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Dungeon Siege III – A breath of life to a stale genre?

Dungeon Crawlers, you either love them or loathe them, some people love the idea of going through screen after screen of quick combat, gathering loot and collecting gear. Others argue that it’s a stale genre that should have died out with Diablo. Dungeon Siege 3 is one of the newest additions to the genre published by fan favourites Square Enix and developed by Obsidian Entertainment, Dungeon Siege 3 thrusts you into a world of civil war in beautifully rendered HD graphics with a storyline that you would expect from the likes of Bioware and Valve.

Dungeon Siege 3
You follow the path of a group of heroes that are attempting to revive a once thriving, lawful order known as the Legion. Wiped out years before by an army of deceit and rumour, the Legion dwindle in numbers and you are given the responsibility of restoring order to the tarnished name and peace back to the world of Ehb. The plot has a few twists and turns and can stand quite proudly in terms of dialogue and quality but outside of that, the game offers very little unique additions when compared to other dungeon crawler titles.

The combat is industry standard, several abilities, most of which you’ll hardly use unless something out of the ordinary happens, you’re most likely to find a skill you like and just stick to using that. The levelling system offers some unique aspects to each hero, allowing the player to customise the build by selecting new abilities and adding proficiencies to those abilities, sadly core stats like weapon type and armour are set and cannot be changed.

Out Of Date?
I could sum up Dungeon Siege 3 in three words, out of date, but I don’t feel it was the game that was really out of date but the genre itself. The game was great to look at, the story was compelling and the characters had a decent amount of personality, those ingredients are usually enough for me to sink 50 hours into an RPG but with Dungeon Siege, the restricting “must haves” of the genre are what spoiled the game.

Can Diablo Pull It Off?
Sure, dungeon crawlers had their day and I’m sure we’ll see more launched in the future but somebody somewhere needs to come up with something unique or fresh that would give the genre a new lease on life. The newest instalment of Diablo is probably fan favourite to bust the genre wide open but when compared to previous Diablo titles, Dungeon Siege 3 wasn’t really that bad so I’m not sure the newer titles will be able to bring anything new to the table at all.

Could you do better?
So what about you guys? Any budding developers out there have a sure win idea to create the next generation dungeon crawler? Maybe something we’ll get to see on the Playstation 4 but for now, I wouldn’t rush out to pre-order anything that is too closely related to the word dungeon.

Article by - Blaine Smith

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