Preview Dungeon Siege 2 pre-love at GameSpy

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Dungeon Siege 2

There's a <a href="http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/dungeon-siege-ii/638944p1.html">preview</a> of <A href="http://www.gaspowered.com/ds2/news.php">Dungeon Siege 2</a> over at <A href="http://www.gamespy.com">GameSpy</a> which covers a lot of things you probably already know if you downloaded the demo. Here's a bit on the super duper story:
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<blockquote>The game begins with the player selecting a sex, appearance, and which of the four available races they'll be playing. After that, the player gets thrown into the thick of the action. This was where I noted the first difference between Dungeon Siege II and its predecessor -- story depth. The game's introductory level and first series of quests already has more twists, turns and genuine character development than the whole first game. It even flirts with the moral ambiguity that's so in vogue right now. You actually begin the game in the employ of the bad guys as a mercenary. You fight your way through a battlefield against Dryads to help uber-bad guy Valdis knock over an old temple that contains a piece of an ancient shield. Once you do, though, Valdis proceeds to turn on you, murdering most of the mercenaries (including your best friend) and leaving you for dead. Oops.</blockquote>
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Oops in the story writing department. Being a "bad guy" through the tutorial and then turning good at the drop of a hat isn't moral ambiguity, it's lame. Not having a story twist is often better than having a really crappy one.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.shacknews.com">Shack News</A>

 

[fizzelopeguss]

You weren't really a baddie in the first place, just a merc that had your contract terminated. But of course it's not like the game gave you any choice in the matter, hell even biowares simple good/evil choices wouldn't of been snubbed...as it's better than nothing.

 

[Drakron]

Thats why BioWare is king, the competition is even more retarded.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

Well, in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king, I guess.

 

[Jaesun]

Clearly Chris Taylor did not discuss with the Codex on what is lame character story progression.

His loss. Perhaps he will learn in the future.

 

[Borys]

Demo DID improve a lot of things over DS1 but it's still a far cry from Diablo 2. Looking like a 1997 game didn't help also.

 

[Digit]

Actually you were not initially bad or good. You were a merc, and the character says time and time again that he isn't on Valdris' side, he just paid well. So it's neither a twist nor lame, it just gives some interesting choices when you meet up with some of Valdris' thugs later on. Also the character I had enlisted in my party, a hulking half-giant was very pro head-smashing and through some dialogue trees I got to kill my would be employers which was cool actually.

Also, considering I had a lot of fun with DS1 despite it's issues I can tell you that DS2 will be a lot of fun. We have:

1) Set items to collect ala Diablo 2.
2) Skill trees to progress through ala Diablo 2.
3) Chants to learn and cast at set shrines to empower your party temporarily.
4) Special powers in addition to skills and spells.
5) Pretty decent AI so far for monsters and party members.
6) Secret areas with loot and gold. They are actually secret too, some walls have hidden stones that when you push a chest will appear out of the ground and you will receive a message "Secret Area Found" etc. Kinda a neat touch, I found my 1st set item from one.
7) Some cool NPCs to talk to and an awesome journal that is really organised and catagorised for primary/secondary quests sorted by chapter and act.
8) Pretty nice special effects and the combat has a really good feel to it.

So yeah, so far I'm pretty stoked. I am still playing the demo and exploring. The game has issues of course, like there is still no hotkey to swap between spells, and since all combat is mouse driven, well, it gets a little busy sometimes. :/

Digit
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Forum fly...

 

[Lemon]

DS2 ranks near the top of ultra generic fantasy worlds. The writing is really pretty bad as well. I doubt I'll be able to finish the demo at this rate.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

1) Set items to collect ala Diablo 2.

I doubt you'll find a lot of variety with those set items considering how those items are limited based on the character building. In Diablo 2, any character could use any set for the most part. In Dungeon Siege 2, only a melee person can use a melee set including the armor.

2) Skill trees to progress through ala Diablo 2.

Except Diablo 2 offers three skill trees per class where as Dungeon Siege 2 has four skill trees total.

3) Chants to learn and cast at set shrines to empower your party temporarily.

Things like this are a plus. However, things like this and the sanctuaries feel way too much like a game device rather than something plausible even in a fantasy setting. I can chat to power up my party, but only in certain stone gazeebos.. And I can get in to this treasure vault but only if I shoot the door with the right weapon and if I have the right focus.

4) Special powers in addition to skills and spells.

Which would be better if they weren't as powerful and didn't take so long to recharge. It's great I can do 200 damage with my rusty short sword, but having to wait 5 minutes to do it again is a bit much.

5) Pretty decent AI so far for monsters and party members.

Attack until you die is pretty decent AI for party members?

6) Secret areas with loot and gold. They are actually secret too, some walls have hidden stones that when you push a chest will appear out of the ground and you will receive a message "Secret Area Found" etc. Kinda a neat touch, I found my 1st set item from one.

Agreed. If it's one thing Dungeon Siege did well, it's dungeon design and nifty things to find.

7) Some cool NPCs to talk to and an awesome journal that is really organised and catagorised for primary/secondary quests sorted by chapter and act.

The journal is good, but it's a little buggy. I've noticed in the demo that it's lost a few quests I'd taken up before I did them.

8) Pretty nice special effects and the combat has a really good feel to it.

The combat is pretty stale. It's just right click and hold until dead. Occationally you can use a special attack, but that's if you have used it recently.

 

[Whipporowill]

1) Set items to collect ala Diablo 2.

I doubt you'll find a lot of variety with those set items considering how those items are limited based on the character building. In Diablo 2, any character could use any set for the most part. In Dungeon Siege 2, only a melee person can use a melee set including the armor.

Why would a strict melee character want to wield a mage set? If said char has any reason to want to wear said set, he'd made sure he was a hybrid - like I always play my chars in DS and DSII. A prioritized skill and a secondary - it's pretty easy to crank up a lagging secondary to be able to wear a specific medallion et c.

2) Skill trees to progress through ala Diablo 2.

Except Diablo 2 offers three skill trees per class where as Dungeon Siege 2 has four skill trees total.

Under melee only - there's dualwield, twohanded and shield - as three separate skills. All of those gets you different attack unlocks and are (often) prereqs for other skills.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Why would a strict melee character want to wield a mage set? If said char has any reason to want to wear said set, he'd made sure he was a hybrid - like I always play my chars in DS and DSII. A prioritized skill and a secondary - it's pretty easy to crank up a lagging secondary to be able to wear a specific medallion et c.

Because cool armor is cool armor, perhaps? The more restrictions on who and who can't use a set makes the sets you find more and more useless to your character. That's one reason why Diablo 2 sets were so nice, because the vast majority of them were wide open to anyone who wanted to wear them. The only major restrictions on sets were class specific items like the paladin scepters. In cases like those, you could wear everything else if you were another class and still get some nice bonuses out of those sets.

However, in Dungeon Siege, pretty much all items are class specific due to the nature of how they exclude items based on the attribute advancement. That means 66% to 75% of the sets will not be for you if you specialize. If you have a secondary, that means you'll be wearing less powerful set items but the restriction will still be 33% to 50% in addition to being weaker stuff.

Under melee only - there's dualwield, twohanded and shield - as three separate skills. All of those gets you different attack unlocks and are (often) prereqs for other skills.

Yeah, and there's how many skills, not trees, above the dual wield? TWO SKILLS? How many skills beyond the shield skill? JUST TWO SKILLS? Even Silent Storm, which had one skill tree per class offers a shitload more build options than Dungeon Siege 2.

 

[Digit]

Etc...

Problem is, how many skills in the skill tree were plausible in D2? Not a whole lot. You had people making use of some of the pre-requisite low end skills like Warmth and so forth, then saving skill points until level 24-30 to whack into the high end skills. Its great having loads of skills, but if they are BS ones like 3 different types of fireball, no one really cares. In DS it looks like they put alot of thought in to the skills and made them all viable. Also, most of them do bolstering effects to either weapons or spells, so you never feel like you pissed them all away like in Diablo 2, when you put loads of points in something then realised at later levels it sucked. Here you can chuck points into something you like, for example extra fire damage, or dual wield, and at later levels you change weapons, not skills. Well, I thought it was clever anyhow.

Also, in regards to armor, the item sets in D2 were quite character specific with only a few lending themselves to multiple classes and often ruled out due to high requirements or just being rather rubbish when compared to other class specific sets. If you check diabloii.net they are not sorted by class true, but they all have things like (+1 to axe mastery) etc on them. Well most do, and anyhow, no one said that being different in DS is being bad. Its good to have sets for each character class and makes more sense than a combat mage running around in full plate, just cos it looks cool for this game.

Good AI btw, is to do with formations and also how they follow the attitude settings whcih I think work pretty well. Apparently the enemy has good AI but I haven't seen anything noteworthy yet. In fact one large monster didn't do anything when I attacked him. -_- But yeah, party AI is pretty solid and the autocast stuff is really quite cool. When we get to see some of the more exotic monsters I expect better AI.

In regards to chants, it is a game dynamic and I feel thats relevant because it is a game. It's one primary focussed on combat so it isn't likely to win praise from people on a site looking for the next fallout. But so far the chants have been life savers and they help step up the combat when trying to get through to a certain area before your chant expires.

Also the power attacks are deliberately powerful because from what I read at least, they are designed to turn the tide in a hopeless battle. Hence why yes, you can do 200+damage with an attack, but you have to wait until you charge it again until it can be repeated. Meaning that you have to time it well and not just piss it away on weeny minions. There is no difference if it does 20 damage every min, except that it feels weak and rather useless then.

Remember combat in the initial areas is pretty standard. But they introduce you to some nice new mechanics in the game. Like the wood creatures being susceptible to fire and so forth, I hope this carries on through the game so you can check the beastiary and see the stats of enemies killed and find their weakness. Maybe later on some foes will be immune to damage types, it wouldn't surprise me as they have been playing Diablo2 clearly. Nothing wrong with using a proven system.

Well, I'm looking forward to this game anyhow, it's easy on the eyes and I don't think the voice acting or writing is anywhere near as bad as previos comers. I was actually enjoying listening to the NPCs tell their tales.

Digit
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Forum fly...

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Problem is, how many skills in the skill tree were plausible in D2? Not a whole lot. You had people making use of some of the pre-requisite low end skills like Warmth and so forth, then saving skill points until level 24-30 to whack into the high end skills. Its great having loads of skills, but if they are BS ones like 3 different types of fireball, no one really cares. In DS it looks like they put alot of thought in to the skills and made them all viable. Also, most of them do bolstering effects to either weapons or spells, so you never feel like you pissed them all away like in Diablo 2, when you put loads of points in something then realised at later levels it sucked. Here you can chuck points into something you like, for example extra fire damage, or dual wield, and at later levels you change weapons, not skills. Well, I thought it was clever anyhow.

First off, Warmth is great to sink points in. Secondly, patch 1.10 fixes that problem by adding synergies to most all the low end skills.

 

[Atrokkus]

Problem is, how many skills in the skill tree were plausible in D2? Not a whole lot.

Clearly, you haven't played Diablo past 1.07...
As Saint noted, there is synnergy feature. It makes almost ALL skills useful.
And many skill are useful not only as synnergizers, but as main attack skills. There is HUGE variety and very many strategies (just check out the huge loads of different character guides). Do you know how many sub-classes (builds) there are? Even just one paladin has about 7 effective different builds.
RTFM, plz.

Also, in regards to armor, the item sets in D2 were quite character specific with only a few lending themselves to multiple classes and often ruled out due to high requirements or just being rather rubbish when compared to other class specific sets.

First off, there are class-specific items. But it's a minority (assassin claws, barb helms etc). If a set contains such an item, then it is considered, obviously, class-specific.
But other than that ALL classes can use ALL (except those above) sets and items, given that they adhere to the requirements. And don't you think that a sorceress can never put on a huge heavy plate armor - she can! if you pump strength well enough (or raise it magically).

combat mage running around in full plate, just cos it looks cool for this game.

NOT cuz it looks cool, but if he finds its mods effective. Many high-level characters use quilted robe-based uniques that rock, and look like bums, so what?

Anyways, Diablo2:LOD item system is much more superior. It's just so diverse that DS2 can only burst with envy.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

First off, there are class-specific items. But it's a minority (assassin claws, barb helms etc). If a set contains such an item, then it is considered, obviously, class-specific.

It might be considered class specific, but other than the barb helm or whatever class specific item is in the set, any class can use the rest of it and still get some nice bonuses.

I'm not sure why digit even brought that up, I've already said that any class can wear the majority of any set in Diablo 2.

 

[Atrokkus]

It might be considered class specific, but other than the barb helm or whatever class specific item is in the set, any class can use the rest of it and still get some nice bonuses.

Correct.

I'm not sure why digit even brought that up

Apparently, it is his frail attempt to prove us that DS2 is the best action-RPG evah.

 

[Digit]

I just wrote a long reply then deleted it because I am pretty sure you wouldn't listen or care. Everyones an expert so they say. I don't even think you guys read my post fully tbh. Oh well.

Surprised that you don't like it Shagnak. :/

Anyhow I'm off to feed my Ice Elemental items now so he grows. Adieu!

Digit
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Forum fly...

 

[Shagnak]

Surprised that you don't like it Shagnak. :/

Well, I don't hate it either.
I am currently ambivalent.
What I have seen so far has left me kinda hollow, so I can't decide if its just so very slightly worse than average or slightly better.
I still havent finished the demo so the jury is still out.

 

[Sarvis]

Attack until you die is pretty decent AI for party members?

That depends, are we comparing it to Bioware AI?

 

[Digit]

Attack until you die is pretty decent AI for party members?

That depends, are we comparing it to Bioware AI?

Actually I read some more about the AI and looked for it in game a little too. Apparently they have what they are calling a Coach AI system, where they can setup plays like in football. You can see it in game in effect for some creatures, like you will walk along a bridge and two of the Hak'u will teleport behind you blocking the way back whilst the rest rush at you. Since it's the early areas only and you fight rather zergy enemies (rush in and die en masse) it's hard to see any AI currently.

Party member AI is quite good for selecting targets and movement. I mean look, stop bitching about awesome AI that doesn't play the game for you, because that was the problem with the first game. Jesus, you guys are so fast to pick apart a game, before you have even gotten to know anything about it's no wonder you piss away your time on a forum complaining about everything.

Digit
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Forum fly...

 

[Sol Invictus]

As much as I'd like to agree that 1.10 made a lot of the low level skills useful, it isn't true for a whole bunch of them, either. Pikeazons were ruined, and they never ever did anything with Throwing Weapons for Barbarians and the Assassin's various attacks were crappy as ever in comparison to Dragon Kick. Putting tons of points in Ice Blades and Lightning Whatever to synergize Phoenix Strike was nowhere as effective for your character had you just dumped them into Claw Mastery and Tiger Strike to synergize with Dragon Kick.

The Barbarian had a lot of useless Shouts, and every weapon mastery save Swords or Maces was just a waste of time.

 

[Atrokkus]

The Barbarian had a lot of useless Shouts,

Wrong. It's just many people can't use them right.
Howl, Taunt, Battle Cry, Shout, Battle Orders, Command, War Cry - ALL of them are used extensively.
Even Grim Ward is used - and it's very effective crowd control tool.
Taunt is a fucking mirackle! You can actually prevent mages from casting, pesky ranged attackers from shooting - plus it lowers their stats.
Howl - cool for dispercing a surrounding crowd. You can howl, then taunt a single monster that you can take on. Or you can howl near a bosspack and fight the boss one of one, while the crowd is running away.
Battle cry lowers enemy's attack and defence, and can be used on ALL monsters in the game, including act bosses and uber-bosses.
War Cry is excellent for crowd-control, also. damage is a joke, but the stun is good and works on all normal monsters.
Well, battle orders is a no-brainer - it's just one of the best buffs in the game.

Barabairian is a VERY diverse and all-round effective class. THrowing IS quite underpowered, but still viable. Frenzy is a great skill now, and there are many frenzybarbs out there now. Concentrate and Berserk are now uber-skills, especially since WW is not as cookie-cutter as it has been before.

every weapon mastery save Swords or Maces was just a waste of time.

Oh come on! Axes fucking rule. You heard of berserker axe? How well it is suited for runewords? And many cool uniques, to boot.
BUt of course, yeah, spears/polearms are pretty much obsolete.

Assassin's various attacks were crappy as ever in comparison to Dragon Kick.

True, but hey - it doesn't limit 'sin's versatilty because there are tons of traps and passive skills that really provide a huge area for experimentation.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

As much as I'd like to agree that 1.10 made a lot of the low level skills useful, it isn't true for a whole bunch of them, either.

I think the question is how many of them are useful per class. In Dungeon Siege 2, you have around ten skills per class. A lot of those skills will be useless as well. For example, in the melee skill tree of Dungeon Siege 2, you have three forks. You have the two handed fork, the shieldy fork, and the shield using fork. Since you can't use a shield while dual wielding or wielding a two handed weapon, nor can you dual wield with a shield or two handed weapons, you're talking about a whole bunch of uselessness there in that tree alone.

Pikeazons were ruined,

Well, that's primarily because they over-nerfed FEND by making the attacks take the weapon speed in to consideration without speeding up the attack much at all. That basically made using a pike with a slow attack speed in conjunction with FEND very, very suicidal. You get stuck in an unabortable attack that lasts a long, long time with a pike.

You can see get away with using all the lower spears and be fairly potent, though. It's really only the pike you shouldn't use.

and they never ever did anything with Throwing Weapons for Barbarians

I think the problem with throwing weapons stems more from the fact that if you run out of ammo, your cool uber-rare throwing weapons are gone for good.

and the Assassin's various attacks were crappy as ever in comparison to Dragon Kick. Putting tons of points in Ice Blades and Lightning Whatever to synergize Phoenix Strike was nowhere as effective for your character had you just dumped them into Claw Mastery and Tiger Strike to synergize with Dragon Kick.

I mainly used traps when I played assassin. Of course, since traps are all elemental attacks, those tend to get useless on the higher difficulties where immune elites show up.

The Barbarian had a lot of useless Shouts, and every weapon mastery save Swords or Maces was just a waste of time.

What about the spear/lance mastery with whirlwinder barbarians? There's gobs of successful builds using that scheme, unless Blizzard changed something.

 

[Atrokkus]

Of course, since traps are all elemental attacks, those tend to get useless on the higher difficulties where immune elites show up.

Not really. First, there is Death Sentry which uses corpse explosion attack - it damages all. Or you can just employ two different element traps.

What about the spear/lance mastery with whirlwinder barbarians? There's gobs of successful builds using that scheme, unless Blizzard changed something.

Actually, spear-WW barb was only viable in older patches. Now WW in general is nerfed, although still quite effective. Now, tho, WW-barbs use either dualweapons or just normal-length weapons, cuz there long weapons don't offer much range advantage in WW.

And it's not to say that spear-class is absultely useless. It all depends on your resources. If you have good runes or found a good unique, then the speed is quite large and you can use it effectively.
But of coruse for a barb sword/axe/mace are much better.

 

[Sol Invictus]

What about the spear/lance mastery with whirlwinder barbarians? There's gobs of successful builds using that scheme, unless Blizzard changed something.

Lance barbs are a thing of the past. That worked great in 1.08, but they overnerfed that in 1.09 when they made Whirlwind be affected by weapon speed. Lances and spears have a speed of 'very slow', so they're crap. They don't offer anything besides damage, and you do more damage by dual wielding swords, and you also hit more targets when you dual wield swords, so there's no point to using lances anymore, unless you're a Charge Paladin - but even those guys are pretty useless compared to Zealadins and Hammerdins. They're only good in PVP, but who gives a shit about PVP in Diablo 2?

At least with Hammers, you can stun, do knockbacks and stuff like that, so even though they're slow, they're still not as slow as lances, and on top of doing a nice amount of damage (though not as much as two swords), you can bash and stun things so they can't hit you while you're using Whirlwind, either.

The problem with Lances is that because their weapon speed is so slowed down, it's easier to get interrupted by enemies mid-spin, and you tend to run out of mana very, very fast because you can't hit them fast enough to leech mana.

Yes, some people still use them, and they're VERY good - but only if you have something like a 1300 damage elite lance with the rarest runeword in the game. It's got Zod, Vex, and all sorts of other shit in it.

But for the average Joe, you better just stick to swords.

 

[dagamer667]

"Except Diablo 2 offers three skill trees per class where as Dungeon Siege 2 has four skill trees total."

Of which only a few are worth developing beyond the one point you spend to fullfill the prereqs for the uberskill at the bottom. In DS2, there at least some incentive to raise the "starter" skills instead of hoarding skill points.