Dungeon Siege III

Development

Dungeon Siege 3 was developed by Obsidian Entertainment. This was the first time Gas Powered Games was not developing Dungeon Siege, however Chris Taylor kept a close eye on the project.

Story

*spoiler alert*

The Kingdom of Ehb has fallen into chaos and civil war. A mysterious yet charismatic young woman named Jeyne Kassynder claimed that the kingdom's protectors, the 10th Legion, was responsible for the murder of the king. Her rallying cry began a series of Legionnaire purges and killings all over the Kingdom. And with the military backing of the Azunite Church, she defeated the Legion in a decisive battle at the Mournweald. But removing the 10th from power did not stop the bloodshed. Jeyne has continued to send out agents who seek out and kill every Legionnaire and their descendants in hiding. More importantly, she also began an all-out war against the royal family. Now the Kingdom is split between those loyal to Jeyne and those remaining on the side of the Crown.

Three decades after the battle at the Mournweald, the 10th Legion prepares its comeback. Per the request of the veteran Legionnaire Odo, the descendants of the Legionnaires are to gather at the Montbarren estate in a remote part of Ehb and begin their quest to take back the Kingdom that their ancestors once defended. But Jeyne's agents caught wind of the ploy, and they sent out Lezcansi mercenaries to burn down the estate and kill anyone who attended the gathering. The player character, a descendant of Legion blood, arrives after the attack already happened. And with another survivor, Marten Guiscard, they elude the mercenaries and make their way to the nearby Legionnaire chapterhouse, where they meet up with a distraught Odo.

The player character travels to Raven's Rill, a nearby settlement, to find the whereabouts of any surviving Legionnaires. The village is under mercenary occupation, but they encounter two Lezcansi mercenaries who have plans of their own. They tell the player character that Lezcansi forces have imprisoned some Legionnaires in a nearby cave for interrogation. They also help by providing the key that allows access to the cave's jail cells. The player character proceeds to defeat the Lezcansi mercenaries and the witches who lead them. Later, they also liberate the entire village by infiltrating its upper section and defeating the archon Rajani. Rajani admits that she is working for the Legion's old enemy, Jeyne Kassynder.

The victory at Raven's Rill is the moment of glory from which the 10th Legion begins its ascent. To signal the organization's return to a broader audience, the player travels to Stonebridge and reclaims the Legion's original headquarters, the Grand Chapterhouse. Next, the Legionnaire begins the process of finding the allies who will provide the troops necessary to combat Jeyne and her Azunite armies.

One ally is the technologically advanced city of Stonebridge itself. Not only is the city the largest and most prosperous in all of Ehb, but it fields a formidable automaton army that also doubles as an efficient police force.

For the alliance between the Legion and the city to be official, Stonebridge's top governing officials, the Meisters, need to hold a vote on the matter. They are initially reluctant to abandon the city's neutrality towards Jeyne Kassynder, but the player character eventually convinces them to support the Legion by helping them track down a legendary criminal known only as the Dapper Old Gent. They do this by breaking up the Gent's automaton-smuggling operation in the city's crypt. They also stop a group of riotous cyclops, who were agitated by the Gent, in the Great Foundry. The struggle culminates in a final battle where the player character defeats the Gent, and the automaton army he controlled, in his headquarters.

After the battle, the Meisters and the player character discover that the Dapper Old Gent was Archambaud du Payen, a veteran Legionnaire. He wanted to destroy Stonebridge after it failed to bring justice to its citizens responsible for the 10th Legion massacre that took place in the city thirty years ago. The player character can either turn the Gent over to the Stonebridge authorities or take him under the Legion's care. Regardless of the player's choice, the Meisters later vote to establish a military alliance between the city of Stonebridge and the 10th Legion.

The other ally is the Royal Court located in the frigid peaks of Glitterdelve. Unlike the Meisters, the young Queen Roslyn was more amenable to aligning her crown with the Legion. But before the matter can resolve, they need to fight off Jeyne's invasion force flooding into the Glitterdelve Mine. The player character does their part by sealing off several mine entrances and forcing the enemy into a chokepoint where flammable gases are building up. Once the gas concentration reaches critical mass, the Royal Army retreats and ignites the gas from afar, killing many Azunite troops caught in the blast and entombing the rest under a mountain of rock.

But the battle also had its share of inconvenient truths, discovered from the player's interactions with the Court and Jeyne Kassynder herself. The player character learns that Jeyne is the daughter of the old king and an archon mother, so she has a plausible claim to the throne. The player also learns that the old Legion indeed conspired to replace that king with his eldest son, only to unintentionally have him killed in the process. When she learns that Jeyne is her aunt, Queen Roslyn takes a more sympathetic view towards her usurper and asks the player character to capture Jeyne alive. She also confirms the alliance between the Legion and the monarchy.

With both allies, the Legion begins its long march to Eastern Ehb to bring the fight to Jeyne Kassynder. While the armies clash on the foot of Mount Jhereb, the player character and their band take a secret path up the mountain and infiltrate Jeyne's Spire. Besting the archon guardians and religious zealots who defend the fortress, they make their way up to the highest floor and defeat Jeyne in a fierce battle. But she manages to escape the Legionnaires' clutches and makes her way back to the Mournweald. There, she uses all her remaining power as an archon to reincarnate the remnants of a Creator God. But despite its awesome power, the player character manages to defeat it and captures Jeyne Kassynder.

With Kassynder brought to justice, the 10th Legion reasserts its former place as the protectors of Ehb and its Queen. Resistance to the 10th's restoration remain in various pockets of the country, and threats outside the Kingdom remain everpresent. But the resolutions to these existing problems are, in the words of Odo, the subjects of another chronicle and another time. And more importantly, the Legion and its allies will be ready to take on those new enemies, whenever they may come.

Gameplay

At first glance Dungeon Siege 3 should appear pretty familiar to anyone with passing knowledge of overhead action games, but Obsidian has made three major changes. First, there are no potions in the game. Healing is done through a combination of spells and instant health pickups that drop from enemies or reaching a save point. The second change plays into the lack of instant healing through a potion and that is a dodge mechanism. The addition of the dodge puts more emphasis on strategic battles and in preventing damage rather than healing it. The third change is in how abilities are handled. Each character has nine abilities; three defensive and six offensive. The offensive abilities are grouped as sets of three in two separate groups labelled as stances.

The stances offer two differing playstyles, for instance one stance is for ranged fighting and the other is for melee. These abilities evolve as you level up and assign points to them, becoming more powerful as well as gaining secondary effects. Stances can be freely switched with a button press allowing for a quick response to new threats. The stance changes make for a quick feel of combat.

As the first Dungeon Siege game designed for consoles there are some changes to the general gameplay as well. Movement is handled freely through the left analog stick while camera control is handled by the right stick. Your main attack and three current offensive special attacks are mapped to the face buttons while other functions like changing stances and activating your defensive abilites are handled by the shoulder buttons. Blocking is done automatically when the defend button is held and dodging is performed by moving the character while holding the defend button.

Many tropes of the dungeon crawling genre are still retained in the game. Treasure chests and breakable objects are plentiful and contain gold, health orbs, and loot. As you fight off mobs they will drop random loot that may be used by your party. Even though you are only able to equip certain armor to your chosen character; all other loot can be equiped to your companions or sold off. Some loot you collect is instantly reflected as gold in your inventory. Such examples are gold/silver bars or candelabras. Stores are scattered throughout the world as well and offer a wide range of equipment for sale.

Playable Characters

Unlike its predecessors, Dungeon Siege 3 comes with four playable characters, each with their own pre-set abilities, instead of a main character that you create and customise at the beginning of the adventure. The four characters are:

Lucas Montbarron

Descended from Lady Montbarron, the protagonist of the original Dungeon Siege game, Lucas is the son of Hugh Montbarron, the Grand Master of the 10th Legion who thirty years ago who led the Legion during their failed fight against Jeyne Kassynder. Lucas fights with a large two-handed sword or a one-handed sword with a shield.

Anjali

Raised by those close to the Legion, Anjali is an Archon, a being that served the Gods that created the world. She has no memory of how she came to the world or how to get back to or communicate with her own kind. Her two stances allow her to switch between her human and archon form. As a human Anjali fights with a spear and staff, as an Archon she is the embodiment of fire and rains destruction upon her foes from afar.

Reinhart Manx

Reinhard Manx is a mage with a reputation for his innovative techniques and thinking. Descended from a long line of mages alligned with the 10th Legion, he grew up at the Stonebridge Collegium and has studied magic for the majority of his life. His stances are either a long-ranged use of Entropic magic that affects large areas with powerful life-extinguising attacks or a close-ranged use of Dynamic magic that he channels through an arcane guantlet and capacitor.

Katarina

Lucas' half-sister, and the illegitimate daughter of Hugh Montbarron, she was raised by her mother's people, the Lescanzi. Nomands and wanderers, the Lescanzi are a people skilled in warfare and magic, protection needed against the people that fear them and their ways. Katarina was raised in like and her stances makes full use of her magic and guns. At range she uses a combination of a rifle and magical curses, close up she uses a pair of shotguns and sorcery.

Multiplayer

The co-op aspect of Dungeon Siege 3 will not allow you to bring your single player character into another person's game. When you join another persons game, you will choose which hero you want to play as. You will always be the same level as the host due to downed players still receiving XP. The host is limited to the same character for the entire campaign. It's not possible for multiple people to play the same character.

The client has complete control over their character as if they would be playing single player. The only noticeable change is that the host controls the dialogue selections. Clients are still able to make their dialogue preference known with a vote.

A client can freely manage their own equipment, abilities, and specializations. Inventory and money is shared with the host, allowing the client(s) to use the vendor and purchase items at will. There is no way to "bank" items or restrict certain items from being accidentally sold.

DLC

Released in October 2011, Treasures of the Sun was first, and only, downloadable package for Dungeon Siege 3. In this extension you travel beyond the borders of Ehb to an all-new environment: the Aranoi Desert. You go there to find an artifact of great power: the greatest treasure of the Azunite faith. The expansion also allows players to level up to level 35 (was 30 in the original game) and reallocate their proficient and skill points. The DLC also introduces an enchanting system that allows players to improve their armour and weapons, and a trio of powerful abilities that players can use to defeat the desert's dangerous hordes of undead monsters.

Plot

*spoiler alert*

While in the Stonebridge chapterhouse, the player character receives a request from an old man named Oswalt. He wants them to find and bring back his former master Etienne du Marnay, a well-known Legionnaire who traveled to the Aranoi Desert in a quest to find "the Greatest Treasure of the Azunite faith”. Finding du Marnay turns out to be difficult, for the Desert is teeming with many dangers. Not only are brigands, thieves and wild spiders present, but there are also hordes of undead soldiers who prowl the dunes and prey on unprepared travellers.

Seeking refuge, the player character and their band find shelter in the Abbey of Saint Hiram, the home of several Azunai worshippers independent from Jeyne Kassynder and du Marnay's last known location. They learn from the abbey's unofficial leader, Sister Eleanor, that the undead forces they fought were Azunai heretics who the 10th Legion cursed long ago as retribution for torturing and murdering Saint Hiram in the abbey's ancient vault. They also learn that du Marnay went into that vault thirty years ago and never came out. So the player character ventures back out into the desert and collects the oil blood of a lamasu (a winged lion) and a tablet with an inscribed recitation, the magical items required to enter the vault and complete their assignment.

The abbey's vault turns out to be even more dangerous than the desert outside. As Sister Eleanor explains, it houses the graves of the heretical Agallan giants, a long-living species with vast knowledge regarding war and magic. And because the player character is of Legion descent, those giants wake up to their presence, rising from the dead in an attempt to avenge themselves and their cursed fates. The fighting concludes when the player slays the giant Molochi, the High Priest and leader of the heretics, in a decisive final battle. Defeating Molochi then takes the legionnaire to a room with two noteworthy items: the dead body of Etienne du Marnay, and a gold statue of a winged lion.

The latter is what du Marnay has been looking for all along. It contains the spirit of a real lamasu with clairvoyant and elemental abilities, thus explaining its reputation as the Azunites' greatest treasure. It was once a tool for Molochi to communicate with the god Azunai, but his heretical turn caused the Azunai-friendly spirit to clam up. More recently, the lamasu spirit has done what it could to fulfil du Marnay's dying wish to see his daughter protected from Jeyne Kassynder and the chaos engulfing the Kingdom of Ehb. That daughter is none other than Sister Eleanor, whose Legion descent is unknown to everyone but a small handful of Abbey priests.

The player then needs to decide whether to abide by Etienne du Marnay's hopes to see Eleanor return to the Legion or allow her to remain in hiding and abandon her heritage. According to the prophetic lamasu, she has two distinct futures waiting for her. If she stays in the Abbey, she will eventually become a high-ranking member of the Azunite church and the catalyst for reconciliation between the church and the 10th Legion. Returning to the Legion, by contrast, will allow her to propagate her bloodline. Her descendants will be some of the 10th's most important members, and one will end up as the organisation's Grand Master. But there is a catch. Eleanor herself will die in a heroic sacrifice, protecting another Legionnaire, before her child's third birthday. The player character then leaves the vault and speaks to Eleanor about her secret heritage, and then decides her fate from there.

Regardless of the player's choice, their character travels back to the Kingdom of Ehb and continues Dungeon Siege 3's main storyline: gathering the necessary allies to combat Jeyne Kassynder and her forces (assuming that the player has not already done so).

PC Requirements

Minimum

• OS: Windows XP SP3, Vista SP1, Windows 7
• Processor: Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz or equivalent
• Memory: 1.5 GB
• Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 3870 or NVIDIA 9800 GT
• DirectX®: DirectX® 9.0c
• Hard Drive: 4 GB for full installation
• Sound: No accelerated sound hardware required

Recommended

• OS: Windows 7
• Processor: Core i5 750 2.67 GHz or equivalent
• Memory: 2 GB
• Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 4870 or NVIDIA GTX 260