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Dungeon Siege Feature Feature
Derek Dela Fuente
00/12/0000
Combining the immersive elements of an RPG with over-the-top intensity and non-stop action, plunges you INTO a continuous 3D fantasy world on the PC.
It wasnât that long ago when the consensus of opinion was that the Role-Playing Game, along with traditional adventure games, was a dying format. It appears that this imminent demise has given the genre a new lease of life: there are many developers using their undoubted talents to produce a new breed of exciting RPGâs. One such enterprise is Gas Powered Games, a company formed as recently as May 1998, and Dungeon Siege is their first game. Chris Lyle is their man, and he told Derek dela Fuente all about it.
Dungeon Siege, combining the immersive elements of a role-playing game with over-the-top intensity and non-stop action, plunges you into a continuous 3D fantasy world where you face off against an army of evil that has been unleashed. Now thereâs a surprise! You begin as a humble farmer (or farm girl), and as you travel through the world and gain new skills, you can gather a party of up to eight characters to aid you. The fusion of action RPG and RTS controls impels the player into one over-the-top battle after the other as the storyline unfolds and a larger plot begins to reveal itself. âThe story unfolds as you play: this was an important goal that we set out to meet. The idea is to allow the player to slowly discover the world and find out what has happened, much like a mystery novel. We have written a story that takes place in an old world with a lot of history which we had to create in the first place. The story is important to the player, and it makes the game a much richer experience, but those who do not enjoy stories while they play can safely ignore most of it and just focus on the action.â All the story telling is through the characters in the world, and because of this, there is a single path. âItâs one of the design decisions you have to make early on; linear story, or non-linear with no story. Some may argue this, but itâs very hard to tell a story when players can wander off to any part of the world.â
Players will be able to customise their eight strong party. There are no rules or restrictions, and you can have any combination of fighters, archers and magic users. Characters join your party as they journey throughout the world - some are hired, others are rescued, and some are brought back from beyond the grave. âWe were originally going to have a party of ten but lowered that to eight characters recently because we asked focus groups how many characters they wanted, and virtually nobody said they needed ten. You can control them individually or all at once. Our party management system helps the player move a group and we also provide a bunch of different formations to keep them organised for battle.â
The setting of Dungeon Siege is one gigantic, continuous world where you can seamlessly journey from the highest mountain to the deepest dungeon without ever having to see a loading screen apparently. âWe have specifically designed our game to take the player on the most awesome adventure to the most interesting places in the world: this also includes mines, swamps, underground river systems, and abandoned crypts, to name a few. Another thing we set out to do deliberately is to widen the appeal by combining combat elements controlled by the player with adventure sequences, which is a good formula for success. Dungeon Siege draws from all of our favourite games and gives players the freedom to play any way they like, without any old-fashioned RPG restrictions, such as the ability to drink only part of a potion and stores that give full refunds.â The design philosophy extends to the interface, allowing the player to have as much control as possible over the game. âThis interface is customisable and every button can have multiple hotkeys. All the hotkeys can be changed to anything the player wants, and we also support MS Strategic Commander and MS GameVoice. All the on-screen UI elements can be moved and some can be hidden.â
A seemingly unique aspect of Dungeon Siege is in the introduction of pack animals such as donkeys. These animals allow the player to make a trade-off between a much bigger inventory and a member of the party capable of combat. Never again will you need to worry about having to pass on the armour youâve found because you didnât have enough room. Although a fantasy game â“ a genre allowing a developer to include almost anything, no matter how fanciful â“ the inclusion of these dumb beasts is a gameplay element designed specifically to make the player think about the best way to win. âA further innovation is our gigantic continuous 3D world. The player is also free to develop each characterâs skills any way they want: there are very few restrictions on what the player can or canât do.â Those non-existent restrictions mean that all characters arenât limited to their own class type: the characters in your party can learn any skill, and it is up to the player how they develop each one. One aim of Gas Powered Games is to provide something for everyone in Dungeon Siege, whilst embedding some difficult challenges within. âWe have puzzles for the hard-core players who like that sort of thing, but you have to go looking for them. Some of the puzzles may involve finding a symbol and pressing a loose stone on a wall, others may involve finding a secret lever to a hidden crypt. For the most part, the players who are not interested wonât even notice these puzzles.â
A smart enemy (in the sense of looking good, and not intelligence) is the skeleton. One wonders whether it is difficult to animate these, what with their stiff âbodyâ movements, compared to the more human characters? Apparently it isnât. All the in-game characters are hand animated simply because the developer strongly believes that this creates the best look for both the game and world of Dungeon Siege. âItâs definitely a challenge to get the animations correct.â And so it should be, what with that aspect being all a part of making games. An idea made to Gas Powered Games was one that involving the skeletons. Chris Lyle was in agreement when Derek dela Fuente suggested that they should lose individual bones and limbs but still be able to carry on fighting. Skulless skeletons! Fantasy games allow a developer to do anything, remember.
Dungeon Siege will support up to eight players via a local area network (LAN) or through the built-in matchmaking server available inside the game. You can take part in both âshort gameâ multiplayer experiences such as âcapture the castleâ and the more traditional campaign style of play. The proprietary Siege Editor in Dungeon Siege gives you the freedom to rework nearly every aspect of the game, making it not only a game, but also a role-playing platform for those who want to create their own characters, spells, dungeons and even entire worlds. You can post these user-created files to the Web, making them available for anyone to download and explore, or play as a multiplayer game. âThe other thing you can do with the Siege Editor is to place monsters anywhere you want in your own creations. Our game will have around 100 monsters, but they have all been designed to be location specific.â Not only that, the game has a custom scripting language called âSkritâ which is used by the game engine. Skrit allows the designers to create custom AI for each monster, but whereas GPG experimented with ones that ran away and found it to be annoying, this is still a facility players can use when setting up their own worlds. A kind of âyouâve played our game, now play your ownâ scenario.
