Playing with Dungeon Siege

The new gem of the day (other than Neverwinter Nights) is Chris Taylor’s Dungeon Siege and it’s looking extremely interesting, not to mention beyond belief gorgeous for an RPG. There’s a new hands-on preview at RPGVault based on their trip to the FanStock 2001 in Seattle. Here’s a taste reminiscent of awakening in a dew-glistened tent on a crisp sunny morning under the shade of tall Redwoods, sun reflecting off the sheer surfaces of the granite cliffs beyond in Yosemite National Park:

Two of the three machines set up with Dungeon Siege were free – silly people! – so I jumped onto one straight away. Suffice it to say that the game grabbed my interest immediately and held it to such an extent that I missed out on one of my very favorite food groups, pizza. In terms of gameplay, its very obvious that a great deal of thought has gone into making the interface easy to play. One example is the fact that player can choose either button on the mouse to be the main action button. Another is the already well publicized ability to pick up a bunch of items by clicking and dragging a box around them. A third is an auto-pack function that rearranges items in inventory to give you room without having to shift everything manually, one at a time. And a fourth is extensive key and hot-key programmability that makes it easy to perform repetitive actions quickly such as switching between melee and ranged weapons. Also cool is the “sipping technology” that lets your characters drink only as much of potions as they need to recover hit points or mana completely.