Speaking of gameplay systems, I thought I'd talk a little bit about the party combat in Dungeon Siege II. We've made a major decision since the original Dungeon Siege to move away from a fully autonomous party and to focus the combat around a single character within the party instead. Along with that focus, we continue to provide lateral control over the rest of the party, for certain specific kinds of interaction.

Out of all the party members, the player only has full primary control over one character at a time. Furthermore, that character will never act on his or her own. With the rest of the party not under your direct control at the moment, you can set the artificial intelligence to one of a few preset behaviors. With a simple key press or click of a button, you can tell the rest of the party to hold their ground, to take an aggressive stance, to mirror your every move, or to regroup and guard your selected character. It's easy to switch your focused character at any time, so, for example, if your mage is the most important character in your party in a specific combat situation and you're currently focused on your melee character, no problem.

The combat mechanics have evolved quite a bit to give you more control over your party members.

The party AI allows players to set the standing orders of the party before combat so that they can focus on the actions of a single party member during combat. And really, it all boils down to one simple concept: more fun and interactivity in combat, especially since players will still have quick and easy access to all of the party's powers.​