I was told that the current build of the game didn't let you respec characters at all, because Obsidian wants to make sure you really identify with the character you choose. The game's story plays a part in that as well. "The game sort of reacts to who you are in specific strategic locations," says creative lead George Ziets. "Lucas is descended from the old Legion, son of the old Grand Master. Arjalis is an Arkon, like Dungeon Siege's version of an angel, and she has this mysterious backstory. So at certain points in the game, that becomes an issue based on who you run into. Someone knows Lucas' family, so they'll respond differently to him than they would to someone else." While there's not a full morality system in the game, there are a few choices to make, and a few consequences to deal with as well, though Ziets declined to say more for now.

Taylor says that old-school PC players will appreciate that Obsidian hasn't dumbed-down the interface completely on that platform. "That's something we're starting to tackle right now," he says, "in terms of the control inputs and things like that. I think people will find that it plays very much like a PC game when we're done with the pass."

Sadly, however, for old-school Dungeon Siege players, there is no pack mule to help carry your inventory around. "It just didn't really fit the way the game turned out," says Taylor. "It wasn't like, well we hate the pack mule, let's throw that thing out. We actually spent a lot of time discussing internally where does this go, how does it fit in, how does it match the gameplay. It was one of those things that just didn't fit the way the game was developing."
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Lucas is a fairly traditional warrior-type, and Anjali is a fire-based magic-user of sorts. All characters can utilize three different combat stances (normal, heavy, or guard) on the fly, each with different ancillary abilities. Heavy attacks have Lucas using a large primary weapon (like a huge sword), and do a lot of damage. As one would expect, normal attacks are faster, but deal less damage. The guard stance blocks enemy attacks (duh!) but can also be leveled up with additional abilities. Special attacks are unique to each stance. In the normal attack stance, Lucas can shield-bash an enemy to stun and damage them, but the special attack becomes a high powered dash when in the heavy attack stance.

Anjali, on the other hand, wields spear-type weaponry and can issue a spinning kick to enemies in her primary stance. In her secondary stance (which transforms her into a floating, other-worldly "fire-spirit" version of herself, Anjali can use a power called the Aura of Immolation to lay down a fiery radius that damages enemies, or lob fireballs at enemies from range. Blending these abilities in combat can be very effective. When playing as Anjali, throwing down the Aura of Immolation at the start of combat, and then quickly switching to her spear to swipe at the attackers while they burned, proved quite effective.
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Your abilities are fueled from a Focus bar that resembles mana, and connecting with normal attacks quickly refills this bar. This leads to you carefully mixing in special attacks with your regular ones, and then once you’ve fired off enough of your mana-using special abilities, you’ll fill up these little purple orbs at the bottom of your screen, allowing you to unleash heals for yourself or even more powerful moves reminiscent of Super Combos in Street Fighter. I played with this and found that early on in the game, heals wound up being the most useful application of these orbs, but I can see plenty of situations and RPG builds where that changes.
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