Vapourware Let's play Dungeon Siege: Mule Simulator 2002

[Jackalope]

Bound to bed by a nasty flu, I decided I have nothing better to do than replaying the original Dungeon Siege. I'm a sick, sick man! It's a game from 2002, made by Gas Powered Games and released by Microsoft, if anyone is curious. And it's an action RPG, whatever that means. It's main innovation was the pack mules, that allowed you to lug all that loot with you. I played it 12 years ago, though I never finished it. I don't know what the last boss is, but I hope it's a Diablo knock-off. We'd see.
It all starts with a quick, but loud installation. I was immediately assaulted by a booming epic music that sounds like something rejected from the Star Wars prequels. And no mute button, I guess it's too epic to mute. Whatever, it's all worth it for the mules!
And it's time to begin!

Spoiler

Wait, Dungeon Sege?

Oh, that's better... The logo I actually like, and the sliding sword is pretty creative.

A look at the options shows maximum resolution of 1024x768... No way I'm doing that. A quick websearch later I managed to increase it to 1680x1050 with very little effort. (I just replaced the values in the .ini file)

Now let's make a character! Sorry, I mean let's '"Choose Hero".

Unfortunately most options are pretty bad looking, the default male looks like a Sasquatch.

And there are some very odd skin tones.

Since I don't want a character that looks like a WW2 propaganda poster, I'm going to stick with a simple white dude dressed as a sheep. Say "Hi" to Wooly, our hero in this journey.

So let's siege some dungeons, shall we?

Aww, that spider is way too cute!

We have a narrator spewing some generic stuff. Something about destiny or fate or greatness. I don't know. Also, he mentions an elite 10th Legion, which founded a kingdom of freedom to the west that lasted 300 years.

This flag looks suspiciously 'merican to me. Maybe it's all the stars and stripes. :kwafuckyeah:

The narrator continues to talk about this glorious kingdom, though we are looking at a chicken coop. Maybe it's supposed to be a joke?

Hey, this is Wooly's farm! He seems to be digging into some chicken crap, poor soul. Even his dog seems bored.

Then an old man runs up and tells you the Krug attacked his farm. He tells you exactly what to do and having fulfilled his role in this game dies immediately. Goodbye, you old friend, we knew you well!

A quick search around the farm and Wooly grabs every shovel, hoe and garden tool in his sight. The dog left though, couldn't find him. Not the loyal kind. Too bad.

Wooly's house is a complete dump.

I wanted to burry the guy, just to be descent. I have a shovel, right? At least cover the corpse with a tarp and move it from the middle of a bridge. But the programmers didn't think of that, sorry old man. Nothing I can do. You and that bridge are bound forever.

That dead grandpa's house seems a bit more impressive than Wooly's, though I'm not a fan of all the fire. A magic scroll awaits. And chickens. Though the chickens aren't really intractable.

I kill a couple of krugs. They are small, ugly, easy to kill and drop even more magic scrolls. Magic scrolls everywhere!

Seems Wooly's farm is in the middle of the forest, which is kind of strange. Shouldn't there be villages or something? Anyway, next I slaughter a bunch of mosquitoes. And some weird one-eyed land fish?

Also, I kill a krug dog. Maybe it wanted to help me, dunno, seemed kind of cute.

Another krug appears and he's pissed. Probably because I killed his dog.

Hit detection with my melee weapon seems wonky, so I switch to a bow, just to see how it feels. Pretty good actually, Wooly is pretty accurate with the thing and it does good damage, so I keep it.

I continue my travels until I encounter a cabin in the woods!

Inside is another old man and some dead krugs. The poor guy uses his very bad voice acting to explain I shoud clean his basement from the krugs and I can keep anything I like. Sure, why not. (Krugs are useless. I probably killed around 20 by now, I could sneeze on one and it would die from the shock.)

The basement is pretty large, puts the cabin to shame.

I even find an elevator to a sub-basement filled with more stuff, including some sweet robes.

At this point I realize my inventory can't contain all the junk I lug around. So I must level my magic spells to level 2 and learn transmute. This would allow me to turn those useless chair legs, pitchforks and old rags into pure gold. But first I must get to level 2. With a "Zap" spell. I start zapping. It's pretty dull, doesn't do as much damage as the arrows so it takes longer to kill guys.

Zap. Zap. Zap. Yawn.

A cave!

In it awaits an elite krug with big nipples and a blue diaper.

I kill the krugs and zap a bit more until I reach level 2. Then I transmute all the junk.

Unfortunately, pretty much everything I transmute is worth 1 gold, so I'm not impressed by my new magic abilities.
I exit the cave and switch back to the bow. I found some new armor, which looks nice and has 10 defense, so I can't complain.

Look, mommy, I'm a ranger!

I reach a broken bridge and an NPC that sounds black, but he's not. He tells me krugs blew up the bridge - so dear Wooly must go trough some crypts. Actually the bridge doesn't look too bad, but I guess the designers really want to show off those skeletons. Maybe we'd find something awesome in the crypts. Probably not.

So this is the end of part one. No mules yet, so I'm kind of sad. I'd probably reduce the game resolution, because right now the UI is pretty tiny and hard to read.

 

[Jackalope]

And the screenshots don't work...

 

[baturinsky]

Use imgur

 

[Jackalope]

Thanks. Should be working fine now. Hopefully.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Spoiler the post, not the images. It's annoying to read the LP otherwise.

 

[abnaxus]

IIRC Obsidian made womyn farmer canon.

Roguey can perhaps confirm

 

[Azira]

Watching this, and seconding this:

Spoiler the post, not the images. It's annoying to read the LP otherwise.

 

[Jackalope]

Watching this, and seconding this:

Spoiler the post, not the images. It's annoying to read the LP otherwise.

Done

 

[aleph]

calling the activity of running dungeon siege "playing" might be a bit far-fetched

 

[MRY]

It's funny, I thought to myself: at least this game was reputed to have great graphics. And then I saw the screenshots . . . .

 

[Roguey]

IIRC Obsidian made womyn farmer canon.

Roguey can perhaps confirm

Yup, there's a statue of her in her tomb.

 

[Ashery]

It's funny, I thought to myself: at least this game was reputed to have great graphics. And then I saw the screenshots . . . .

For 3d games of its era, the graphics have definitely aged better than many of its peers. Close up screenshots, like those that've made up the majority of the first post, will always look like shit for games of this era.

Anyways, it's best to go into Dungeon Siege expecting something that sits between RTS and ARPG. The early game is definitely mind numbingly boring with only your PC, but once you get to the third town or so and have a good six or more units to control, the game starts to hit its stride.

You really need to keep committed to a single development path, though, as you'll otherwise find your stats/skills lacking, and considering that the game assigns XP based on damage, you'll get into a situation where you're both lacking in skill and finding it difficult to earn the experience to make up that difference. This is especially true with Nature mages and is one of the reasons you'll generally want to run with 3+ of'em.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Dung Siege 2 have more gameplay than first one.

Dung Siege 1 bring some new ideas, some of them are not appreciated like streamlined playthrough aka interactive movie.

Only good thing to use Dung Siege? Use it to play Ultima V/VI Lazarus.

 

[Matalarata]

In before the thread is renamed to Dungeon Siege plays Jackalope

Main problem is the game plays itself. As soon as you have a full party you'll discover that the ai is quite efficient and direct intervention almost unnecessary, turning a let's play into a let's watch.


Edit: also the world is both huge and incredibly linear. Lot of details, little interaction... Some nice (ultra short) side routes lead to treasure but that gets old fast.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Dungeon Siege? Son, you're young and you have a full life to look forward to. Don't do this to yourself.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Out of curiosity I tried the Dungeon Siiege: Throne of Agony on PSP and guess what. There was gameplay! Like average action RPG from PS2 era but still.
DungSiege rated by amount of gameplay 3->ToA-->2---------->1

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Save yourself before it's too late.

 

[4249]

Thread should be renamed to "Let's abandon screensaver after one update".

 

[Tigranes]

It's ok. Even if nobody plays Dungeon Siege anymore, somewhere out there, Dungeon Siege is playing itself.

 

[abnaxus]

Just leave it running overnight and you should've completed half of the game.

 

[Blonsky]

Should LP Space Siege for maximum sanity lose.

 

[abnaxus]

At least Space Siege is a p. short game and has C&C.

 

[Abelian]

I played this once about a decade ago. The saves helpfully show how much time was spent in-game. I remember finishing it in 24 hours of gameplay over the course of one or two weeks.

The ability to pour small potions into larger containers was neat, as was the fact that characters drank as much of the health and mana potions as needed. Pausing and healing made the combat rather easy, though.

The extremely linear gameplay structure annoyed me, since it was tedious to backtrack to a town, especially when you're a packrat like me (I guess that's why they added the mules).

 

[Ashery]

Pausing and healing made the combat rather easy, though.

Eh...Up the difficulty. Potion spamming on hard is often an outright death sentence as you can't fight/cast during the potion drinking animation and even your tanks can drop pretty quickly on hard.

And while the game itself is linear, there's a decent number of hidden areas. And packratting isn't much of an issue once you get the transmute spell, especially later on when you'll easily be hitting the 9.999mil cap.

 

[abnaxus]

That healing mage you pick up along the road somewhere has a spell that is enough to keep everyone alive easily.