Preview Aranna preview at GameGossip

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna

<A href="http://www.gamegossip.com/">GameGossip</a> offers up the newest <A href="http://www.gamegossip.com/article.php?id=37">preview</a> of <A href="http://www.microsoft.com/games/pc/dsloa.aspx">Legend of Aranna</a>, the sidequel to <A href="http://www.dungeonsiege.com">Dungeon Siege</a>. It's a pretty spiffy little piece of work, including things such as this:
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<blockquote>The character progression system in LoA is, for lack of a better term, squishy. There are no classes to choose from and no definite specializations to give the characters a sense of individuality. The premise is simple: the more you use a sword, the better you get with it. The more you cast spells, the better you get with them. The more you fight, the stronger you get and the stronger you get the better equipment you?ll be able to use. Skin color and gender are the only insurmountable differences between the player characters (and they are merely graphical differences). One last thing folks might have a hard time with: characters? abilities are not affected by race. A male half-giant starts out just as strong as a female human. </blockquote>
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Yup, that's rather odd that race has no effect on stats.
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Spotted this at <A href="http://www.homelanfed.com">HomeLAN Fed</a>.

 

[Vault Dweller]

They did a great job eliminating every single choice from the game. Why spend time considering different characters and choose skills when you could be pla...sorry, I meant watching the game

 

[slavemaster]

Yup, that's rather odd that race has no effect on stats

Holy shit, you mean a puny halfling is no stronger than a giant!? What the hell have you been smoking, Saint?!

 

[Sol Invictus]

Nice review. Legends of Aranna seems to be as bad as I feared it would be and as such I will not be buying it. Seems like a perfectly good waste of Chris Taylor's talent to be working on trash like this when we'd all be better off with a sequel to Total Annihilation or a game much like it.

Now that game had DEPTH.

 

[Jinsai]

Here's why

* Original DS designers didn't want n00bs to be "penalized" for picking a particular combination of race and class
* Game code didn't support any stats other than "human" for player characters
* The way the game works, any initial differences would likely get evened out as characters progressed anyway, so it ends up being a pain to implement for effectively no gameplay value

The design philosophy behind DS was to put some elements of the "RPG experience" into a friendly, easy, simple game that "little Timmy in Idaho" could play.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I'd say even Timmy in Idaho would be confused why the big Giant dude is as strong as the human woman.

 

[sweetjimmy]

hey now. i wrote that article and I live in Idaho. Fortunately, my name is not 'Timmy', it's Jimmy. and btw, idaho kicks ass if you're into skiing, whitewater rafting, camping, rappelling, paintball, horseback riding, etc. etc. etc.

but anyhoo, if you couldn't guess from my preview, I really didn't care for LoA. Too much clicky-clicky and not enough engaging story/strong characterization.

 

[Elwro]

. Too much clicky-clicky and not enough engaging story/strong characterization.

So, you have to click at all?

 

[sweetjimmy]

So, you have to click at all?

heh. actually I hear that in the first patch available, they are going to add an automated clicking system so you no longer have to click. That way you can just keep your pointer finger firmly planted on the 'H' button for health potions.

...that was a joke, by the way.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

So, you have to click at all?

heh. actually I hear that in the first patch available, they are going to add an automated clicking system so you no longer have to click. That way you can just keep your pointer finger firmly planted on the 'H' button for health potions.

The second patch will be the Auto-H patch, so you don't have to do that either.

To expand on this, Dungeon Siege 2 will be a screensaver.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The second patch will be the Auto-H patch, so you don't have to do that either.

To expand on this, Dungeon Siege 2 will be a screensaver.

Are there any plans to make a special DVD edition that people could watch on their DVD players?

 

[HanoverF]

Are there any plans to make a special DVD edition that people could watch on their DVD players?

I hear there may be a super special edition DVD of Dungeon Siege 2 that will watch itself for you...

 

[Spazmo]

Eventually, we'll have Dungeon Siege 23 which will simply be a post-it inside a box that costs $50. The post-it will have written on it a brief and concise plot synopsis of the whole game:

"Hack n slash."

 

[Voss]

No, no remember whats-his-name wanted to take the unfun things out of games.

So it will just be hack. No slash. And you'll be teleported right from one encounter to the next with healing done automatically between fights. And so you aren't surprised, ie taken off guard in a way that might be consider unfun, every 10th fight will be a sub-boss, with the main boss being fight 100.

Each fight, obviously, will raise whatever skill you use by 1 point, so you'll max out at 100 in time for the boss fight.

Oh and you'll automatically win the final boss fight, since losing might not be fun.

 

[Elwro]

. And so you aren't surprised, ie taken off guard in a way that might be consider unfun, every 10th fight will be a sub-boss, with the main boss being fight 100.
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Don't forget the fight counter in the lower left corner. And when the number of fights approach n x 10 (n natural), it begins to flash!