Dungeon Siege III Interview

Eurogamer has put up a 2-pages post-release interview with Dungeon Siege III’s lead designer Nathaniel Chapman, in which the game’s reception, the move away from the mechanics of its predecessors, the PC controls, the game’s stability, Obsidian’s reputation as a company that releases buggy games and the rumors of Obsidian working on a 2D “highly stylized” RPG all get addressed. Here’s a sampling:

Eurogamer: That decision to put combat front and centre was potentially a risky one. What was the thinking behind it?

Nathaniel Chapman: There were two main things that motivated it. One was, in bringing the game over to consoles, we really needed it to play in an exciting way on a console controller. It was very difficult to take the party management aspect of the earlier games and… it just didn’t mesh well with the console controls.

In general, one of the criticisms of the first Dungeon Siege was that it kind of played itself. We wanted to make a really active experience and put a lot of emphasis on the ‘action’ in ‘action RPG’. We wanted to ensure you never felt like the game was too automated. We really wanted it to feel like you were always directly controlling your character, and how you controlled your character really mattered and affected the outcome of combat.

Eurogamer: You weren’t worried about a backlash from the series’ core PC fanbase?

Nathaniel Chapman: Honestly, we were less worried about that aspect of it. Actually this is one thing I would have liked to have spent more time on, and we are actually spending time on now. Basically, I think as long as PC gamers have a good way to control the combat they will enjoy it. One review – I can’t remember which – said if you play with a game pad the combat is great, so right now we’re working on improving the PC controls through an update.

I think if there are PC gamers who are having a negative reaction it’s less about what the combat is, it’s more how the combat controls.