Interview Legend of Aranna tit-for-tat at GameGossip

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna

<a href="http://www.gamegossip.com/">GameGossip</a> serves up a whopping <a href="http://www.gamegossip.com/comment.php?id=1268">five question interview</a> with <b>Tara Teich</b> about <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/games/pc/dsloa.aspx">Dungeon Siege: Legend of Aranna</a>(note the new website). Here's a peek:
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<blockquote><b>GameGossip: How many new areas, items, and spells can gamers expect from the expansion?
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Tara Teich:</b> There are nine new areas, <u>providing more than 20 hours of gameplay</u>. The areas span all sorts of terrain, as you journey through snowy mountains, and island jungle, beachfront, swamp, rocky cliffs, and dungeons galore. It?s a nice mix of terrain, and provides a lot of variety, especially since each area is populated with new monsters determined to stop you from completing your quest.
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There are over 70 spells, including the all new Transformation spells, which allow Nature and Combat mages to turn into different varieties of monster. They can then fight right at the front of combat, next to your melee fighters and hold their own, while continuing to gain magic experience. We?ve also added a fun new Haste spell, which speeds up movement of the caster, allowing them to fight and run at increased speed. </blockquote>
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That's almost <i>20 hours</i> more gameplay than in the original!
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Thanks, <b>Pezman</b>!

 

[Deathy]

In addition, we?ve added a whole slew of new UI enhancements, including a number of features to decrease the time spent in managing your inventory. You pick up a lot of great loot as you travel through the world that going through your finds can take a lot of time. The new Auto-Sell button really helps out here. I find that I really only deal with my inventory when I get to a store. Then I pick out the Auto-Sell option I want ? you have choices so you can sell everything, or keep spells, scrolls, and/or potions ? and proceed to sell off everything. The store has everything nicely sorted for you, making it easy to go through and outfit my party with the best of what I had and what the store has.

An auto sell feature! What's left to actually play? No more inventory management, no more game!
Really, is this a joke? It almost has to be, this is almost of Progress Quest proportions.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Yeah, about the only gameplay in Dungeon Siege was walking and selling loot. Distributing potions is now handled by one click of the button as well, so even that's gone away.

 

[Deathy]

I'm waiting for a feature that lets you automatically walk to the nearest enemy (although, if enemies were placed close enough together, this wouldbe unnecessary, as it would do it automatically as part of the attack AI).

Basically, if you're actually playing this game (as opposed to staring blankly at the screen), something must have gone horribly wrong.

 

[Psilon]

For God's sake, wasn't the Transmute spell simple enough?

 

[Section8]

Good god. Most DVD releases of movies are more interactive. You know, if they made it so that Dungeon Siege booted up everytime your computer idled for a set time and added that "move to next enemy" feature, it would actually be kind of cool as a screensaver. You could leave your computer sitting there for an hour or two, and come back to see what level you are and what ph4t loot got through your autosell filter.

And that is pretty fucking tragic. Working on a production line is a more viable form of entertainment.

 

[Section8]

Okay, I've been thinking even more about how much of a fucking abomination this game is.

Automation in games is acceptable, but there needs to be a reason why you'd automate. The philosophy that is obvious: "Anything that is not enjoyable for the player should be automated." It makes sense. Why make the player do something that they're not going to enjoy? The whole point of buying a game is for entertainment. If something gets in the way of that, then you automate.

Let's also think about why you wouldn't automate something. If you've identified something as a critical feature, ie something that is central to the enjoyment of your game, then you want the player to experience that. Automating it kind of defeats the purpose of it being a critical feature to begin with.

And finally, let's think about what can and can't be automated. If something is too difficult to be automated, then that means intelligent an d intuitive thought is required. If something can be easily automated, then player is redundant, at which point you have to think what the fuck you're trying to achieve by developing a game for a human audience.

The only time something that could otherwise be automated becomes interesting for a player is when a human would struggle to keep up with an automation. The point where the player is beyond redundant, they have been completely superceded, and the challenge becomes keeping pace.

To summarise:

When the player can control a system just as effectively as automation and the system imposes neither a significant challenge of intellect or reaction, then it might as well be automated. Subjecting the player to such interactions is process work. By-the-numbers play. Chimp mode. And when all of the gameplay systems fall into this category, then the question must be asked - "Why play this game?"

And I can assure you that any response to that question can be swiftly nullified. Story? Read a book. Graphics? Watch a movie.

The only thing Dungeon Siege inspires in me is the desire to become an animal behaviourist. The experiment would be thus. "What is the lowest form of life than can effectively play Dungeon Siege?"

 

[Sharpei_Diem]

When the player can control a system just as effectively as automation and the system imposes neither a significant challenge of intellect or reaction, then it might as well be automated. Subjecting the player to such interactions is process work. By-the-numbers play. Chimp mode. And when all of the gameplay systems fall into this category, then the question must be asked - "Why play this game?"

I'd swap the order of your statement: When the automation can control a system just as effectively as the player... Why play this game?

When the decision matrix is so simple that an automation can do this, then that's a real good point. You could just as easily be playing 'Backup Databases/Servers'...