I played all the way through DS. It was simplistic, yes, and fights were uninspired, sure. But I found the whole game world very immersive. The graphics were gorgeous, and the surround sound was very enriching. It had no other real redeeming qualities, but it was a nice relaxing escape from reality with little more to do than guide some adventurers and enjoy the tour. And I liked that (one time through, anyway).

If DS2 has that same immersiveness, I'll play through it too.

My biggest complaint with Dungeon Siege was that it was too automated. Combat was automated, skill advancement was automated, hell, if you played your cards right, even movement was automated. If they cut down the automation, and add some "real" RPG elements to the game, DS2 might be worth it.

This cinematic feast for the eyes showcases the extraordinary capabilities of the Dungeon Siege II engine

Hmmm, I thought I had read a quote in PC Gamer by Chris Taylor saying they had to reuse the Dungeon Siege engine... so I can't imagine the DS2 engine being that much better (though it was a great engine as far as RPGs are concerned).

"This was another case of the engine being the major focus of the game, hopefully DSII will give them a chance to focus on putting some meat into the gameplay now that most of the engine code is in place."

I think I remember hearing this back when DS was just coming out. The engine took quite a bit of the dev cycle and they knew the gameplay would suffer. Not quoting, but I thought I read a post by Taylor saying that DS2 would be what he wanted DS1 to be. My personal opinion of DS was that it was very boring. I was very let down by the game, was hoping it would be a nice Diablo successor. Maybe DS2 will bring a good 'game' on top of a nice looking engine. Well see...

This comment was edited on May 13, 14:38.

i love minesweeper and crosswords are a blast.. where can i find bookworm you are speaking of?

I played Dungeon Siege for about an hour on normal mode, and just got completely fed up with how frigging slow the character advancement was. I downloaded a mod that increased stat advancement a bit, and that made it a little more fun, but in the end Dungeon Siege suffered horribly from a few flaws :

Magic - Useless. The really cool spells that would actually do some damage, you never get to use, since you need to be about 20 levels higher than you ever get during the course of the single player game.

Fighting - fun at first, until you realise that the game is actually playing itself. The only thing you are telling it to do is where to move the party to (and I can somehow just imagine the game grumbling about that, too.)

Classes - Reducing classes in an RPG to the : Fighter / Archer / Priest / Wizard mold is, in my opinion, in no way an "advancement". You have a party of 8 characters (well, 7 and a donkey), and so you have every class at least twice. This is insanely boring.
Furthermore, I absolutely hated the fact that if you so much as got one level of experience in a different class than your main class, you were basically screwing yourself over where advancement was concerned. I can't remember the gist of it, but some smart peeps had figured out that the formula for stat advancement suffered tremendously from "multi classing".

All in all, Dungeon Siege was pretty, and it was fun to play for a few hours, after that it just became a boring drag. The fact that there also was absolutely NO penalty whatsoever for having one of your characters die (just cast a ressurect spell, select the character, and hit Z so he grabs all his loot and equips it) was a design decision of the umpteenth stupid magnitude.

Good points in the game, however, were that Z key (not having to click 18 times to grab some loot = good), the auto arrangement of the inventory, and the donkey. I always liked the donkey the best of all my characters

They better make some spectacular changes to this franchise before I ever get snared into it again.

Creston

Taylor has gone on recored (don't ask me where, I can't recall exactly) as saying he was less than thrilled with the actual Dungeon Siege "game" as opposed to the Dungeon Siege "engine," which he (righfully) is very impressed with. So I think GPG has a good idea at least that _something_ was wrong with the first game. We can at least hold out hope that the sequel will address those issues while still looking good and being very easy to get into.

John Carmack has a lot to be proud of with his technical achievments. I'm looking forward to seeing the new technical advancements of the DOOM III engine, I'm also excited about seeing what Valve has incorporated into Half Life 2.

One thing that he should not be proud of is the fact that his game company does nothing for gameplay. Not only does id Software not release any games with any dundamentally different gameplay aspects to them, but everyone else in the industry also wastes their time trying to catch up to them technologically leaving gameplay behind to suffer in their games as well.

The industry is only just now starting to recover from the Quake III Arena engine, and now we're seeing more of a focus on gameplay. The Doom III engine will throw everyone one else back into tech catch up mode again, once again forcing gameplay to suffer.

Getting onto the topic of Dungeon Seige, I loved playing it for a week or two but it got really old pretty quick. This was another case of the engine being the major focus of the game, hopefully DSII will give them a chance to focus on putting some meat into the gameplay now that most of the engine code is in place.

Fingers crossed.

This comment was edited on May 13, 13:53.

Dungeon seige is fun, I couldn't care less how many stats it has.

You missed my point, though the other posts after yours have nailed it. Don't be so literal: I wasn't saying the lack of stats make the game boring, it's the overall "stupid" simplicity of DS, as opposed to fun simplicity, that makes it a waste. Of course this is all personal opinion and you can argue I'm wrong til you're blue, but the afore-mentioned few stats for a supposed RPG, items that aren't very exciting or different, same-old same-old levels, virtually no story, cardboard-cutout characters, etc. are all exmaples, if you want more. I was getting at the overall blandness, simplicity, and monotony of DS.

If you think "it's all about" co-op, how about co-op Watching The Grass Grow(tm)? Click click click with your friends, oh whee! Co-op does not save a game.

On the other hand, simplicity does not mean a game's bad. The oldie-but-goodies like The Incredible Machine, Lemmings, chess and checkers, or even newer games like Marble Blast and Orbz are terribly fun to play. How many people do you know that spend time with Minesweeper, Bookworm, or crosswords, even though they're simple? Simple can be good, but DS is nowhere near a good simple, it's just pointless.

m19

This comment was edited on May 13, 13:41.

just a hint.. i keep my 4 fighter/archers up front and 2 combat and 2 nature magic mages in the back healing me or casting spare critters to take the heat off my fighters. i rarely even use health potions.

Dungeon Siege is my favorite game ever. It's an obsession, something like Diablo, but with better graphics. A year later I still play it about 40 hours a week. That's staying power, my friends. And btw, I've never played the single player game, just multiplayer.
It's akin to a MMORPG, only the online play is free.
DS is not a game, it's a whole other world,hehehe.

This comment was edited on May 13, 13:24.

couldn't even force myself to finish the first one because of how monotonous it became.

I finished it, on God mode.

I will not be buying this one.

-TPFKAS2S
http://www.braglio.org
I woke up today and wished for tomorrow
I don't want to be like anyone else
I woke up today and wished for tomorrow
I don't want even be myself

I just recently purchased the original Dungeon Siege after trying the demo. I'm enjoying it so far and havn't really had any problems with the battles.. just got to guzzle those health potions and keep your weaker units back.

I don't like how linear the map is, but it's still fun IMO. I just made it into the Glitterdelve Mine.

I couldn't even force myself to finish the first one because of how monotonous it became. The designers forced you to one straight path and you'd see a group of monsters in the distance and if you couldn't take them all out, you'd just lead them to you one by one. Talk about uninspired gameplay. I can see them forcing you to one path in the caves and dungeons, but they really needed to expand the options for forest travel and stuff.

I doubt the game will be better based on this quote:

To emphasize the advances we have made in the RPG genre, we created a very special trailer using the actual in-game rendering engine.

I really hope that they're seriously not considering advances to graphic quality as advances to the RPG genre. A new bump-mapped terrain option or something is not in any way advancing the RPG genre! Now if they're talking about interactivity and free-form movement on the scale of Ultima 7, then that's an advance to the RPG genre. But I guess I won't know until I see the trailer.

I got bored with this game after about three hours. There just wasn't anything different, interesting, or exciting. It reminded me a lot of Black and White: pretty, with about 20 minutes of gameplay.

The first one was fun at first, then got kind of boring. A real struggle to finish. The real mark of does a game deserve a sequel should be how many people are still playing the original a year later. Anyone? How about using the overly complicated Siege toolkit to build mods, anyone? Maybe just some die hard fans. I'll pass on this one.

McSterls

Dungeon seige is fun, I couldn't care less how many stats it has. Tweaking all those numbers in "real" RPGs just bores the hell out of me, but the first Dungeon Seige was actually fun, with just enough differences in your characters to separate the play styles, and no extra fluff. Besides, it's all about the Co-Op play... more games should have that!
Now if we could just get some screenies and more detailed descriptions of the sequel...

you know, the first was fun, although toward the end it got a little tedious. and the multiplayer map didnt make too much sense.

but by the sound of it they think that this engine is gonna be pretty good, should be fun methinks.

Also, has anyone else noticed that with the imminent relese of Doom3, that the games slated for release have been graphically pushed up. Honestly looking back and into the future ID really does redifine graphic advancements for the whole PC industry.

Must be fun to be Mr Carmack and know that he is responsible for the current state of PC games,..

http://www.poorintern.com
- The Voices In My Fruit Loops Tell Me I'm Special -

So we can run around with cardboard-cut characters where the only difference between them is three numbers? DS's idea of an "RPG" was always laughable to me, pretty though the engine might be. Pass...

m19