Instead of simply plugging new content into an existing framework, Dungeon Siege III is being built from the groud up in Obsidian's own engine, brought to consoles for the first time, and gently remodelled as a pretty, punchy and immediate co-operative action-RPG in the classical style.
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"We want the game to be about multiplayer, and we want it to be as easy as possible," says lead designer Nathaniel Chapman, noting that his girlfriend would watch him play Mass Effect 2 to follow the story, and wanted to be able to jump in and take control of Tali. Intriguingly, Obsidian is working on multiplayer aspects to the conversation system, too. "Multiplayer and single-player are not two separate games. They're totally integrated. That was a very important point for us," he says.
All the game's enemies and spells or abilities have been designed with the tactical interdependence of the classes in mind, and there are even explicit combos that can be executed by two classes in tandem, using each other's strengths to expose enemy weaknesses by forcing them into certain states. The classes, we're told, are designed for uniqueness over flexibility and will be pretty carefully defined, although you'll naturally still have some choice over skills as you level up.
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There's a middle-ground to be found here: we ask if the game will go to the same extreme lengths as Alpha Protocol in the pursuit of Obsidian's mantra of "choice and consequence". "No, not at all," says Urquhart. "The idea is to have some very specific points in the story where you make these decisions, so you feel like it's your story and not just the story we're forcing down your throat. But we're still doing that," he jokes.
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