Yesterday I spoke to two people about Dungeon Siege III. One claimed that playing the demo was such an agonising experience that she cancelled her preorder, the other boldly stated that it was the finest ARPG of its time. I was tempted to make them fight it out by furiously clicking on one another but it didn’t seem right. Not in the real world. Today, there is news of a big chunk of DLC due in October. You’ll have to shell out for this, around $9.99, but it does sound there’ll be a healthy amount of content. That’s if you consider searching for treasure and ruins in a desert full of monsters healthy. New monsters and items are par for the course, but there’s more! An enchanting system will allow you to make your shiniest loot even more shiny and you’ll also be able to respec your character. Cue cries of: “It should have been in the base game!” No word if there’ll be a further patch for us PC folk alongside the DLC. Personally, I stopped playing the game before the keybinding patch so don’t know how much that did to improve things. Any thoughts?
]]>If you really, really want to besiege dungeons three-at-a-time, then this competition is for you. In celebration of there first being Dungeon Siege, and then two of it, and now three of it, the lovely chaps at Square and Obsidian have provides three sets of all three games for you guys to win. That's right: Dungeon Siege One, Two, And Three (Count 'em!) for you to play. They're Steam codes, too, so if you already have one of the games you could always pass the code along to a chum. That sounds like a decent prize to me, but what to do to win it?
]]>The third siege of dungeons arrived a little while back, with Obsidian taking the reins of the Gas-Powered Games-created loot'n'kill fandango. I've been frantically clicking my mouse button at it for the last few days - an act which I have now transmuted into some words.
First point of interest for me in any dungeon crawler: can I summon animals? Silently beating up monsters in rock corridors gets pretty lonely, after all. Also, I’m really very lazy - if there’s some companion animal doing half the damage for me I don’t need to press so many number keys. Get to it, my furry friend.
Dungeon Siege III delivers on this front, at least. My stocking-wearing gunwoman can summon a spectral hound to antagonise foes while she snipes them from afar. On top of that, one of the AI-controlled companions (only one of which you can have with you at any one time) can summon a flaming hound. It’s doggy carnage out there.
]]>Obsidian lead designer Nathaniel Chapman has stated in an interview with Eurogamer that the developers are currently working on a patch to improve the PC version of Dungeon Siege 3's keyboard and mouse controls. I've yet to play the PC version of DS3, but I was witness to Alec's agitated bellowing about the PC controls (among other things), so I'm going to go ahead an assume that this is a good thing.
]]>Would you look! Eurogamer published my review of the console-toy version of Dungeon Siege III. Did I like it? I did. Though that didn't stop me from having a pop at the loot system. Click past the jump to read that and another choice extract, or just go read the full thing. The choice is yours, adventurer.
]]>Dungeon Siege III has some of the noisiest visuals I've ever seen in an RPG. I've made fun them before. What, then, is a good solution when you want to advertise the game on a television?
Square Enix came up with a solution. A million thanks to RPS reader João "Mellow" Melo for sending this in.
]]>This? Right here? This is how it should be done. A whole ten days (and eight hours) ahead of Dungeon Siege 3's release, Square Enix and Obsidian have put out a demo on the game's Steam page. BOOM! That was the sound of assorted expectations being blown out of the water.
]]>There's a new trailer for arcade hack'n'slash RPG Dungeon Siege III, featuring footage of the game's four player co-op mode. Tell you what, as much as a deviation from Dungeon Siege 1 and 2 as this is, with four characters explosively disassembling monsters on the same screen and with the camera tilted just so, it finally starts to look like a Dungeon Siege game. How about that! Come see what I mean.
]]>Does every game have to have a comic now? I don't mind a comic, but sometimes I just want the game, and none of this stringing myself along with prequel content and backstory in a different medium. Anyway, I'm probably being a miserabilist. So there's a Dungeon Siege III tie-in comic due from Dark Horse, spanning three issues - this is good news if you're into DS lore, I guess.
]]>Hrm. I'm a pretty wary of pre-ordering games personally - I like to hear at least some reception before I invest in a game - but if you were in the market for Dungeon Siege III anyway, you'll be very pleased to hear that future-buying it via Steam means you'll be gifted a free copy of both Dungeon Siege 1 and 2. Which is a pretty good deal - although I rather suspect that the kind of person who would pre-order Dungeon Siege III probably already owns the other games anyway. Still, this would appear to be their first appearance on Steam (if indeed that it how they're being distributed), so that's good news. Gradually transforming one's games library to a purely digital form is forever appealing - I know I've a whole bunch of disc-locked games that I wish could instead be summoned from the crowd.
Also, DS3 is confirmed as Steamworks title. More details on that below, like.
]]>Dungeon Siege III, previously dated to be released on the 27st May, will now be with us on the 17th June, three weeks later than planned. This we call a "slip". Square Enix have rather delightfully described it as an "update".
]]>That's right! Because the latest trailer for Dungeon Siege 3 introduces both a sexy lady and guns to the upcoming action RPG in a single playable character, and about time too. I for one have had it with the video game industry neglecting the public's palpable hunger for both firearms and optimistic takes on the female form. The games industry will never know the loss they suffered when development of my own game, Boobgun, was ended due to financial inconsistencies, but this is at least a step in the right direction. You can watch the trailer right after the jump, and thanks to VG247 for the tipoff. No, really, VG247. I mean it. Thanks.
]]>This week Quinns managed to get some hands-on time with Dungeon Siege III, leaving the poor boy equal parts confused and excited. He quickly hunted down the only other RPS contributor to have played DS3 - one Richard Cobbett - for a chat. Their ruminations on combat, consolisation, breasts and coca-cola follow, and at some point or other they talk about the game, too.
]]>Funny, I wrote the word "Dungeon" in our headline bar because I was going to write about the Dungeons English-language demo, only I can't actually find the link, despite having seen it earlier. What has happened to it? We may never know. Anyway, that word didn't go to waste, because our info-cousins at Eurogamer have posted another look at Dungeon Siege III, only with actual moving game footage this time. There are explosions and skeletons and exploding skeletons. So it all turned out for the best. Go take a look, below.
]]>Dungeon Siege III or, to use its full title, Dungeon Siege III: The Battle of Lens F'lare has had its release dates confirmed. It'll be arriving in Europe on May 27th and North America on May 31st, and Americans can also browse their choice of pre-order bonuses here. A summer release, then. I can see us now- windows open, trousers off, a glass of something ice-cold, calorific and toxic-coloured in our free hand and... wait. Dungeon Siege III is an action game, isn't it? It'll require two hands to play! Failed. In mourning I've posted the original Dungeon Siege theme after the jump. Bet you'll find it more stirring than you expect.
]]>RPS Best Friend For Life Richard Cobbett went freelance last week, abandoning his "Ma-gasine" (which I gather is like an overweight pamphlet) to live off nothing but his charm, wit and contacts. As we'd hate to see Richard starve, we offered him the chance to go and play the latest build of Dungeon Siege III for us. Has this franchise been changed for the console-devices after all? The truth follows.
]]>This was a good one. When I met up with Chris Taylor (of Gas Powered Games and Supreme Commander fame) at GamesCom for my Dungeon Siege 3 interview, it was our respective last days of the convention. My body felt like a trashed and soon-to-be-demolished building, and Taylor was engaged in some kind of mental wrestling match with a hangover. To make matters more awesome, most of Dungeon Siege 3 was (and still is) under wraps, so we quickly moved on to talking about riches and success, and what that meant for game developers. Have a read after the jump.
]]>Eurogamer has found Gas Powered Games' Chris Taylor in characteristically bullish mood arguing that thanks to the enormous explosion in Steam, he thinks the PC version of Dungeon Siege III will compete with the console ones, noting that "every major player in the world buying a PC gaming company" and leading to an exciting future. Example quote...
]]>Dungeon Siege III reveals its first in-game footage today, and you can see it below. The game being developed by Square Enix and Obsidian asks you to "rebuild the once great Legion and stop Ehb from falling into darkness." And ohmygosh, it looks a bit brilliant. I really want a party-based hack-n-slash just now. Especially with the narrative sensibilities of Obsidian behind it. Crikey, those attacks look awesome.
]]>Dungeon Siege III is to be created by the busy men at Obsidian. The company, having put out Alpha Protocol, now seem to be re-enforcing their previous role as a team who pick up other people's projects and take them in new directions. After Neverwinter Nights 2 and Knights of the Old Republic II, they're currently creating Fallout: New Vegas, and it's just been announced they're taking the reigns from Gas Powered Games on the RPG series.
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