Dungeon Siege 3 at New York Comic Con

[Sannom]

So Alvin, was the presentation on PC or Console?

You certainly were playing with an Xbox360 gamepad, but then again, AFAIK, you did the same thing at E3 and Gamescom and it was demoed on a PC.

 

Was Alvin playing through the presentation, or was it his colleague? We didn't see what he used right? He could have used a mouse and keyboard for all we know...

 

It would be good to have a short synopsis of the Dungeon Siege 3 panel, they talked about stories and characters in there, no?

[WorstUsernameEver]

So Alvin, was the presentation on PC or Console?

You certainly were playing with an Xbox360 gamepad, but then again, AFAIK, you did the same thing at E3 and Gamescom and it was demoed on a PC.

 

Was Alvin playing through the presentation, or was it his colleague? We didn't see what he used right? He could have used a mouse and keyboard for all we know...

 

It would be good to have a short synopsis of the Dungeon Siege 3 panel, they talked about stories and characters in there, no?

 

Pretty sure at least Alvin was using an Xbox360 controller. And all the cues in the video were of Xbox360 buttons, so I doubt the other guy was playing with mouse and keyboard.

 

As far as I can tell, Alvin was play with the female character whose name included a J and began with an A. Aj..anti? Something like that.

[Alvin Nelson]

1. We were playing on the PC.

2. I was playing the female character Anjali.

3. Let me know what you'd like to know from the presentation and i'll try to answer the questions.

[kirottu]

Looks a solid game for co-op.

[Labadal]

Alvin nelson died in the demo because they probably had to show the reviving system.

 

I have questions if it is ok.

 

1. When a friend jumps in to play with me, will his progress be saved and will he get items?

2. Can you play two players from the start? I mean choose a class, or is coop play only limited to me using my main character and a friend using a companion.

3. How many companions can you have on your adventure? Will it be main character plus one companion or can we have more than one with us while we fight.

4. Will we see nonlinear levels or are they all built up like corridors?

5. Are we allowed to backtrack if we miss stuff?

6. Is the inventory limited by weight, number of item slots?

7. how many abilities can we expect for each class?

8. How far in development is the game?

9. What are your own feelings about the game? (not a pr anwser please. )

 

I know, many questions(sorry), but I hope you can anwser one or two.

[LadyCrimson]

Comments:

---Nice presentation, good job guys.

---Love the spiders/combat moves & graphic/engine.

---I like/prefer the "story event" concept (vs too many full cutscenes).

---"And I died, great."

 

Idle Questions:

---Is treasure mostly in containers & bosses? Part of keeping the action flowing? I have no issue w/it...just curious. Can't remember if that was announced in one of the many long threads already, if it was, sorry.

---What kind of PC rig were you using for the demo?

 

Misc:

---Can I get one of those Obsidian logo t-shirts somewhere?

[SirPetrakus]

1. We were playing on the PC.

2. I was playing the female character Anjali.

3. Let me know what you'd like to know from the presentation and i'll try to answer the questions.

You were playing on the same PC? As in simultaneous hotseat? Did we establish that already for DS3? I don't recall.

 

No, I can totally understand how talking about a presentation and trying to play at the same time can be difficult. My cat meows and as soon as I try to turn my attention to her, I always end up dead when I'm gaming, let alone trying to do a presentation. We men are just NOT good at multi-tasking. Like I said, the presentation was pretty good and we got to see the 'revive' mechanic. I had no idea there even was one.

 

Like I said, game looks awesome, not much to add to that.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

First thing I noticed during the gameplay - incredibly stiff animation transitions. You guys did this with Alpha Protocol as well, and here it's even worse.

 

I don't know if this is being fixed, or a known issue, but it's the only glaring flaw in the presentation and everything else is gorgeous.

 

EDIT: Why have a breadcrumb trail if everything is so linear?

Edited October 13, 2010 by WILL THE ALMIGHTY

[Oblarg]

First thing I noticed during the gameplay - incredibly stiff animation transitions. You guys did this with Alpha Protocol as well, and here it's even worse.

 

I don't know if this is being fixed, or a known issue, but it's the only glaring flaw in the presentation and everything else is gorgeous.

 

EDIT: Why have a breadcrumb trail if everything is so linear?

 

That was only a demo level. I'm sure they wouldn't include it if there were not levels in which you could get lost.

Edited October 13, 2010 by Oblarg

[Alvin Nelson]

Alvin nelson died in the demo because they probably had to show the reviving system.

 

I have questions if it is ok.

 

1. When a friend jumps in to play with me, will his progress be saved and will he get items?

2. Can you play two players from the start? I mean choose a class, or is coop play only limited to me using my main character and a friend using a companion.

3. How many companions can you have on your adventure? Will it be main character plus one companion or can we have more than one with us while we fight.

4. Will we see nonlinear levels or are they all built up like corridors?

5. Are we allowed to backtrack if we miss stuff?

6. Is the inventory limited by weight, number of item slots?

7. how many abilities can we expect for each class?

8. How far in development is the game?

9. What are your own feelings about the game? (not a pr anwser please. )

 

I know, many questions(sorry), but I hope you can anwser one or two.

 

Can't answer most of these, but i'll go with the items that we've already announced:

2. Si.

8. The demo you saw there was pre-alpha, if that helps.

9. I'm pretty excited about it myself. The last fun co-op games that i played were Dark Alliance 1 and 2, and the Ultimate Alliance games. It's been a good while since i've had a game that i could just sit and enjoy with friends. I'm not big into games like Gears of War or Army of Two, so this game is right up my alley.

[Alvin Nelson]

Comments:

---Nice presentation, good job guys.

---Love the spiders/combat moves & graphic/engine.

---I like/prefer the "story event" concept (vs too many full cutscenes).

---"And I died, great."

 

Idle Questions:

---Is treasure mostly in containers & bosses? Part of keeping the action flowing? I have no issue w/it...just curious. Can't remember if that was announced in one of the many long threads already, if it was, sorry.

---What kind of PC rig were you using for the demo?

 

Misc:

---Can I get one of those Obsidian logo t-shirts somewhere?

 

Treasure is going to be everywhere.

I'm not sure if we have any more shirts at the moment...

[Alvin Nelson]

First thing I noticed during the gameplay - incredibly stiff animation transitions. You guys did this with Alpha Protocol as well, and here it's even worse.

 

I don't know if this is being fixed, or a known issue, but it's the only glaring flaw in the presentation and everything else is gorgeous.

 

EDIT: Why have a breadcrumb trail if everything is so linear?

 

We were playing a short demo, so it's a bit more linear. The final game won't be nearly as straightforward.

Can you explain a bit more what you mean about stiff animation transitions?

[Starwars]

Think he means stuff like when you run for example and then stop, it immediately transitions into the standing idle animations without any real... transition to it (like the character moving his body into the new stance). This makes movement look a bit "choppy".

[WorstUsernameEver]

Aside from work needed to be done on animation interpolation and possibly slightly higher res textures for the ground/walls etc. it seems that from that point of view there's not much to be said, the game looks good.

 

So, fully aware that you probably can't answer to most of the questions I'll ask you, here's my take on the presentation:

1) The enemies look pretty slow and easy to kill for the most part. Was the difficulty toned down for the demo or can we expect a similar level of difficulty for the final game?

2) It's pretty clear that in the demo some unconnected areas were basically stringed together with the Causeway. But how will that work in the final game? Will it link locations on a linear path like that or will it be usable as a more general-purpose fast travel system?

3) You seem to be utilizing the same 'health orbs' system that Diablo 3 (and a great deal of action games) utilizes. Does that mean that there won't be potions in the game?

4) Will environment be more open in the final game? Or will the game be this linear?

5) Do you have all the stances from the beginning or can you unlock more of them as you progress through the game?

6) Are all the characters pre-set? From how you make it sounds, if you select, say, Anjali, you'd probably end up encountering Lukas (or is it Lucas? eh, whatever) in that dungeon, or at least, you could encounter him and make him one of your companions.

7) When can we expect the console versions to be shown? Quite frankly, while I like what has been shown of the engine a lot, the real test will be to see the framerate this smooth on consoles.

[Labadal]

Alvin nelson died in the demo because they probably had to show the reviving system.

 

I have questions if it is ok.

 

1. When a friend jumps in to play with me, will his progress be saved and will he get items?

2. Can you play two players from the start? I mean choose a class, or is coop play only limited to me using my main character and a friend using a companion.

3. How many companions can you have on your adventure? Will it be main character plus one companion or can we have more than one with us while we fight.

4. Will we see nonlinear levels or are they all built up like corridors?

5. Are we allowed to backtrack if we miss stuff?

6. Is the inventory limited by weight, number of item slots?

7. how many abilities can we expect for each class?

8. How far in development is the game?

9. What are your own feelings about the game? (not a pr anwser please. )

 

I know, many questions(sorry), but I hope you can anwser one or two.

 

Can't answer most of these, but i'll go with the items that we've already announced:

2. Si.

8. The demo you saw there was pre-alpha, if that helps.

9. I'm pretty excited about it myself. The last fun co-op games that i played were Dark Alliance 1 and 2, and the Ultimate Alliance games. It's been a good while since i've had a game that i could just sit and enjoy with friends. I'm not big into games like Gears of War or Army of Two, so this game is right up my alley.

 

Thank you for taking your time to anwser, and I enjoy games like Dark Alliance and Ultimate Alliance myself. Not a big fan of shooters either. I play them, but that only happens if I go to a friends house.

 

For a pre-alpha build the game looked mighty impressive.

[Nathaniel Chapman]

Aside from work needed to be done on animation interpolation and possibly slightly higher res textures for the ground/walls etc. it seems that from that point of view there's not much to be said, the game looks good.

 

So, fully aware that you probably can't answer to most of the questions I'll ask you, here's my take on the presentation:

1) The enemies look pretty slow and easy to kill for the most part. Was the difficulty toned down for the demo or can we expect a similar level of difficulty for the final game?

2) It's pretty clear that in the demo some unconnected areas were basically stringed together with the Causeway. But how will that work in the final game? Will it link locations on a linear path like that or will it be usable as a more general-purpose fast travel system?

3) You seem to be utilizing the same 'health orbs' system that Diablo 3 (and a great deal of action games) utilizes. Does that mean that there won't be potions in the game?

4) Will environment be more open in the final game? Or will the game be this linear?

5) Do you have all the stances from the beginning or can you unlock more of them as you progress through the game?

6) Are all the characters pre-set? From how you make it sounds, if you select, say, Anjali, you'd probably end up encountering Lukas (or is it Lucas? eh, whatever) in that dungeon, or at least, you could encounter him and make him one of your companions.

7) When can we expect the console versions to be shown? Quite frankly, while I like what has been shown of the engine a lot, the real test will be to see the framerate this smooth on consoles.

 

1) Abilities were overtuned and enemies undertuned for the demo. So, the real game will be tougher. Actually in our current build it's pretty much impossible to get past the first couple of fights in the game... but that's a bug.

2) It will be a bit more general purpose than in the demo.

3) We're not using potion chugging as the primary health recovery mechanic, no.

4) The game will be more open than that presentation.

5) In the current development build, you have all stances from the beginning. Because they are used tactically, and important to having a well-rounded combat experience, they're likely to stay unlocked at the beginning.

6) Can't answer this yet.

7) The framerate should be industry standard on consoles, and we are working very hard to ensure that it is consistently running at framerate. The game will likely run faster on most gaming PCs, so that's a definite advantage for PC players.

[C2B]

Thanks for answering WUEs questions Nathaniel. It really gives me confidence in the game.

Edited October 13, 2010 by C2B

[Pidesco]

I'm going to repeat my questions here:

 

I was under the impression the game maps were mostly a corridor. However, Alvin showed a visual aid indicating the way to go. Does that mean DSIII has more open sections?

 

 

Also, what kind of active defense skills are there? Can you dodge, parry, etc?

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

First thing I noticed during the gameplay - incredibly stiff animation transitions. You guys did this with Alpha Protocol as well, and here it's even worse.

 

I don't know if this is being fixed, or a known issue, but it's the only glaring flaw in the presentation and everything else is gorgeous.

 

EDIT: Why have a breadcrumb trail if everything is so linear?

 

We were playing a short demo, so it's a bit more linear. The final game won't be nearly as straightforward.

Can you explain a bit more what you mean about stiff animation transitions?

 

 

Think he means stuff like when you run for example and then stop, it immediately transitions into the standing idle animations without any real... transition to it (like the character moving his body into the new stance). This makes movement look a bit "choppy".

Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Although since he said it was a pre-alpha build, I'm pretty sure the little quirk in the animation will be fixed. At least I hope so. Did I mention how gorgeous the rest of the game looks?

[SirPetrakus]

That's an incredible amount of feedback, Alvin! Thank WUE for asking all these good questions and thank you for taking the time and patience with us to answer them.

[J.E. Sawyer]

DS3 owns.

[funcroc]

GameTrailers: gamescom 2010 video interview with Chris Taylor and Nathaniel Chapman

[Tigranes]

I'm not a fan of the causeway, mainly because I think psychologically, when I decide to teleport/move to a new location, that's where I want to be, and I'm already thinking about what to do when I get there - doing some filler battles to get there will just be makework. Causeway enemies seemed to be pretty throwaway as well... although, if they were an actual challenge, that wouldn't be much better, either. In this kind of game I'm not sure it makes sense to limit fast travel.

 

Otherwise, looks super, super pretty - I'm pretty blind to graphics in general and there are only a handful of games where I actually just like looking at things, and in the 3D era it's been even rarer. Game also looks very fun in the Diablo II sense.

[Wombat]

DS3 owns.

How about FO:NV? It saddens to see you keep saying that you are disappointed by the turn-out of the games you played bigger roles...

 

Back on topic, DS3 seems to be on a good direction... To be honest, I was bit worried Obsidian might not be able to keep up with the modernization of the game industry but, about this game, I read the posts of the designers confidently.

[steelfiredragon]

DS3 owns.

 

 

 

what you mean the PS3 owns, its a piece of junk, it can't even make the kettle spice run under 12 parsecs....

 

oh wait you said DS3, it better own. I plan on buying it for pc