Dungeon Siege 3 - Preview @ G4TV
 

Omega points out a preview of Dungeon Siege 3 at G4TV. As with the other articles so far, the details are light. Once again, the graphics seem to stand out to the previewers:
More information.

Bah, why does shit always have a sequel and good things end? DS was always such a borin tunnel-run. *__*

Did you play DS2?

In general though I'd guess it's because not enough people who agree with you buy what you think are good games, while enough people buy in your opinion rubbish games that it makes them commercially viable. Ie, you have a minority view and need to make up for it by either spending more than otherwise on games, or by creating your own games.

For the same reason there are so many McDonald's restaurants…

Pretty graphics do not a good game make. What worries me the most about this new game are the controls. Dungeon Seige 1 & 2 had wonderful game controls.

Does anybody know if this new game has kept the mouse controls from the first two games? Or has the console port completely screwed the game controls for the PC market?

Absolute garbage. Tried it one time after many years and couldnt believe people actually eat crap like that.

Have we lost faith in Obsidian already?

Nah, I think this has the potential to be a good game. Though, I base this on nothing but my faith in the developers.

DS2 was pretty good, but suffered from horribly linear character development - despite being infinitely better than in DS1. But the rest of the game was great for the genre, and the story wasn't bad.

I'm pretty sure they've stated on the forums that the PC will have mouse controls (no idea if they're the same as the older games though).

I was inveted recently. I was eating McDonalds stuff for the first time in … I think at least 5-7 years.

No matter what you say about it, I found it very tasty. :)

But I don't eat it on a regular basis, you know ? ;)

Once per 7 years sounds correct. Just to remind how bad it is. ;)

I think the PC Gamer preview I saw talked about one player using mouse and keyboard alongside another using a gamepad. I'm guessing that was co-op on the same PC, which would be cool.

I think Dungeon Siege II was a tremendous improvement over Dungeon Siege, much more in the style of RPG's I like (more Baldur's Gate light than a party-based Diablo-clone).

Only Dragon Age and Morrowind had as much attention to fleshing out the world, it's lore, history, culture and flora/fauna. It even had companions with their own background story and sidequests, which is uncommon to see outside Black Isle/Bioware. Unfortunate they returned to the old formula in the expansion, which was very sad. If Dungeon Siege 3 is like Dungeon Siege 2, then I am going for it. If it's like the expansion or Dungeon Siege 1, I might skip it like I skipped Titan Quest, Silverfall, Sacred 2 etc.

I have pondered about this, and I think I have cooled down in my faith to Obsidian.

Obsidian are strong at building good stories, but every sequel they made of others games have been inferior. KOTOR2 might not have been their fault of course, Neverwinter Nights 2 was semi-decent but mostly a disappointment to me (lack of customization and ease of adding new content made the idea of building your own stuff with the toolset obsolete, and the ending was one of the worst I have seen). Mask of the Betrayer was a definite improvement, but it was also a small expansion.

I have yet to play Alpha Protocol, but what I heard about it makes me believe that going from tactical/strategical/rpg gameplay into action, was a bad idea.

I'm not a big story guy, really.

In my opinion, Obsidian is one of the VERY few well-funded developers left that still caters to the old-school crowd, if only partially so.

Primarily in terms of game mechanics, and a solid understanding of entertaining game design.

Very few (big) developers today, understand what makes a game entertaining beyond merely on the surface. So, they copy/paste games from the past - or games with success - without really knowing what they're doing.

Bioware, for instance, have been copying themselves over and over - making a blueprint of a "successful" game, but they've completely lost touch (or interest) in what ACTUALLY works. They even claimed Mass Effect 2 was the best game they ever made!!! :)

Such is the case with the vast majority of AAA developers, because they're lost in the cycle of business, perpetuating the problems of greed versus art.

In effect, they've become fantastic salesmen - but lousy game designers.

I wonder… should we call this: "The Masses Effect" ;)

I agree with that statement, DArtagnan. After checking the site http://blog.brainhex.com I have been convinced that a flaw in many designers is the attempt to find an universal one-size-fits-all kind of game, when it used to be that there are gamers with different interests, thus made different branches of games. In attempt to streamline a game to fit everyone, you will simply scale away more and more archetypes.

Mass Effect 2 had one of the strongest stories ever, one of the strongest, most epic, most emotional game I played. Gameplay though, was like eating light vanilla. Nothing new and not near the quality of the games it tried to copy. It's an irony that Mass Effect 1's equipment system was so horribly bad, that it was a definite improvement to cut it out entirely from it's sequel.

Dragon Age, on the other hand, was very strong on gameplay, that drew from much experience in how to create a challenging, tactical and advanced game, without dumbing it down. It definitely adheres to those minds who do not seek easily digested entertainment, but something they can participate in themselves. From what I heard in DA2, they are making light-vanilla out of that too. A story to be digested rather than a game in which you as a gamer decide how to play.

A friend who previously played ME2 while I did, asked me what choice I made in the ending of Dragon Age. There are several endings and your choice really matter there. That reminded me of when we played Fallout 2 and spoke for hours upon hours on how we played the game, what characters we made, what choices we made, what peculiar content we found etc. When the "Tactician" achievement popped up on my screen I felt strongly rewarded, because I definitely played Dragon Age in my own unique way, still my playstyle was supported by the developers. The amount of choices in how to play the game, what to do in every situation, what kind of character to play, was incredible.

We never ever spoke about that in ME2 because there were ultimately only two ways to play the game; light blue or orange. You didn't really play ME2, it was served to you. Instead of picking from a menu, ME2 was like food on an airplane, you could pick one out of two prepacked dishes. This means that no matter what you picked, your choice did never really matter in the end. You made as much choice as you would have done if you optioned to see Aliens or Terminator 2. Your dish was exactly the same as about 50% of the rest on the plane.

Yeah, and it's a simple enough thing to realise why.

It's no longer the passion of the artist driving development, it's the business that's calling the shots.

Not necessarily a bad thing, objectively speaking, but a horrible thing from my point of view.

Developers are asking themselves: "What do people want?"

They should be asking: "What do WE want?"

Well, you seem like more of a story guy than myself - so I won't bog the discussion down with how I wasn't really impressed with the story of ME2. That said, it was a very convincing cinematic experience, even if I much preferred the first game - in that sense. The first game has stuck with me, where as the second is all but forgotten by now.

You must remember that Dragon Age was started aaaages ago, when Bioware wasn't absorbed by the business aspect - to the same extent. So, the game is sort of a mish-mash of the old with the new.

Personally, I think the gameplay was a significant step down from Baldur's Gate 2 - and I found it shock-full of cookie cutter combat setups. The primary weakness of the game was the lack of diversity in terms of character development.

Then again, I'm still not a story guy - so that aspect, while admittedly fantastic, didn't really make up for the grindy feeling of combat entirely.

Oh, I agree entirely ;)

Except that Aliens is brilliant and Terminator 2 is mainstream crap, released after Cameron went "Bioware" ;)

I post this not to argue but because I'm always amazed by the range of different experiences.

From my perspective…

KotOR 2 added nuance to the predictable, cardboard-cutout characters of KotOR.
NWN2 added proper parties to that godawful almost-Diablo gameplay of NWN.
Mask of the Betrayer is one of the best RPGs of the last decade. End of story.
Alpha Protocol was flawed but also brilliant and I still marvel at the range of possibilities.

Playing KOTOR2 and reading Nietzsche made me question and later change my core values. That said, KOTOR1 have the greatest twist I have seen in a computer game.

I deeply enjoyed the party gameplay in NWN2, but I only played NWN1 in multiplayer where as both the NWN expansions were limited to a party of 3. It's just the ending that ticked me off, and I didn't think the keep system worked well. Also I was kinda disappointed over the romance options, but Khelgar Ironfist is one of the most memorable companions I know.

It's true. But it is an expansion, and expansions tend to use an already existing toolset. It's also rather small in scale.

I thought it was pedestrian. Didn't work for me at all. *shrug*

I don't see what using an existing toolset has to do with anything. It's also longer than, say, Fallout 1 - one of my favourite all time games.

Anyway, just a different point of view.

I mostly agree with Dhruin, though I consider KotOR1 and 2 roughly equal: I do like the twist of KotOR1, and it's certainly more polished. Other than that, KotOR2 has the better gameplay (smoother, with features like weapon switching and advanced classes) and the better writing overall (too bad certain parts were cut, meaning characters like Sion/Nihilus make less sense).

When a game is produced there's a limited set of resources of which some is put into engine, some in gameplay. A sequel or expansion made with the same engine doesn't only come with a bugfixed and polished one, the developer can also spend more resources into actual gameplay and content. Fallout 2 was thus much larger and complex than Fallout 1, Baldur's Gate II larger and more polished than Baldur's Gate I, Gothic II larger than Gothic I etc. Raven Software usually had stronger story and content than ID's original game made with the quake/doom engines.

Mask of the Betrayer was longer than Fallout 1 indeed, but was it longer than Fallout II or Baldur's Gate II?

Expansions also tend to be much shorter than sequels, which was the case with Tales of the Sword Coast, Throne of Bhaal, Hordes of the Underdark, Mask of the Betrayer and Awakenings.

The overall point here, is that I do not rule an expansion as a good example of a full blown game made from scratch, so I do not really see one as an achievement.

Ah, well, for me I'm interested in the creative content and couldn't care less about the tools - or the length for that matter. I don't really understand why you'd value that over the quest design, story, structure, world design and so on - that's the achievement I'm interested in. Fallout was a better game than Fallout 2 for mine, by the way, because it was a more focused experience.

Anyway, just some observations. Carry on.

I think you miss the point. I also prefer the creative content, which is why I think it's best when an artist can begin with a canvas and all the colors he or she needs, instead of having to first assemble the canvas from scratch and gather all the chemicals required for the colors before he or she can begin to paint their piece.

In the recent years it have been common to purchase the engines from companies who work on them exclusively, such as the Unreal 3 engine, which means that companies can spend more time on building the actual game, than the engine.

Related article: Spiderweb Games - How Jeff Vogel Saved the Gaming Industry Overnight

That's just as much a disadvantage, as an advantage - in terms of the creative process.

In theory, it means less time spent with the engine - and more time with the creative stuff. Sadly, as it turns out, it simply means less time with the game, overall.

They license engines (or use established ones, based on what was used before an expansion) to cut costs, ultimately - and they also constrain themselves, because even a very flexible engine, like Unreal, will have limitations in terms of what you can do with it - without completely re-writing code or changing stuff at a fundamental level.

Back in the day, truly creative developers opted to create their engines from scratch, even when having the option of licensing. Looking Glass, for instance, chose to write the Dark Engine (Thief), because they had certain specific things in mind, and they didn't want to license anything else. I remember reading that about them, in an interview. Then again, they also wrote the Ultima Underworld/System Shock engine - which was FAR ahead of anything else at the time, so they had the competence needed.

Today, even though developers are changing engines pretty significantly, they're still bound by certain basic limitations - or the impractical nature of redoing the core of an established engines.

I think it's extremely evident in modern games, and even though there ARE significant differences, I think it's supremely evident that games like Batman, Mass Effect, Bioshock, Alpha Protocol, and games like that - are bound by much the same limitations. Even as different games, I think they "feel" too much alike.

In the past, most games felt THOROUGHLY unique - and that's just another thing that's been lost.

I think the reason all games feel the same is rather the similar presentation. All games are 3rd person, have a minimap in top left/right, usually allow to take cover and will at one point allow you to man a turret with unlimited bullets. The tasks involve finding X or doing Y # number of times, or go to shiny lit-up waypoint to receive next instruction in journal. Party/troop control, going off track, games as toolsets in which you can craft your own character/strategy are growing rare. You just need to sit back and absorb the recognizeable which also means the predictable.

Yup, agreed. I think the engine plays a part in that as well, because so many of the assets are prepared for those similar features already.

But, it's also a general lack of daring and creative drive.