Dungeon Siege III Previews

Should you be in the market for a couple more E3-based previews of Obsidian Entertainment’s Dungeon Siege III, your search is over.

An excerpt from PlayStation LifeStyle:

On top of the great RPG gameplay is what Obsidian Entertainment hope will be a compelling story. One important piece of information is that the story will contain dialogue trees (literally) which will allow you to steer the direction of encounters to suit your liking. The world map for Dungeon Siege 3 is the same as the previous title, so chances are we’ll be seeing some of the same fantasy areas and maybe some returning characters from the previous installment. Cinematic events are plentiful so you can expect to see some epic situations throughout the experience, and assuming the story is as great as the presentation, it should prove to be a memorable adventure. The world will also contain cities which serve as hubs for your adventures as well as shops to purchase gear from. As with most dungeon crawlers, monsters will drop ranging in quality and value, and thankfully Obsidian have implemented a value system to show you how much value an item is worth before looting it.

One of the greatest additions to Dungeon Siege 3 is co-op gameplay. At any time during the single-player story, a second player can hop in seemlessly and control a second character within the game world. In the case of the private demonstration, the primary character was playing a guardian while the secondary character jumped in as a healing-based cleric class. The mixture of co-operative gameplay and a handful of enjoyable classes yields tons of different class synergies which can yield powerful results. Using 2 powerful damage-dealing classes leads to tremendous damage capability, but using a tank or healing class can make the team much more resilient.

And then a website called YouSayToo gives us their perspective:

Character classes also make a comeback in DSIII to provide variety with the combat. However, the demo only featured two classes for players to strut with; the Archon and Guardian. The Archon is strictly a spell caster who can hang back and use spells while the Guardian being a melee type can take enemies head on. Obsidian’s demonstrators took this time to point out the fact that the classes in DSIII have been given extra touches that make them completely distinguishable from one another like completely unique animations, weapons and equipment.

Another new thing that DSIII brings to the table are “Vistas”. These are vantage points spread throughout the world that allow players to zoom in on far away areas that were critical to the quest. In one the demo’s scenarios the character stood on a cliff to get a bird’s eye view of a town down below. Another scenario revealed a cavern. Vistas provide plotting for the vast map, so players will have to take advantage of them when encountered.