Written by: Gavin Carter
Published: April 19, 2002

In the search for the next big gaming phenomenon, developers constantly mix new, innovative ideas with tried and true formulas. Success begs to be emulated, and releases that shock the entire industry with quality and innovation, such as Half-Life or StarCraft, are bound to see imitations pop-up. One of gaming’s largest and most successful franchises is Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo series. The seminal action-RPGs and their expansions have routinely sold over the million mark and opened the door to a genre full of potential. Other companies, such as Delphine with Darkstone, have tried to duplicate Diablo‘s success, but so far, none has unseated it. Next up at the plate is Dungeon Siege, created by gaming media darling Chris Taylor and his team at Gas Powered Games. Taylor was lead designer on the influential real-time strategy title Total Annihilation, and as such expectations for Dungeon Siege ran high throughout its development. With such anticipation in mind, I set out to see whether Dungeon Siege lived up to the hype.

The focus of Dungeon Siege is on pure hack-and-slash gameplay, so the plot is bare-bones at best. The title begins with a short in-game cutscene introducing the idyllic kingdom of Ehb. Settlers from another land fled persecution to settle Ehb and have remained well off ever since. Their luck is about to change, however. Your character begins as a lowly farmer, shown tilling his or her fields. Suddenly, an injured man stumbles toward you with news of an attack by a race known as the Krug. The ape-like Krug come running for you right behind your friend, and you’re forced to whip out your knife and start killing. From there the plot takes off in a largely linear fashion as you explore different locations around the world of Ehb, battling the Krug commanders and those behind them.

The vast majority of your time in Dungeon Siege is spent snooping through mammoth-sized dungeons, caves, ruins, tombs and other exotic locales. The entire world is seamless, meaning you won’t have to stare at the screen waiting for a loading bar to fill up at any point. The title plays out from an overhead perspective featuring a moveable camera. The camera rotates freely and tilts about 45 degress from directly overhead, allowing you to see more of the game world. Areas such as underground caves and tombs pose no problems for the camera system, as the rest of the world fades away upon entering, leaving only a cutaway view of the inner passages.

While exploring the elaborate dungeon environs the designers have cooked up, you’re bound to come face to face with more than a few nasty monsters seeking your demise. Combat in Dungeon Siege can be compared with Baldur’s Gate: Battles proceed in real-time, though you have the option of pausing and issuing orders at any time. Your characters have four different methods of attack: melee, archery, combat magic and nature magic. Each method has its own positives and negatives. For example, archers can dole out high damage from a distance, but have slower attacks than most melee fighters. Some overlap exists between nature and combat magic, but nature is primarily focused on healing and attribute buffing spells, while combat is focused on dishing out damage and summoning creatures to fight on your behalf.