Dungeon Siege 3 - Old School @ IGN

IGN thinks Dungeon Siege III is rather old-school, so they have an article that discusses the apparent pros and cons. Here's their take on the camera, for example:

Viewing your party from on-high is well-established in the world of video games. So well established, in fact, that it has slipped from 'established' to 'extinct' in most genres. There just aren't that many action games that still use it. After all, ditching that perspective and going for an over the shoulder viewpoint allows players to see what's ahead of them and more often than not that's helpful. Sure, it should give you a decent tactical awareness of where your enemies are, and looking down at the world has some charm, but it feels pretty restrictive unless you're in a dungeon.

There's no real technical reason to stick with this viewpoint any more – today's games are more than capable of rendering epic landscapes. Is it just tradition, then, that has prompted Obsidion to stick with what has come before? Quite possibly, but I can't help but feel that gamers who are less familiar with this genre will get annoyed by the decision. We're used to being able to scope out our surroundings, so being unable to lower the perspective will be an inevitable frustration for some. And yes, I am aware that there's more than one viewpoint to choose from; but even the one that's closest to the character and looks ahead the most still left me wanting to see further.

I wonder if they'd write the same thing for Diablo III?
More information.

Another IGN masterpiece where if everything not action of a fps its trash. As for diablo 3 they will apologize and say it reinvented the genre. Of course the money from blizzard will help greatly.

but in my session with the game I very much felt funnelled along a single path. Compared with Fallout, Oblivion, even Diablo, I felt hemmed in, with only small alternate paths to explore, each of which almost always ended at a chest-filled dead end.

What? Diablo?

Sure, in Diablo 2 you can explore fields but they're all walled off.

There are times when the so-called old school view point works and is helpful. I liked that DA Origins provided differing ways of looking at a situation, especially in dungeons.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
I wonder if they'd write the same thing for Diablo III?

Hehe, nicely put. Indeed, Diablo 3 will certainly not be slammed for using oldschool camera angles.

I fully agree with IGN. I also think everybody should be a straight heterosexual and married with 30. No more and no less than 1 kid though, we have overpopulation to consider. Different tones of skin can easily be taken care of by a little bleach. A generation down the road we can fix it in the genome.



(because this is teh internets: sarcasm alert!)

This IGN article makes me even more interested in the game than I was before. I like that!

In Sacred 2 the perspective was very annoying. You could zoom in to an over the shoulder view, but that just limited what you could see. While you were in over the shoulder view you did not see the horizon ahead, it was still basically top down with a lot lower visibility of your surroundings. You really had to play it zoomed out to an overhead view.

I had a similar viewing angle problem with the recent King's Bounty (not featuring Amelie, though, since I still have to buy them). It just appeared as unnatural to me.

Weren't they the guys that said DA was so old-school that it almost felt like a relic of the past? (Or was that Gametrailers?)

The zoomed-out camera should not be a problem. It can be a problem, but it's the developers task to implement it well. If it feels bad or uncomfortable, it's because the developers probably didn't implement it very well. There is nothing inherently wrong with this type of camera (on the contrary, it seems like a perfectly logical choice considering the genre), which is what they seem to imply.

obsidian has fixed the camera? lol

The reality is that the player is assaulted by stereotypical accents (heroes seem to have poncy British accents while sexy big-bosomed vixens speak with an eastern European lilt)

1) Yay!

2) Um, I thought we brits were stereotypically the bad guys?

The reality is that the player is assaulted by stereotypical accents (heroes seem to have poncy British accents while sexy big-bosomed vixens speak with an eastern European lilt)

I for one have no problem with how they speak. Why should everyone speak in a American English accent. Look at the setting of the game.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
I for one have no problem with how they speak. Why should everyone speak in a American English accent. Look at the setting of the game.

which is a generic high fantasy no.1,456

Originally Posted by SAGO
which is a generic high fantasy no.1,456

So whats your point or you just trolling. Do you expect to live in a generic fantasy world and speak like we do? Seriously I had no problem with the original 2worlds since they used old english and it fit the setting.

Typical IGN crap. I remember one review where they were explaining how much the sequel of one particular game is much more better because you could move your character directly instead of moving just a cursor (it was turn based game). Reviewer didn't realize that only thing that has changed was the graphics of the cursor. ("cursory" => "charactery").
As for the viewpoint itself - I only wait when someone tries to convice us that strategy games should drop this obsolete inadequate camera too.

For anyone who cares, there are a lot of new previews posted in this thread over at the Obsidian boards, from the latest press event: http://forums.obsidian.net/index.php?showtopic=57006

Most of them are really positive, fun.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
So whats your point or you just trolling. Do you expect to live in a generic fantasy world and speak like we do? Seriously I had no problem with the original 2worlds since they used old english and it fit the setting.

bro, i'm saying thats its pretty typical for sexy hoes to have erotic foreign voices in a generic fantasy video game setting whereas everyone else is voiced by like 1-4 voice actors of the same nationality and accent