Last night I posted my enthusiastic first reaction after wasting far too many hours with Dungeon Siege. I love the game, but I want to make sure I also add that a lot of people hate it — and for very good reasons — and anyone whose been waiting for this game for years (like I have) might want to wait to read the reviews and comments from players before running out to buy this game.
The basic problem is really that designer Chris Taylor succeeded too well. In previews and interviews over the past couple of years, one thing Taylor mentioned over and over was simplifying the RPG experience. He certainly succeeded at that, but many of the people who bought the game are complaining that it is simplified to the point where it is little more than a screensaver.
Combat, for example, pretty much runs itself. Just point near an enemy, click once, and the characters will wipe out everything in the area on their own. As one player noted, you could set the characters up, point them on their way and then come back 20 minutes later to check their progress. It’s not quite that bad, but it is close.
The character creation system has been dumbed down to the point where there is really no way to differentiate characters. There are a total of four skills (that’s right, four). The spell system isn’t bad since there are well over 100 spells, but for melee and ranged combat, there is just one “kill the enemy” skill. No special attacks or subskills of any kind — an incredibly horrible design blunder. What were they thinking?
And none of this might matter if the backstory were any good. Now, lets be honest, RPG backstories tend be crap. A lot of people liked Diablo 2’s story, but frankly it was third rate fantasy at best. And Dungeon Siege’s backstory makes Diablo 2 look like Tolkein. For a game with so much hype and Microsoft behind it, this has one of the worst stories ever for an RPG.
But, on the other hand, I think the main problem is with the whole klik-n-kill action RPG genre in the first place. Apparently a lot of people really seem to think there is a substantive difference between Diablo where you might have to click on a monster 5 times before killing it as opposed to Dungeon Siege where you only have to click on the monster 1 time and your character will keep attacking until either the monster or the character dies. It’s not like Diablo or Diablo 2 had a whole lot of tactical gameplay to begin with, and this game sort of shows the emperor is not wearing any clothes.
So the problem with Dungeon Siege is that Chris Taylor took a game genre that was already extremely simple and then said, “How can I simplify it even more?” But at some point — a point which Taylor clearly crossed — the player begins to notice that the game is so simple, that player begins to ask what effect their decisions really have in the game? The answer in Dungeon Siege is: not a whole heck of a lot.
The experience of the game, in many ways, is like setting up an all-bot match in Quake or Unreal Tournament and just watching the battle unfold.
On the other hand, I have enjoyed the game. It is a lot like console RPGs, which also drastically limit your ability to influence the game. If there were a decent storyline, Dungeon Siege might be comparable to something like Diablo meets Final Fantasy.
As it is, the real saving grace of this game is likely to be the modding community. The tools that are set to be released to mod the game look like it will be relatively easy for people to use the game engine to create more compelling content. We’ll find out in May — when the tools are released — if that actually happens or whether word-of-mouth kills Dungeon Siege and leaves everyone waiting to mod Neverwinter Nights.