Trivia / Dungeon Siege

• Acting for Two: Voice acting power couple Yuri Lowenthal and Tara Platt make up the entire cast of the original game.
• B-Team Sequel: Dungeons Siege III was made by Obsidian Entertainment and not Gas Powered Games.
• Channel Hop: The third game is published by Square Enix instead of Microsoft Game Studios.
• Franchise Killer: DS III was considered by many fans, as the final nail in the coffin for the Dungeon Siege franchise and was the start of many Dungeon Siege fans' general distaste to Obsidian Entertainment. There were several reasons why every fan hated it. These are:
  • Removal of of character creation: Even though Dungeon Siege's character creation was comparatively limited, it still offered players a chance to role-play. The removal of such a tool for pre-made characters was deemed unnecessary and pointless for many fans, and made the game dull.
  • Reduction of party members: The main selling point for Dungeon Siege which removed it from its contemporaries like Diablo, was its massive roster of party members that one can edit and micromanage. Whilst there was a reduction from eight to six in Dungeon Siege II, it was still enough to make the game truly unique and there was still a wide variety of potential members to recruit, each with their own unique dialogue, skills and storyline. So to see it reduced even further to four unchangeable pre-made characters was a blow for many players.
  • Switch to more console support: This change was filled with bewilderment for Dungeon Siege fans as they felt it simply cannot be replicated on console. Many fans suspected that the reduction of party members had to do with DS III's jump to the consoles, which made no sense given that the franchise never delved into consoles outside of spin-offs on portable devices.
  • Change to the lore: Many fans were...unimpressed with the way the plot of Dungeon Siege III went, with many viewing the plot as non-canon.
  • Change in gameplay: This was a major one as Obsidian Entertainment - due to jumping to console - decided it was a great idea to change the gameplay of Dungeon Siege from a slow, methodical, almost tactical fights to a more fast-paced MOBA-esque action sequence. Fans utterly loathed the change as it bared too much resemblance to Dungeon Siege's main competitor, Diablo alongside other MOBA games.
• Game Mod:
  • The first Dungeon Siege received quite a bit of official mod support, even going so far as to provide an official editor for the game, with some of the more noteworthy mods being recreations of a few Ultima games in the Dungeon Siege engine, and The Lands of Hyperborea, a "total conversion" mod that is a essentially a whole new game.
  • The second game may have comparatively less mods than the first one, the majority of which being quality of life addition mods (like increased party movement speed or retroactive skill point rewards from quests for characters you haven't recruited yet/are in the Inn), but there's still some notable ones with a big scope; Dungeon Siege II: Legendary Edition being the most famous one, as it ports all of the first game's campaigns into the second one's engine, including the multiplayer exclusive one. One brave soul also attempted creating a Fan Sequel to Broken World titled Dawn of the Third Age, featuring 32 primary quests and one secondary quest.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The expansions for the first two games are no longer officially bundled with the digital rereleases, meaning the only way to play the extra campaigns and reap the benefits of updated gameplay mechanics in the base game is to track down mirrors of the files that would originally be included with the installs.
• The Other Darrin: In Dungeon Siege II, the Broken World campaign changes the voices of nearly every surviving character from the main campaign, with some being more noticeable than others.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Because the expansions for DS1 and DS2 were made by different developers, they are not available for digital purchase on Steam and GOG.com.

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