Normally, I would shelve a game of which I was disappointed, and believe me, nowadays that is common. In this particular case, though, seeing the Dungeon Siege name I feel compelled to write a short complaint note in the hopes that someone who worked on it will read it.
As an engineer in the games industry, I understand plenty about being forced in to bad decisions. But a handful of them seem unbelievable and avoidable.
Controls: I'm aware they're being fixed, but that's not an excuse. When GPG managed to make a superior control system 10 years ago, you know you have a problem. Your controls are terrible, particularly the camera control. I've developed camera controls before and I can't quite comprehend how a product of this caliber could fall so short on such a basic element. Hold right click to move? Really??? Run up to items and press e to pick them up? What in the world? Did you play the first two games?
Inventory: You're making dungeon siege. Do not change the inventory. Inventory management is a pillar of gameplay for dungeon siege. The game practically revolves around the acquisition of items. We've all played console games with fun inventory systems, even the original diablo port to PSX had the inventory right. Do not assume you must make a boring clunky inventory screen to support consoles. You're better than that. I hope.
Equipment appearance: Again, the game revolves around acquisition of loot. Why in the world would you regress so badly from the original two games? Surely you felt you could improve some aspects of the older games and branch out from them and put your stamp on the game, but why did you choose to neglect one of the main pillars of the game?
Neither the graphics nor the story are good enough (nor could they be) to alleviate the problems with the base gameplay. I'm sorry guys, you've put a lot of hard work in to this product but you had to know these aspects were not worthy of release. I hope you can show this post (and those like it) to whomever is responsible for forcing this release out the door. I was really hoping this year would be DS3, TL2, and D3, and I'm a little sad to see one of the games fall a little short.
Sincerely,
Will
