Dungeon Siege 2 Demo

By Cyrris

I was a big Diablo 2 fan back in the day. My silver-clad barbarian strode the lands of Sanctuary, demolishing Diablo’s minions, and solidifying Blizzard’s position as my favourite game developer of all time. When the previews for Dungeon Siege first came out, it looked promising. Pretty graphics, wonderful scenery and lots of small interface and gameplay tweaks that Diablo could have really benefitted from. Drinking only as much health potion as you needed seemed so obvious to me. Upon finishing Dungeon Siege though, I felt somewhat robbed, and I know I’m not the only person who felt that way.

Chris Taylor showed with Total Annihilation that he has what it takes to make a killer of a game, but his talent for making an RTS didn’t flow too well over to the RPG genre. While TA appeased many even without much of a storyline, it’s not really possible to do that with an RPG as they’re based largely on what is going on around your character as a person. Dungeon Siege lacked the depth that Diablo 2 had (even for a hack’n’slash RPG), and the expansion pack, Legends of Aranna, didn’t really improve it. Dull characters, poor voice acting, and a generally detached feeling from the game world were just as prevalent. There was some nifty level design though.

After the release of the singleplayer demo for Dungeon Siege 2 I decided that I needed to give it a go, just to see if Gas Powered Games could really make the improvements the world of Aranna so badly required. It was a 1.4 GB download which I am not so sure was worth it.

The ability to hold a conversation with many more people is a definate improvement, though some of the voice acting is still very poor and this I think affects the character of the game world quite a bit. The general atmosphere still seems a bit bland, and I think something could have been done to make the in-game music a bit more fitting to the forest setting the demo is in. The theme tune from the original game does make an appearance, and I always liked its melody, so I have to give some points for that.

While I was not able to kill any major sinister characters in the demo, I am hoping that DS2 will create a much more profound feeling after disposing of a major nemesis. Even upon finishing Dungeon Siege completely, beating the final character did little for me. Meanwhile, fighting all the Prime Evils in Diablo 2 and even lesser characters throughout brought about a satisfaction that Dungeon Siege really should have been able to match. Finishing any quest in the demo still doesn’t feel like much of an achievement. I think some more profound visuals and sound effects could have been used here - but perhaps they are used for the more important quests in the full game. I can only hope.

As far as game mechanics go, I’m no expert, but the improvements to controlling your characters are nice, as well as these new “powers” which were introduced, giving your team some truly lethal and rather fun abilities. Many parts of the interface feel so similar to the original game that anyone who played Dungeon Siege will feel right at home. The AI is better, and the graphics are reasonable, though no longer anything to gawk at. The engine does feel somewhat dated, and I believe it is merely an upgraded version of the engine that the original game ran off. The explosion effects in one of the quests seemed particularly poor and outdated. The engine doesn’t seem to have been made with those in mind.

Overall, I’m not really impressed, and I am glad that Chris Taylor is now focusing his energy on Supreme Commander, as his skills at making an RTS clearly outshine that of his other ventures. I won’t be purchasing Dungeon Siege 2, as it doesn’t seem like enough of an improvement over the original to me.