Dungeon Siege 3 - anyone give it a shot?

[MonTy]

Hail all,

Hope all is well with everyone. Dungeon Siege 3 has caught my eye but I'm a bit skeptical of it- namely the RPG qualities. I trust Lurker Lounge's advice on the authenticity of an Action RPG over any others, so I ask if anyone can offer some words of their experience thus far.

One big concern is the "end game". In Diablo 2, killing Diablo/Baal is just the beginning. Players had the opportunity to continue onward to test their willpower and determination against much tougher versions of their foes. In Dungeon Siege 3, it seems the difficulty is meant to be picked from the start, instead of a tiered structure. In the demo I was able to get through the hardest difficulty without breaking much sweat (just had to dodge a lot). Few random internet comments are suggesting it to be ~13 hour single play through with no challenges, bosses, zones, quests, or reason to continue playing.

I understand the Dungeon Siege series never had the depth of Diablo, so I'm not expecting them to change much from their previous formula. My impressions from the demo is that the combat and interface is designed for consoles. Controlling the camera is often more of a struggle than the enemies. Each gear slot has its own tab that you have to select to upgrade equipment. Picking up gold/items is not fluid and often times have to click frantically around it. Your skills and key binds seem simple, being easily accessed for a few controller buttons.

Just wondering if any Lurkers have their opinions (which I hold in the highest regard) on this matter Just a quick note that if anyone plays StarCraft 2 and wants to play, feel free to add me via BNET ID MonTy.192

Cheers!
-MonTy

[Chesspiece_face]

I played the 360 demo and it was literally the worst demo I have ever played.

The way that conversations/story is implemented make playing the game with other people an absolute chore. Imagine playing Diablo where whenever the host starts a conversation the other players have to sit and watch them talk while you stand around doing pretty much nothing.

Not only that but the combat and character development seems very thin and doesn't allow for a whole lot of ingenuity and emergent gameplay. The combat is much more "Streets of Rage - hack 'n slash" than "Diablo - hack 'n slash"

Edit: Just noticed you mentioned already playing the demo. Must have missed that on my first read of your post. Everything I've seen regarding the full game, however, makes me believe that there isn't going to be any suprise gameplay developments that aren't offered in the demo.

[Drasca]

I tried the demo while using PC. Worst mistake ever. The front page was pretty, but I was sick within 2 minutes of the limited camera controls and interface gearing toward console crowd. Square/Enix's influence also took away all character development away from the player-- so what we have is another movie, and one that is poorly developed as it flows badly. No thanks. I was gone.

The graphics were technically pretty, until you started moving and looking around. The aesthetic choices were horrible so the overall look was terrible.

See the following "Extra Credits" video to show what I mean by Graphics vs Aesthetics in gameplay:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/v...Aesthetics

[kandrathe]

Boo. That is sad news. Dungeon Siege II is passably fun for LAN parties.

[Crusader]

As soon as I read DSIII had been Consolified, that is, molested like an innocent child by a big fat hairy publisher until it would lay down with the worst thing to ever happen to gaming; the console, I decided to not pick this one up.

Now, am I being harsh? perhaps, but let's take a look. In order to work with consoles, the control scheme was changed from a logical mouse click does whatever you want to do scheme to a monstrosity. Shall we look at the mess they made of things?

Right click: Move character. IT BEGINS HERE! What is wrong with the left mouse button? oh, you made that the attack button? Riight. there is this thing called contextual clicks.
You have to control the camera yourself. Which makes you seasick within minutes. OBSERVE!
Then picking up items is a real biatch. Whatever happened to just using your mouse to click it, the character walking to it and picking it up. Oh Right! Mouse! Consoles! Burly hairy man-rape! Now all we can do is walk around aimlessly over the item until it deigns to give us a popup showing we can pick it up. Look at 5:05 of the above movie to FEEL THE PAIN. Trust me, it doesn't get better.

Let's take a look at combat shall we, look at 6:30. FEEL THE PAIN. First some clumsy camera aiming, then an instruction that reads "Move Right Mouse Button in the direction of an enemy to target them."

Let's recap shall we? Right click moves the character. Keyboard controls the camera. Left mouse attacks, move right mouse button in the direction of an enemy to target them.

W.T.F.

What happened to 'right or left click to attack the enemy'? I mean, it was simple. Burly man console rape, that's what happened.

The nightmare of the control scheme continues. Let's see, shall we?
Press space to block.
press 1 to stun your enemies with shield bash.

So while trying to manhandle the camera into position, you have to use space to block and the numeric buttons for special attacks, whilst using the right mouse button to target enemies. Still with me? Remember, in Diablo this was all done with one button. That was 15 years ago.

It gets worse. "tap right button in a direction and pres space to dodge" LOLWUT? Last I checked the right mouse button doesn't have DIRECTIONS! It's pretty obvious this is referring to the second directional pointer in a controller, but COME ON, PUT SOME BLOODY EFFORT INTO A DECENT PC CONTROL SCHEME!

Let's move on to the rpg elements. Now, I don't call hack&slash games RPG's just out of pure principle. Just because it has a character sheet doesn't mean it's an RPG. An RPG requires you to play a character that develops and has some freedom of choice in its actions. The latest Elder Scrolls games are RPG's. Diablo and Dungeon Siege are not. Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic are in the grey area since it's still linear as hell, with the player determining the order in which he does things, but at least they have freedom in character development. In Mass Effect that is 'Red Bar or Blue Bar'. But on to this shitpile they call a game. They borrowed the conversation interface from Mass Effect, that much is clear. They borrowed the facial expressions from a piece of cardboard, ie: there are none.

So yea, it sucks. Balls. Of steel.

[kandrathe]

Consolified...

Well, really... In the 1980's I studied Alan Kay and the work at Xerox PARC. The typewriter was a particularly useful device invented to allow the alphabet to be mechanically represented in a way that people could push buttons (levers really) to communicate to a piece of paper. We've been stuck with the QWERTY keyboard ever since. Xerox hypothesized that with computing, and navigating 2 dimensional screens, that the man machine interface might be better off with a "Mouse". Great for sitting at a fixed work station, but not so good for the types of computing being done now.

Gamepads really suck for typing. And, while keyboards are great for abstractly having many buttons (options) they are not as ergonomically viable for the 4 people sitting around the living room playing Tekken Tag Tournament. Where console game designers (and ergo publishers) fail is in short changing the things that PC software designers (and publishers) fail which is in spending enough time working out the ergonomics of the human/machine interface.

It doesn't help that each console manufacturer has to rearrange the buttons, make them different colors, making the entire industry not standard and confusing. It makes porting between consoles difficult, and porting from the PC pretty impossible.

I played the original Half-life on the PC for years, and someone gave me a console version as a gift. It's barely possible to do.

[Kevin]

As soon as I read DSIII had been Consolified, that is, molested like an innocent child by a big fat hairy publisher until it would lay down with the worst thing to ever happen to gaming; the console, I decided to not pick this one up.

While I fully agree that PC's and consoles have different strengths and that porting from one to the other without putting any effort into it is bad. The idea that console games are automatically inferior, I can't accept. There are some games I prefer on consoles, the game pad control scheme does have advantages for some things and designs. GunValkyrie did a great job of this, though it did take a bit to get used to it because it was so different from most other control set-ups but once you stopped fighting it, it felt so natural.

So I've accepted the fact that some games are going to be designed for consoles first and then ported to the PC so I picked up an X-Box 360 controller so that I can play them how they were designed. If the developer can't port it to a PC using the same input it would get from that console then it's just not worth playing. I don't know if Dungeon Siege 3 is in that category or not.

Of course I played Dungeon Siege one and it failed to really keep me engaged. I did get through it in multiplayer, but the fact that you could set your toon to follow/assist and essentially walk away for 30 minutes and not have the other people know in multi was not good.

I tried DS2 briefly and again it didn't grab me. So I had no expectations for DS3 when I heard about it.

Now if you can navigate the 8 billion configurations a PC can have, you can do some stuff a console just doesn't allow, but you don't always need that for a good game. I still think the FreeSpace games did one of the best jobs to being adaptable to whatever you wanted for controllers with the way they handled the mapping of things. I don't know why so many games fail to provide key mapping options, or put such horrible interfaces on them when they do, or only provide the interface for some options but you can edit files for others.

Of course I might not be wanting as much from my games recently. I actually prefer the Mass Effect games (though I think I liked 1 better than 2) over say Oblivion, partly because it was more linear and I wanted to see the story. I get so distracted in Morrowind/Oblivion and end up getting caught up in min/maxing and that detracts from the game. I played through Mass Effect three times because while the character development was as you say "red bar, blue bar, or purple bar" for skills and "red choice / blue choice" for actions it did change how things played enough, and the different squad choices could change how it played enough. I also knew I'd be done in 20-40 hours of play. With Oblivion I might put that much time in and not even have one gate closed. It's not that I don't have fun, but I've found I do like to know I'm making progress and being forced to do so as opposed to forcing myself to do so, can be nice. Of course the Mass Effect ports from the console to the PC also came with changes to the interface so that a mouse/keyboard would work well. They put the extra effort into it.

Since control interface is such a huge part of game enjoyment, I do wonder how DS3 would review if played with the input it was designed for? I doubt I'd still have much interest since it's predecessors never caught my interest, but I do wonder.

[kandrathe]

Of course I might not be wanting as much from my games recently. I actually prefer the Mass Effect games (though I think I liked 1 better than 2) over say Oblivion, partly because it was more linear and I wanted to see the story. I get so distracted in Morrowind/Oblivion and end up getting caught up in min/maxing and that detracts from the game. I played through Mass Effect three times because while the character development was as you say "red bar, blue bar, or purple bar" for skills and "red choice / blue choice" for actions it did change how things played enough, and the different squad choices could change how it played enough. I also knew I'd be done in 20-40 hours of play. With Oblivion I might put that much time in and not even have one gate closed. It's not that I don't have fun, but I've found I do like to know I'm making progress and being forced to do so as opposed to forcing myself to do so, can be nice. Of course the Mass Effect ports from the console to the PC also came with changes to the interface so that a mouse/keyboard would work well. They put the extra effort into it.

I have Oblivion for both console and PC, and I think they did a pretty good job. My only complaint is that I miss tweaking things with the ~console that I can do on a PC, but that's back to command line which is difficult to do without a keyboard.

I still pull out Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 once in awhile, even though they have fairly linear plot play through. I think the first one had better immersion, in being able to land on the planets and explore (even though the number of planets was limited). But, I do get a little annoyed by the limited dialog choices, and the resultant plot consequences. For example, if you play the male Shepard as a "nice guy" paragon (who is checking up on them frequently to get their loyalty missions), you invariably attract Jack, Miranda, Kelly, Tali and confuse Garus, and Mordin about your intentions. And, this isn't Fable, where they'd resolve the multiple attraction conflict with an orgy in the captains quarters.

It's not really a problem of these RPG genre games being on this particular hardware, so much as it is in the ability of the designers to step away from storyboarding a plot line, and forcing the protagonist into their version of the story. This is a failing of many RPG games. They can wow us with the spectacular cut-scene specifically designed for when Roger flicked his Bick, and lit the fuse to the humongo explosives.

If you let the player wander around anywhere they want, and resolve the problem without a lighter, then you might never see that movie they spent a gazillion dollars producing.

What it really means is that beyond physics, they need to incorporate more simulation and allow the NPC's to react and think for themselves. If you let the protagonist wander around, he might interact with the environment in ways they didn't expect and the environment needs to react as well. This is why Oblivion has nearly infinite replay value, even though the NPC's become somewhat predictable, and in fact, they often run around killing each other without the user having instigated the conflicts (often to the players disadvantage).

[Crusader]

Well said Kandrathe. And I agree with GG too. But when you take a PC-only game series and adapt it so that you can play it on consoles, you sacrifice too much. Imagine our worst nightmare; Diablo 3 on Consoles. Imagine the sacrifices made. Imagine the AGONY!

Now, I must say I loved Oblivion. I've seen what is promised in Skyrim and I try not to get hyped. One promise they made and have shown (somewhat) is NPC's dynamically adapting to situations affecting their town. And the NPC's supposedly aren't shit-for-brained any more with their random outbursts of nuttiness. They'll also react more realistically to players. They might pick up items the players drop, or fight over them. We'll have to wait and see.

[kandrathe]

Well said Kandrathe. And I agree with GG too. But when you take a PC-only game series and adapt it so that you can play it on consoles, you sacrifice too much. Imagine our worst nightmare; Diablo 3 on Consoles. Imagine the sacrifices made. Imagine the AGONY!

Now, I must say I loved Oblivion. I've seen what is promised in Skyrim and I try not to get hyped. One promise they made and have shown (somewhat) is NPC's dynamically adapting to situations affecting their town. And the NPC's supposedly aren't shit-for-brained any more with their random outbursts of nuttiness. They'll also react more realistically to players. They might pick up items the players drop, or fight over them. We'll have to wait and see.

I think a great comparison is Oblivion versus Dragon Age, The Awakening. Even in looking at how they award the Achievements tells much about their understanding of "game" play. I've been through it twice, and that's it. There is no way I'm going to replay the exact same story 6 times to get all the Achievements for each character type. I'm not a play tester, I'm the gamer -- let me play!

Now, I could imagine Diablo3 done right on a console. There is no reason it wouldn't work exactly as D1 and D2 did on the PC. You need to look at how some of the co-op games are done right on the networked consoles now.

[Taem]

Two comments:

GAMES THAT WORK WELL ON BOTH:
I installed Portal: Prelude on my PC and it plays great, typical FPS, using keyboard and mouse, however I got used to playing Portal on the xbox with the control pad. So I got a wired xbox controller and plugged it into the PC and whola, I was playing with the controller. The best part is I could keybind any control/action to any button I choose - this was part of Portal: Prelude functionality, however I believe the software I was using would have allowed me to do this also.

DIABLO III:
All I have to say is I hope your ready for that style of play with D3, because it was delayed specifically so it could release on consoles. I had asked Bashok about it personally on the D2 forums during the PTR and, while he didn't admit D3 was coming to the console, he said it might take a longer time to develop if it were coming to the console, and low and behold, a huge delay (although not uncommon for Blizzard, I know) for D3's release. I hope Bliz nails it with D3, but I fear it will become the same lame fiasco DS3 has become. If that's the case, I'll be playing Torchlight 3 instead.

[Crusader]

DIABLO III:
All I have to say is I hope your ready for that style of play with D3, because it was delayed specifically so it could release on consoles. I had asked Bashok about it personally on the D2 forums during the PTR and, while he didn't admit D3 was coming to the console, he said it might take a longer time to develop if it were coming to the console, and low and behold, a huge delay (although not uncommon for Blizzard, I know) for D3's release. I hope Bliz nails it with D3, but I fear it will become the same lame fiasco DS3 has become. If that's the case, I'll be playing Torchlight 3 instead.

Ummmm.. your logic is flawed. Diablo3 was never delayed. In fact, to date, no release date was given. Blizzard always takes long making their games. Also, I see no proof anywhere to support your claim that Blizz would release the game for consoles. You'd think they announce it if they plan on doing it. So no, Diablo3 is PC only as far as I can tell.

[Taem]

DIABLO III:
All I have to say is I hope your ready for that style of play with D3, because it was delayed specifically so it could release on consoles. I had asked Bashok about it personally on the D2 forums during the PTR and, while he didn't admit D3 was coming to the console, he said it might take a longer time to develop if it were coming to the console, and low and behold, a huge delay (although not uncommon for Blizzard, I know) for D3's release. I hope Bliz nails it with D3, but I fear it will become the same lame fiasco DS3 has become. If that's the case, I'll be playing Torchlight 3 instead.

Ummmm.. your logic is flawed. Diablo3 was never delayed. In fact, to date, no release date was given. Blizzard always takes long making their games. Also, I see no proof anywhere to support your claim that Blizz would release the game for consoles. You'd think they announce it if they plan on doing it. So no, Diablo3 is PC only as far as I can tell.

Well, I really hope that your right. I don't think the Diablo series has any right being on consoles. Did you ever play D1 of the PS1? Sucked. Anyways, that was the impression I got from Bashok numerous times on the official B.net forums. As to D3 being delayed, I'm aware no release date was ever given, however I've read around the web that some companies who would be carrying the game expected it to come out last year, maybe because of Blizzard's early announcement? Who knows, but I'm pretty sure Bliz is looking to make extra $$, and everyone in the biz knows the console market is a billion dollar market. While I would prefer D3 to remain on PC only, lets face it, Bliz is a company that makes money selling video games, so why wouldn't they release such a highly anticipated game on the consoles also?

[Rhydderch Hael]

I have Oblivion for both console and PC, and I think they did a pretty good job. My only complaint is that I miss tweaking things with the ~console that I can do on a PC, but that's back to command line which is difficult to do without a keyboard.

I've played Oblivion on an Xbox 360 for a few years before I picked up the PC version of the same title (what am I going to do with three fold-out maps of some place where I know the geography by heart!?). What I miss most is what I don't get with the PC controls: namely, the ability to force-select only one item in the sales window (which I got by tapping the left bumper button on the Xbox controller) in order to sell a stack of identical items one at a time, and I miss the means to spam through the ridiculous and immersion-breaking Persuasion minigame (on an Xbox, you spin a stick; on an PC you have to hunt-n-click with the mouse).

The kicker is, there's a miniature keyboard you can attach to an Xbox controller, thus making console commands possible if the software ever permitted it.

[Chesspiece_face]

Penny Arcade comic.

[kandrathe]

Penny Arcade comic.

Ah, yes, the classic RPG problem of difficulty scaling, and loot distribution.

They would have been better off with a simple system of no scaling, and that every character gets equal gold, experience and a copy of every item dropped until their inventory gets filled.

The most immersive would be for it to fall on the ground and allow the participants to fight each other for the loot in a PvP battle.

[Kevin]

Well said Kandrathe. And I agree with GG too. But when you take a PC-only game series and adapt it so that you can play it on consoles, you sacrifice too much. Imagine our worst nightmare; Diablo 3 on Consoles. Imagine the sacrifices made. Imagine the AGONY!

Now, I must say I loved Oblivion. I've seen what is promised in Skyrim and I try not to get hyped. One promise they made and have shown (somewhat) is NPC's dynamically adapting to situations affecting their town. And the NPC's supposedly aren't shit-for-brained any more with their random outbursts of nuttiness. They'll also react more realistically to players. They might pick up items the players drop, or fight over them. We'll have to wait and see.

I think a great comparison is Oblivion versus Dragon Age, The Awakening. Even in looking at how they award the Achievements tells much about their understanding of "game" play. I've been through it twice, and that's it. There is no way I'm going to replay the exact same story 6 times to get all the Achievements for each character type. I'm not a play tester, I'm the gamer -- let me play!

Now, I could imagine Diablo3 done right on a console. There is no reason it wouldn't work exactly as D1 and D2 did on the PC. You need to look at how some of the co-op games are done right on the networked consoles now.

Interface still matters and consoles don't have as many options. Yes you can get a keyboard for most of them, but the history of console games that required a controller beyond the standard one for the console have a history of more failures than successes and the ones that have worked were very specific. Consumers seeing a game that requires a keyboard for the console are likely to say "Um my computer can do that and nothing else will take advantage of this so why bother?" Even things like racing wheels that seem pretty straight forward can be a downside because the game is designed for the controller and the wheel just works worse. Which is sad in a racing game.

Of course the multitude of options on the PC can actually be a problem as well, but as I've said I've seen that issue solved before.

Of course some of my point was that at times since all I'm after is entertainment, the "interactive movie" genre that I really think the Final Fantasy games helped make so popular, can be what I want. Mass Effect doesn't even try to hide this fact. Heck there is a "movie grain" option in the graphics settings to make it look more like a film. Wet, is another game that embraces this mechanic and does so in a way that still makes the game very fun to play. I don't want all my games to be demanding.

The problem is that games of this nature appeal to a larger market and hardcore gamers can't survive on this fare only. They, like Crusader, want more depth at times, more choices, more freedom, etc.

As you rightly point out, AI programming is not simple. It's one of the slowest moving things in a very fast moving industry. I can't blame companies for saying "Well this is something we just can't pull off, but we can make some really cool/entertaining things if we stick with a story on rails so lets do that."

It's not a secret that design is generally done for a lower common denominator (I didn't say lowest because it's not usually lowest) in order to increase market size. Consoles have very little difference in this, since they have fixed hardware, fixed OS/drivers, etc. That generally translates to lower production costs, and with a larger market share...

As you say, design matters too. Dungeon Siege 3 sounds like it didn't just fail because it was a bad port, but it seems like it failed because it was just a bad design regardless of system.

[Concillian]

I don't disagree that some games are great as an "immersive movie"

The issues happen when you change the direction of a series of games. Dragon Age II got flak because they removed significant features and feel from the original. People expect, at the least, something roughly equivalent to the precedent when they pick up a "II" or a "III" game. When they end up with something that removes a significant portion of the feel of the original to shoehorn it onto a console, there are going to be problems.

Presentation and marketing is a big part of the issue with console ports.

When I was playing Baldur's Gate series games, there were console versions of Baldur's Gate games that were consolified, but it wasn't a problem at all, because they were not sold on the PC platform and nobody expected them to act like the PC Baldur's Gate series. I played at least one and it was more like Diablo than Baldur's Gate, and that was perfectly cool. It was fun and different, and that was okay.

I believe the issue at hand is less a console issue and more a perception issue with what people expect from a "Dungeon Siege game". It's not new that people complain when features are changed for the worse in a series. I believe DA2 issues and Crysis 2 issues also stem from the same issue. If Crysis 2 were called something without a 2 or 3 in the title, it would not have the expectation of pushing PC hardware to the limit the way Crysis did. DA2 is the same thing.

[Chesspiece_face]

The issues happen when you change the direction of a series of games. Dragon Age II got flak because they removed significant features and feel from the original. People expect, at the least, something roughly equivalent to the precedent when they pick up a "II" or a "III" game. When they end up with something that removes a significant portion of the feel of the original to shoehorn it onto a console, there are going to be problems.

I had the complete opposite experience with DA:2. I played Origins on the 360 and going into that I knew that the controls were going to be sub par compared to the PC controls. It was frustrating for awhile, but eventually I grew accustomed to the interface and came to appreciate how the game worked.

I put off playing DA:2 for a long while primarily because so many reviews lambasted it for being dumbed down. When I finally got around to playing it I couldn't understand what the hell these reviewers were talking about. It was obvious that they were letting their perception of the PC changes effect their reviews of the 360 product and more importantly it was obvious that they were basing their "dumbed down" perception off of playing the game on the easy setting. Anything normal and above is quite the opposite of "dumbed down". In fact, because healing is much more of a commodity in DA:2 as well as the fact that encounters often include many more opponents the game requires so much more tactical positioning and skill use than the first one ever did. Playing through on Hard I ended up turning off 90% of the tactics for my party because I couldn't allow a single misplaced skill as it had the possibility of causing a wipe.

[Crusader]

Hah, even the developers are aware what a mess they made of the controls. Look at this interview:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-0...-interview
I quote:

Nathaniel Chapman: There were two main things that motivated it. One was, in bringing the game over to consoles, we really needed it to play in an exciting way on a console controller. It was very difficult to take the party management aspect of the earlier games and... it just didn't mesh well with the console controls.

In general, one of the criticisms of the first Dungeon Siege was that it kind of played itself. We wanted to make a really active experience and put a lot of emphasis on the 'action' in 'action RPG'. We wanted to ensure you never felt like the game was too automated. We really wanted it to feel like you were always directly controlling your character, and how you controlled your character really mattered and affected the outcome of combat.

Eurogamer: You weren't worried about a backlash from the series' core PC fanbase?

Nathaniel Chapman: Honestly, we were less worried about that aspect of it. Actually this is one thing I would have liked to have spent more time on, and we are actually spending time on now. Basically, I think as long as PC gamers have a good way to control the combat they will enjoy it. One review - I can't remember which - said if you play with a game pad the combat is great, so right now we're working on improving the PC controls through an update.

I think if there are PC gamers who are having a negative reaction it's less about what the combat is, it's more how the combat controls.

Can you believe the arrogance of this guy?