by Dhruin, 2011-03-11 21:34:54

Here's a small collecion of Dungeon Siege 3 articles, starting with our friends at GameBanshee who have an excellent five-page hands-on look:

Without a doubt, Dungeon Siege III is the best-looking Obsidian-developed game to date. Not only do the animations and buzzword-laden effects look amazing on PC (and slightly less so on consoles), but the camera swivels and zooms in smoothly and comfortably, too. There are two separate zoom modes (near and semi-far), and both suit their purposes well (the former being something of a vanity cam and the latter being your standard action RPG vantage point). You can tell The Onyx Engine suits this type of third-person RPG very well - it reminds me of a modernized version of the Snowblind Engine that powered the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath titles - and based on what the team told me during my visit to the Obsidian offices, the toolset that accompanies it sports all of the options they've found to be most valuable through years of RPG development experience.



A colorful fantasy art style is utilized when moving through the game's early overland regions, but the castle, caves, and dungeons I saw had a foreboding and moody style to them. Some areas even had a steampunk feel to them, and as you might have expected, they were filled with automatons and bomb-tossing goblins (that flew across the screen when struck hard enough). The subterranean levels are fairly dark, but doorways and important objects are illuminated by deliberately placed candles and torches. The light being shed from such sources realistically dances on any characters that pass by and, in one of the dungeons I was shown, will even paint a sparkly sheen on underground rivers as they pass through.