Dungeon Siege II Impressions

Dungeon Siege II was announced yesterday, but very little is being said about the game here at E3. Yet we did have the opportunity to closely watch an in-engine trailer for the game that Microsoft is only showing off the floor in its meeting area. The movie is of such high quality that it might seem to be made up of prerendered scenes, particularly given that while Dungeon Siege's graphics were notable, they weren't of such cinematic quality. A Microsoft representative told us that, quite astonishingly, the sequel uses the same engine as Dungeon Siege. The difference is that the original game had its graphics limited by what typical PCs of the time could handle, while Dungeon Siege II is planned for 2004.

We were told that the trailer represents the direction Dungeon Siege II is taking, without getting more specifics on what this really means. What we saw indicated that the sequel will put you in more epic-sized battles. Several of the trailer's brief scenes focused on large groups of humans or monsters running or engaging in combat. Separate shots showed swarms of insectoid creatures and lines of human archers at the top of castle ramparts. Other interspersed sequences showed combat with what we presume are boss monsters, one of which was a hideous hunchbacked beast and one of which was an enormous blue-skinned dragon whose head just peeked above the castle walls. It's likely there are some tremendous spell effects in the works, as we saw one sequence that involved what looked to be a fiery meteor strike.

Gas Powered Games--the studio founded by Chris Taylor, Total Annihilation's designer--has been working on Dungeon Siege II since the first game shipped. We'll have to wait a little longer to see more of the game. The trailer is still being finalized, as more work is being done to the audio, and Microsoft expects to release it in the coming weeks.