ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: DUNGEON SIEGE

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Believe it or not, I was hoping to have this out a little bit before Thanksgiving, but this is what happens when a video turns out more complex than I planned for AND I get sleep. A lot of the time involved with this episode was getting to the points I needed to in order to show different parts of it. I had a lot of previous saved games for Dungeon Siege, but some were missing and some I was simply unable to get working again due to some mod dependency weirdness I guess. In any event, while this is hardly an obscure game, I consider it a real cornerstone in terms of influential games for me. It's all laid out in the video.

Right now my plan is to have two more Game Dungeons this month, along with an extra video. I'll also be having the monthly video chat on the 6th and post it up here afterwards (though it will be unlisted on Youtube).

COMMENTS

thumbs up! as always stellar video also semi excited for a bonus video?

EDIT: also forgot to mention a lot of this reminds me of path of exile...

I spend soooo much time on this game...

I bought it after premier on 4 god damn CD's that I almost lost before I even reach home(sad that music CD is scratched like hell, Jeremy Soule maybe is not that good as Mark Morgan but it have nice style).

It was actually first game that "glued" me to PC for 18 hours. I spend nonstop 18 hours on it after I install it first time.

Actually only Fallout 2 and Stalker SoC could do that, and I still play both those game EVERY YEAR, I making small 2 day's marathons for both of games and I still think that I should made this for Dungeon Siege.

And just like Ross said, this game have "something" that give you that pure fun. Game can be dumb or ugly, but as far as it have atmosphere and good gameplay you can spend days playing it.

But few thought about video...

After you get 3 people in your team, You should definitely try combat magic. I always choose bows for my character, but after you get good combat level you can just burn anything that you encounter. When I reached one time swamps with full combat magic team It was almost impossible to stop me I just send them to fight and hold Manna Potion shortcut ALL THE TIME

Second thing, you should DEFINITELY mention that you can pause game by hitting space and set orders to your team, you actually gonna use it all the time later in game and some people today just dont get it that you can do this(yes some people on internet have problems with such things like reading and checking options).

Other thing.

DS II. you should mention that it was probably first game that your character could use two weapons at the same time. Ff course there where games with system like that, but DS II was fist game that work great with it and look amazing with all those effects and powerups. first DS would be amazing with dual weapon system.

Also this time that you spend thinking if you should set your character as a brutal one weapon or fast two weapon fighter... Because in DS II it was almost impossible to set your character to different type in the middle of the game. If you choses magic... later its pain to change it...

And last funny thing, when I first played Dungeon Siege it I stopped before reaching Castle Ehb, when you need to beat that damn Dragon. I had really messed team and I was to pissed off to back to the city, so I dumped this game for good week before I beat that Dragon... Normally I would not go back to game(ragequit) but Dungeon Siege was just to good to leave it like that

Myeeh, it looks like Skeletor's taken over RPG games.. MYEEEEHH!!

I sunk so much time into this one it wasn't even funny, as in 'this was the last game other than morrowind I got for the computer i got for college because by then it was 2006 and my brother borrowed it then it blew up.

Even then most of the mods were dead links, which bugged the hell out of me because there was work put into a scifi mod which... yea squad based 'KILL EVERYTHING' /IN SPACE/ would have made me so happy.

Any idea where to get this one other than ebay? I see it's on the gog wishlist and steam apparently doesn't have the expansion.

We seriously need to compile a list of and archive any and all active mods before everything just goes under. i know they included an editor, and from what i remember the multiplayer was kinda nice, though frankly yea... getting that mod so you can full party multiplayer would be nice.

Now i want people to mod this so we have the Strife world... but able to play here. It'd be fun to recruit people in my quest to Murder Everything, and while the training area in the castle would need MASSIVE tweaking since really it was a bigass jump puzzle, I could totally see it as doable especially if you break up what the different colored acolytes have as equipment (the grey ones being melee, the brown ones machineguns, the command variant having party buff skills and bigger guns, etc.)

It's also an older game so you don't need to put nearly as much detail in as you would otherwise... but it'd still be a hell of a lot of work and i have no skills as a modeler or texture guy.

Pity chances of a system shock 2 like engine patch to modernize things is probably not in the cards.

The movie was meh.

^ It's by Uwe Boll, a notorious director for making bad films.

I remember playing Dungeon Siege II for hours, I never got the chance to start off with DS 1, so I may have missed the originality that came with it. I did, however play DS 3, and yes... while the art and textures in the game are wonderful, the same immersion and gameplay I had in DS 2 wasn't as good. Still enjoyable to play, but with the direction games are going; I don't find it surprising anymore that many games spread themselves thin in areas like storyline and immersion, and focus more on eye-candy and profiteering.

Ohhh poor Tanzi, she's been taken by the Hak-u.

Well, speaking of summoning mages in Diablo clones, in Sacred, if you play as a Vampiress, you can resurrect your dead enemies to fight with you. If they kill an enemy, there's a chance that this enemy will also become a fighter for you (without you needing to manually resurrect them).

As far as I'm aware, there's no hard limit on how many fighters you can have, although there's a soft limit that increases as you level up your skills. (You can only be a vampire for so long at a time before you transform back into a human. But that time increases as you level up your transformation skill.)

But I'll admit, it's not quite the same as having party-members you can deck out with gear and control individually.

In general, this episode reminded me quite a bit of Sacred, although that game does contain a few of the things you dislike, like respawning monsters.

Hey Ross, have you heard of an MMO called Skyforge? I watched your Secret World episode and I immediately thought of it as a parallel to Skyforge. This is an MMO with slick combat and weak story. First it doesn't have the single target focused combat that you mentioned you hated. Instead it functions similarly to a third person shooter. There's a lot of different types of combat depending on your class. You can have ability combos, abilities that you can hold down to get a greater effect, stacking abilities and plenty more. You can also switch your class at anytime so you aren't limited to a single class. In fact the game encourages you to try out as many classes as possible. While it is kind of grindy most of the time it doesn't feel like it because you're constantly getting new toys to play with. Right now it's currently in beta so there's somethings the developers need to iron out but still it is an amazing MMO with absolutely sublime combat.

Probably the first video that told me I didn't like something because I was playing it wrong and I agreed. I also certainly can't think of a game that had the medium sized squad mechanic combined with hacknslash. Kind of like Death of The Necromancer was the only book I ever read where the hero has henchmen who he pays to help him out. It's a concept I'd like to see more of.

If memory serves, the level up system in Dungeon Siege was incredibly punitive if you had two different skills at different levels. Like, it was totally possible to level up all four abilities, but you HAD to keep them at exactly the same level.

Cross-posted from the "Game Dungeon Wish List" thread:

After the Dungeon Siege video, I strongly recommend that Ross checks out the Neverwinter Nights series as well. It has a few similarities to Dungeon Siege, and you usually don't have to play the games in order. Neverwinter Nights 2 in particular has a similar set up to Dungeon Siege: fun and easy combat, squad based fighting, no respawning enemies, detailed and extensive expansion packs, plenty of available mods and community levels (most of which are still readily available online) the works.

 

 

Why -are- shadows the killer of FPS, Ross? Better yet, how is it possible 2002 shadow tech can wreck a machine that can run Crysis?

Also, seriously, why is it that older systems work better? Did they put the brakes on it for the time, and create something that could never actually be played?

About the whole "Multiplayer having more than single player", a lot of FPS has that nowadays. The regular Call of Duty often does.

I used to run a rather popular Dungeon Siege community site, DungeonSiegeCenter.com - the domain has long been out of my control though.

I just checked the WayBack machine... ahh, memories. No pay, constant demand for updates, people threatening lawsuits because I uploaded their submitted content a day before they wanted it to be available...

Good times. We got 1.2 million unique visits in the first month. I've got a gold release of the game sent to me by Microsoft, they spent $24 US on the postage! HA!

I miss my buddies SeaWolf and Liam, I'll have to look them up.

Ross is right about the magic too, I always played ranger and had way more fun.

About the whole "Multiplayer having more than single player", a lot of FPS has that nowadays. The regular Call of Duty often does.

I used to run a rather popular Dungeon Siege community site, DungeonSiegeCenter.com - the domain has long been out of my control though.

 

I just checked the WayBack machine... ahh, memories. No pay, constant demand for updates, people threatening lawsuits because I uploaded their submitted content a day before they wanted it to be available...

 

Good times. We got 1.2 million unique visits in the first month. I've got a gold release of the game sent to me by Microsoft, they spent $24 US on the postage! HA!

 

I miss my buddies SeaWolf and Liam, I'll have to look them up.

 

Ross is right about the magic too, I always played ranger and had way more fun.

I wish Dungeon Siege 1 would come to GOG. I used to play it a ton. But now I'm missing the discs and don't have it installed on my PC . The GOG team could probably fix all the issues Dungeon Siege 1 has. They were able get Revenant playable for all current versions of Windows with no issues what so ever. http://www.gog.com/game/revenant I don't know how they do it but I swear these guys are wizards.

Man, yeah, I'm surprised there aren't a lot of these "raid"-type games. Like, one of the only other close things I can think of is the MechWarrior games where the single-player lets you add extra BattleMechs to your party, but it isn't quite close to what DS1 does.

That said, the multiplayer seems fit for larger-scale co-op. Just invite as many people as the server can fit and go hog-wild.

Sacrifice was ALMOST squad based in its gameplay. That's the closest I can think of, but I guess that's playing the summonables card.

I fondly remember DS because the first battle song.

South park used the same theme in a chapter

Geeat review as always.

Subs up!

Subs added! Thank you Daniel