Obsidian cannot into camera and controls. Seriously. Head banging stuff. If they fix that, it's a decent game.
It felt nothing like Dungeon Siege 1, but a lot like Dungeon Siege 2 or perhaps Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Has elements of both.
Anyways, here's my impressions of playing the demo, played it with both characters, normal difficulty. Coz I'm not hardcore.
Good - Things I really liked:
- Still quite a bit of loot. I was worried they'd cut down big time, but there's still plenty.
- Impressive dialog trees/paraphrasing. The dialog itself was pretty bland, but the mechanics were good. Dialog wheels and paraphrasing make a return, but they don't suck, surprisingly. Conversations felt natural, dialog trees had depth and unlike a certain game which I will not name, you didn't get situations where the character said something completely off base or where the dialog option would be a question but player's response would be a statement.
- Skills and abilities. Plenty of upgrades for skills and abilities. I can imagine the small variations on skill upgrades can accommodate quite a few builds. I'm tempted to put an Xzibit picture here... "Yo dawg! I herd you like upgrades so we put an upgrade in your upgrade so you can upgrade while you dungeon siege!"
- Combat.Combat is pretty good. From a pure mechanics standpoint, it was easily an improvement on Dungeon Siege 2's combat. More skills, more abilities, felt a bit more fluid. I prefer Dungeon Siege's combat in 1 to both 2 and 3, but I'm liking Dungeon Siege 3 much more than Dungeon Siege 2, especially as an Action game. Also some nice combos. Physics and other small things made it more enjoyable. Getting a critical hit and watching an enemy fall off a cliff was pretty cool.
- Choice and Consequence.
A choice without the typical "BUT THOU MUST!" or "You cannot say no, just yes in different ways!" mindset that so many games have. Awesome. But they do it right at the end of the demo. So we won't know whether it actually makes a difference. ****ing tease. Here's hoping.
- Not buggy.
You heard me. I suffered zero bugs in two playthroughs of the demo. That's got to be a freaking record as far as Obsidian goes. Did not get stuck in anything, did not get quests bugged out, did not suffer through crappy or non functioning AI, cutscenes, characters or anything like that. Did not get any crashes. I also did not get any performance dips. Ran at a perfect 60 FPS non stop with V-Sync.
Could it be? A polished Obsidian game?
Do I dare to dream?
Meh - Things I didn't feel too negatively or positively about:- Story, Characters & Writing.
I'm somewhat inclined to give Obsidian a pass, especially with their great record in this area, but the dialog, story and characters felt rather bland. As far as the demo goes, I guess this is one area that Obsidian decided to stay true to the originals. Still, it's possible that it simply gets better the longer you play. I have faith in George "Mask of the Betrayer" Zeits.
- It's a console game.It is definitely not natural on the PC. The UI loses the grid system of the previous games, and goes with the good ol' list. The camera, the controls, they are all designed for a gamepad. Nuff said, it's a console game.
- Preset Characters. Now, the preset characters don't bother me, but they apparently bother some people. I'll never understand the point of cosmetic customisation in a game like Dungeon Siege, but hey, it's a feature that's no longer there. What takes their places is a cast of pre defined characters. This arguably, leads to a better narrative as each character has their own personality and story to tell, but that depends on how good the story is. Because of the change, each come with their own classes and skillsets. Which brings to me to the important point.
- Redesigned Character System.It loses the freeform character system of the originals, where you can just build whatever kind of character you want. It was one of the more enjoyable parts of Dungeon Siege 1/2 for me, mixing and matching skills to level them up and create weird as hybrid classes at times, and at other times, focused specialists. That's pretty much gone. If you've played a game like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance or Hack n Slash games of a similar kind, you'll get how the character system works pretty quickly.
- Linear Maps.Running through corridors. Not surprising, considering the genre, or the series. Loading only one map doesn't make the originals anything more than linear. I literally came across side areas where the game went "lololol, try again when you buy teh retail version, nub". So, I'm thinking that this becomes much less of a problem in the full game. Or maybe not, who knows.
- Graphics.The graphics **** in me was not pleased. While the character models looked pretty good, for a moment, I wondered whether the game was actually finished in 2007. Effects are nice, lighting was good, art direction is very nice, but the technical aspects of it such as textures and poly count were pretty weak by today's standards. Yes, it's a hack n slash / action RPG made by Obsidian and not the latest FPS using Frostbite 2 but it looks dated. Hopefully, graphics are given some fine tuning. Either that, or the quality of it's art style, lighting and effects stay consistent and win me over by the end.
Bad - Things I really really didn't like:- Camera and Controls.
Terrible on PC, absolutely dreadful. I really hope they fix this because multiple times it made me go FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU. I hear it's much better on a gamepad, but I've yet to try it.
- Keymapping.
It's a demo, so I'm not wholly surprised, but with the terrible controls and camera, the fact that I couldn't change any of it to make it better, just made it all the more annoying.
- In-game help.
Was not very helpful. Probably could use some work.
- No Auto Looting.
This was like the best feature in the original Dungeon Siege games. Picking up loot all at once. You pressed a button and something awesome happened. Now, you've got to pick up each piece of loot manually. Button = Awesome is no longer connected now, in Dungeon Siege 3....It makes me sad face. At least you don't need to pick up gold manually...
- No Pack Mule.What I actually didn't like was the consolisation of the inventory system, I really liked the grid setup the originals had. When they got rid of the grid, you may as well get rid of the mule since there's no need for it. But the mule is the series mascot, so it deserves it's own point too. There was actually a referrence to undead mules in one of the locked areas. WHY MUST YOU TAUNT US, OBSIDIAN?!?!
Modifié par mrcrusty, 08 juin 2011 - 07:40 .
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