Late Tribute to Dungeon Siege

Dungeon Siege Promo Screenshot. Taken from MobyGames.

That's going to be an awkward start since I just realized that I missed out on a perfect point for this "article". Dungeon Siege is one of a few games I have in mind for these "scuffed perspective on titles I would like to eventually check out" and I decided to cover it after Abuse and Cannon Fodder series. Even though I was sadly oblivious to the fact that the first game hit its 20th anniversary back in April 5th, that honestly feels like a mistake on my part.

As it was the case with Amiga classic about "hill decoration", my first introduction to unique action role-playing game happened thanks to a YouTube video. This time it was an excellent chapter of Ross's Game Dungeon about the original title and kind of the franchise as a whole. I would like to go in a similar direction, but in smaller scale with derpy execution. If you haven't watch that video, I highly recommend you to do so.

Curious Journey.

It was the first title of a new company called Gas Powered Games, which later became known as Wargaming Seattle before their closure in July 2018. Formed by the former members of Cavedog Entertainment, creators of Total Annihilation, their way sounds pretty familiar. While I agree that it's kind of a stretch and feel silly about going that route myself, but it sort of mirrors the story of original Diablo. You know, switching over from real-time strategy to action role-playing game, partnering with rising gaming juggernaut and creating a truly fascinating title. Some similarities are there, when you think about it.

Development of the game took almost four years, and it's really easy to see why. Dungeon Siege was ambitious, perhaps too much. While usually that's not really a good thing and more likely to result in some kind of disaster, Gas Powered Games managed to deliver a pretty solid game. In a postmortem at Game Development (formely Gamasutra), technical lead Bartosz Kijanka talks a lot about Dungeon Siege's development process and the game as a whole. They had to go through the problems that came from ambitions early on, hitting dead ends with many curious ideas and fight against complex nature of game's engine during debugging. Obviously, developers of Dungeon Siege had a "crunch of sheer astronomical proportions". The kind that, as you read previously mentioned article, is certainly not healthy for the exact reasons nowadays crunches bring up a lot of controversy.

However, all of these challenges lead to the creation of an interesting game. While the narrative itself is a major point of criticism for the original Dungeon Siege, I personally don't consider it to be a flaw. Part of that is because I'm yet to properly experience it on my own, but I would argue that, dare I said it, generic story in your typical fantasy world is something that a lot more players nowadays would be open to enjoy. Whenever you're so-called "Warcraft refugee" or was burnt by other series that went into convoluted mess of a narrative, diving into classic journey through the Kingdom of Enh would be exhilarating.

Dungeon Siege Screenshot. Taken from MobyGames.

I mean, considering that Jeremy Soule, the composer of The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind and later parts of legendary RPG series, also worked on this game... You don't even need to mention it. If you visited Vvardenfell before, there's just no way you wouldn't recognize that music. Let's not forget that this game is simply gorgeous. Dungeon Siege released a few months before Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos and both of them managed to nail the art style that helps both titles to look fantastic to this day. In fact, while writing this "article", I began to wonder if this game is what classic RTS could've looked like in its RPS iteration (if it ditched the rest of real-time strategy elements, perhaps). Not only that, but I also started to wonder if multiplayer portion of Dungeon Siege with the focus on controlling just one character is close to what World of Warcraft could've looked like at the end.

Either way, this game can really grab your attention. With nice gameplay and charming atmosphere, I'm sure that Dungeon Siege will easily find its place in your mind. Maybe this game doesn't have any kind of deep role-playing system, magic might feel like more of letdown and routine getting somewhat grindy, but that's okay. Considering the time and scope of  this project, I think it's best to celebrate what Chris Taylor and his talented crew managed to achieve instead of thinking what could've been better (or rather nitpicking). 

Party Creations.

As fate would have it, Dungeon Siege managed to get a lot of love from dedicated community. Thanks to them, aforementioned multiplayer mode with larger map can be explored by one person in more familiar way thanks to Myros Mod. Whenever you picked that path or was fortunate enough to conquer Utraean Peninsula with friends, another adventure might await you in an official bonus map called Yesterheaven. While you're at it, you can take a look at Czech fan site dedicated to the original game with many maps and mods to download or an English resource called Siegetheday with its active forums.

When talking about the community projects for Dungeon Siege, I must bring up a recreation of two games in other classic role-playing franchise. Ultima V: Lazarus and The Ultima 6 Project are meant to carry over both Warriors of Destiny and The False Prophet to the engine that powered the shining star of this post. Both recreations were apparently finished, which is truly fascinating on itself. And let's not follow the example of franchise's current owner by forgetting about Legends of Aranna: an expansion bundled with the original game that offered more content and improvements. Since it's absent from both Steam and GOG versions, you would have to find another way to obtain it.

Conclusion.

Originally I wanted to cover other parts of Dungeon Siege series as well, but ultimately I felt that the full focus on original title would be the best due to missed 20th anniversary. Due to my limited experience (large chunk of it is attributed to one YouTube video) with the franchise, my interest in follow-ups aren't as high as the first game. While I might check out Dungeon Siege 2 someday, I don't think I can say the same about the last entry in the series due to all the changes that shifted it away from what made older games so special. So I bought just the original game on Steam for myself during Winter Sale 2021.

What about the current state of the franchise though? Square Enix has purchased the rights to Dungeon Siege back in 2010, which led to the creation of Dungeon Siege 3 by Obsidian Entertainment. Afterwords, it followed the fate of Thief, Legacy of Kain and other franchises that remain forgotten by Japanese conglomerate. However, they've decided to return to Dungeon Siege in March 2022 for a collaboration with The Sandbox likely in order to play it save with their interest in questionable trends that try to make their way into the gaming industry. Sadly, I don't think there's any reason to hope for a modern re-release of original title anytime soon. Would've been nice if Microsoft bought the franchise from Square Enix. Not the company, they need to finish that Activision Blizzard deal and even then I doubt Xbox Game Studios would keep growing after that.