Dungeon Siege update, screens, movies

Publisher Microsoft updated its official Dungeon Siege Web site with new details on the game's multiplayer mode. The company revealed that the 3D fantasy role-playing game will support three different multiplayer modes: play over Microsoft's Zone.com online game service, internet play via specific IP addresses, and also over a network. The actual multiplayer game will let players hack and slash their way through all of the single-player game's area, including the Kingdom of Ehb or the expansive Utraean Peninsula. The multiplayer game will let you choose and customize your own character, just as in the single-player game, but it'll let you choose to play as a male or female human, a dwarf, or a skeleton as well. Players who choose to host their own game will have access to administrator abilities on their own server, including kicking or banning unruly players.

Dungeon Siege itself, from what we've seen of it, is a fantasy role-playing game that seems to borrow elements of Blizzard's Diablo and Verant's EverQuest. You control your detailed and well-animated 3D character through the game's detailed areas (which make good use of dynamic lighting and animated shadows) by clicking your mouse pointer in the direction you want it to go, or on the monster you wish to fight, or the object you wish to interact with. Once you step into a fight, Dungeon Siege will enter your character into auto-combat be default; you don't need to click your mouse rapidly (or at all) to attack a monster; the game does all the swinging, missing, and killing for you.

We'll have more coverage on the game soon, but for now, you can browse our updated screenshot gallery and watch the movies linked below. Dungeon Siege is scheduled for release this April.