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[Bullet Club]

In the realm of action-oriented video games, few are as zen as dungeon crawlers. Even at their most complex, demolishing and looting enemies in the likes of Diablo or Torchlight is as hypnotic as it is satisfying; their gameplay loops providing a perfect mixture of habitual repetition, and utter excitement. And to a small, yet passionate subset of PC gamers during the early 2000s, few games offered a better blend of these elements than Dungeon Siege.

Created by Gas Powered Games – a Redmond-based development studio led by the legendary Chris Taylor – Dungeon Siege received significant praise upon its release in 2002 for its unique, party-based gameplay and its seamless, loadingscreen-free world, resulting in a dedicated player base quickly rallying around its design.

Yet even amongst its most ardent fans, it also received significant criticism for its barebones story, as well as its tendency to play itself. As a result, its creators worked hard to ensure its sequel featured a more impressive narrative, and a deeper, more involving combat system upon its release in 2005. The end result of their efforts wouldn’t upend its genre – but it would still prove a hit among fans, and continue to inch the series closer to role-playing stardom. Unfortunately, after the release of a decent, albeit gimped spinoff on the PlayStation Portable the following year, the series would proceed to go dormant for half a decade, in addition to being adapted into one of the worst video game movies to ever reach theatres. When it would finally re-emerge, it would do so under the guidance of a different studio – and end up being utterly unlike what had come before it.

This is the rise and fall of Dungeon Siege.

 

[Teslerum]

Dungeon Siege III gets too much of a bad rap. First off it was envisoned as a spin-off anyway (SQE forced the DSIII title) and it was a low budget (Under 10 Million, near Kickstarter Levels) game.

Other than that it had great lore, fun Gauntlet/Dark Alliance style gameplay and its DLC was excellent (With one of the greatest cliffhanger choices there are, sadly there never was a DS4 that could have paid off on it). So, I don't agree with Gamers on that one.

But YMMV.

On the whole (For me). DSI was meh/good, DSII is excellent in so many way, the PSP game was fun and DSIII was my favourite couch co-op (Online-Multiplayer was terrible) experience in the last 10 years.

So, overall I enjoyed the series very much.

 

[Elginer]

The modding community around DS 1 and 2 were amazing. I got a hell of a lot of play time out of both. 3 was fun but not all that much DS just a casual dungeon crawler.

 

[J-Roderton]

3 is the only one I have played any of. The first two were not the same type of game?

 

[Teslerum]

3 is the only one I have played any of. The first two were not the same type of game?

No, to keep it very general 1 was like a party based Diablo and 2 was that + more of a full fledged rpg.

 

[Woo-Fu]

The siege games were universally boring. Felt soulless when compared to something like, oh, say, Diablo which was oozing atmosphere out of every pore.

 

[Sentenza]

The only genuinely good thing that ever came out of the Dungeon Siege franchise are the two stellar total conversions that transform the first game in a complete remake of Ultima V (Lazarus) and Ultima VI (Archon).

Vanilla Dungeon Siege 1 in particular had some interesting tech for its time (it's one of the very first games of certain size where content was seamlessly streamed from start to end without any loading screen) but gameplay-wise it was basically a glorified screensaver that with the right AI settings played itself from start to end.

 

[Wolfgang Jr]

Can we all agree that this is now a TOTAL ANNIHILATION thread seeing that was the only good thing that Chris Taylor ever made?

 

[anthraticus]

The only genuinely good thing that ever came out of the Dungeon Siege franchise are the two stellar total conversions that transform the first game in a complete remake of Ultima V (Lazarus) and Ultima VI (Archon).

Yup... only reason to get Dung Siege is to play the Ultima 5 & 6 mods for it.

 

[manfestival]

I would like to see this make a comeback

 

[Alexios]

I mean, it wasn't that good to begin with.

 

[Coflash]

I mean, it wasn't that good to begin with.

Hate speech!

 

[eot]

I played a lot of the first Dungeon Siege when it came out, and looking back on it it's honestly an okay game at best. It kinda plays itself.

Can we all agree that this is now a TOTAL ANNIHILATION thread seeing that was the only good thing that Chris Taylor ever made?

Now that's a game. I don't know if it's good, but it's so damn unrestrained, it's more like playing with toys. The way each shot is simulated still makes it cool to look at, to this day. I especially love the Krogoth unit from the Core Contingency expansion. Maybe the most OP unit in an RTS game ever lol.