of terrain with one special fork into a closed dungeon. At the end of (2) you find a (1).

      I can think of only one area where the progress loops back on itself, and that was "the giant stone gate is barricaded, you have to go through the icky spider

  • DS I, Mac Version: C (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Spencerian ( 465343 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @04:43PM (#9022536) Homepage Journal
    GPG actually ported DS to Mac OS X. It's playability was stronger due to a typical Mac's better-than-standard-issue video card (in my case, initially a GeForce 4MX 32MB).

    It wasn't much different than Diablo II in playability, although I appreciated the ability to blend abilities to create characters, unlike in Diablo II where the character type is quite fixed.

    I, too, was disappointed with the overall plot (the word "contrived" fits well) and lacked Diablo and Diablo II's storyline that kept its rigid universe interesting. Weapons, armor, and graphics were very nice, including the use of a true mule for loot (no other game since that has been popular enough for me to play on Mac OS X has duplicated this), the wide, wide world that had lots to explore (particularly the MP map), and showing definitive changes to the character's appearance as armor and weapons are added.

    The bad news: The Mac version lacked an inherent MP game list system, since DirectPlay is not available for Mac OS X. Thankfully, GameRanger [gameranger.com], a free game access service for some Mac games, worked well to link up Mac users. Next, while the Mac and PC versions essentially did and used the same resources, the use of DirectPlay for the PC version and coding changes with the Mac version made it impossible to play with PC users, nor was it possible to port character or game files from PC version to Mac, or vice versa.

    That, and stability was a problem in some configurations. Overall, I enjoyed it for many months--it was actually the first game that broke my routine play of Diablo II, after I played that game and its expansion for almost 3 years.

    Neither Diablo II nor Dungeon Siege hold a candle to Neverwinter Nights and its 2 expansions [bioware.com]. Being an online adaptation of the D&D world, this game was designed for storylines, but does not slouch on game play in the slightest. And, although the official Mac versions of the two game expansions are not yet available, Mac OS X users can install the Linux game components to play both expansions without issue. Character and game files are easily transportable, and Mac, Windows, and Linux users can play and host without issue (only the Windows users can create worlds as the toolset was made only for this platform).

    Still, I would appreciate a DS II if it arrives for Mac OS X. However, since GPG (and the Mac company, MacSoft [macsoftgames.com], that ported the game) has not worked to bring its single expansion of DS I, called Legends of Arrana, to Mac OS X, I doubt it may show any earlier than 1 year--if at all--after DS II arrives for the PC. And, after enjoying the diversity of NWN, I'd be more cautious on the quality and usability of a GPS game.
    • I disliked two things about NWN - the load times between each area (it made it hard to have a big town with lots of buildings you could enter when it took a few minutes to load each transition in or out) and it didn't have hills. To make a mountain you had to build a bunch of steps, and a little sloped path went up the middle of each one. Did they ever fix that? (I haven't played since the first month or so it was out).
    • It's playability was stronger due to a typical Mac's better-than-standard-issue video card (in my case, initially a GeForce 4MX 32MB).

      I can't tell if you are being funny or if that is some misguided Mac zealotry. A GeForce 4MX 32MB as standard issue? Such a card is standard issue on a Mac? That somehow qualifies as a way to make the playability of DSI on a Mac better than on a PC?

      A GeForce 4MX (64Mb, as the 32s aren't available any more) goes for a paltry $40.00. It's not even a GF4 level card as it la

      • I am not a developer by any stretch of the imagination, but I have been told by an actual cross-platform developer that the way that Windows and OS X handle graphics are very different. The bottom line (which was all I was really qualified to understand) was that the quality of the graphics card is less important on the Mac then it is on the PC, but the speed of the CPU is more important. Which is why I can play Shadowbane with an 8MB graphics card (ugly as sin, but it works), while a PC user who tries it w
        • That is, if true, patently ludicrous. Why would the speed of the CPU matter when even that lowly GF4MX has a decent GPU on it. If the Mac handles graphics on the CPU, therefore not needing as much of a video card as a PC then it is doing things incorrectly.

          There is no way that a Mac of a given MHz can outperform a PC of the same speed with an equal or better card.

          That card, whether it is in a Mac or a PC understands textures and vertices -nothing more. there is no way a Mac can make better use of it, as

          • You know, I tried to explain this again, as I remembered the explanation better, but then I realized I could boil what I was trying to say pretty simply.

            It doesn't matter how good your hardware is, if the code that is running on it is poorly written for that platform. If what the original poster says is true, the Mac version of the game probably makes better use of the hardware it has than the PC version did. (This is actually often the case with Mac games--because they come out later, the release version

        • Thats pure Jobs reality distortion field, Macs do have an edge but it's not a huge one. It's simply has a cleaner memory architecture and thus a slightly more efficient transfer of info to the GPU the CPU co-ordinates but it's the GPU who does the heavy lifitng. The edge is somewhere in the region of 1% overall performance boost in equivalent hardware and equivilent machines. which is very hard to get. Price wise their about equal now. And performance wise in most areas. Only graphic work with huge images d
  • This should be discussed with features. Does it require the CD? Can you at take it out after the check (full HD install)? If the next one drops the CD-check, I'd be much more likely to buy.
    • There are a few trends with most modern games:
      1. They all require a full installation of game/data files.
      2. They all have SafeDisc/SecuROM/custom copy protection.
      3. Removing the CD after it passes the inital check has no ill effects. (Data streamed from the CD can be a problem - you need to find a way to has it come from the HD or find a way to ensure that the stream becomes a harmless option. )
      4. The NO-CD crack gets released within 24 hours of the latest patch. Unless you are playing Warcraft III, there
      • A virtual CDs should solve both problems. Never used one myself--proabably "illegal" or something.
        • Virtual CDs only only work in most cases. depending on the one you choose, there are some applications that are still incompatable with the image in one way or another. SafeDisc 2.51 and SecuROM are good examples - most first generation imaging software can't handle them without emulation.

          Homeworld: Cataclysm is one of the more interesting ones. Not only does it not work under Nero ImageDrive (should replace it, but it's the only one that's integrated with burning software), but it doesn't even give an e

  • Dungeon Siege SUCKS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aeoo ( 568706 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @07:57PM (#9024330) Journal
    Sorry, the guy is a brilliant computer game engine maker, but he wouldn't know a good game if it bit him where the sun doesn't shine.

    They've never heard of the word "gameplay", never played Nethack or Angband, thus they do not know their roots and in general, they have no clue.

    Like many others, I was astonished at how great the engine was, how smooth and pretty and how there was no load time, etc...but THE GAME??? What about the GAME? Where is the gameplay?

    I'm not going to buy DS2 unless the reviews rave about *gameplay*.
    • Another example of game companies peddling to the LCD:

      I've been saying the EXACT same thing about World of Warcraft to people. It's the most fantastic engine I've ever seen. The graphics, music, sounds, and engine are incredible. Stormwind Keep looks like it cost them at least $1 million to construct. Yet, the game is completely watered down to the point of absurdity.

      Somewhere along the line they forget they're making a GAME with two little things called "chance" and "consequence."

      Dungeon Siege :

  • I liked Dungeon Siege- it was enjoyable, the real problem I had was later on - when you were carrying a ridiculous amount of items with various requirements and trying to remember who I wanted to have what - hopefully there'll be some sort of way to automate this later on.
  • Well. Lots of new pretty graphics and maybe even high res textures this time around.

    *yawn*

    In the end, there was not a story in sight in the first game and it is plain and obvious that they have no intention of *pretending* they've added one in its sequel.

    The plot from DS1, without any real exaggeration, was basically "They killed my cow, the bastards."

    This gets a sequel?

    Last time they tried this, NeverWinter Nights was released 2 months later and DS fell into the bargain bin in short order. (Not that

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