Dungeon Siege III Preview

It seems that a preview version of Dungeon Siege III’s code has been sent out to the press, as GameSpot too now serves us with a hands-on preview.

As we completed quests and cut our way through innumerable bandits, our heroes would rack up experience and advance in level. This awarded us with ability, proficiency, and talent points to spend on customizing our characters. Ability points weren’t awarded at every level, but when they were, they let us purchase new abilities to use in combat (by level 9, we had three ability points to spend). Proficiency points were used to customize those abilities. Each ability had two proficiencies and five slots. Each time we purchased a rank in either proficiency, it occupied one of those slots and altered the effects of that ability. For example, with Reinhart’s clockwork trap, we could alter it to do more damage or temporally stun victims with every rank.

Finally, there were the talents. Talents were similar to proficiencies, though they weren’t tied to any one ability and instead helped our character as a whole. Each talent was broken into five ranks and could be used to beef up a character’s critical hit chance or increase the amount of gold he or she found. The other way we could customize our character was through the collection of loot. Every time we slew a bandit or opened a treasure chest a pile of riches would spill out at our feet. From the randomized assortments of odds and ends, we could collect swords, shields, staves, and suits of armor that were each unique to a specific character. This meant that Lucas couldn’t wield Katarina’s venomous hand cannon and Reinhart couldn’t wear Anjali’s form-fitting breastplate.

They also have a less informative video version of the preview which contains some new footage. Thanks, C2B.