A few weeks ago Co-Optimus traveled to Irvine, California to check out Obsidian Entertainment's new studio. We got some hands-on time with the upcoming Dungeon Siege 3 and a great co-op focused interview. In this article you'll find our impressions of the preview build we played. It's Part Two of our preview from last month. You'll also find the main focus of this post is a co-op specific interview with the Obsidian staff. There was a huge amount of information available, but one man in particular had the answers to most, if not all, of our co-op questions. There were three fantastic presentations covering role-playing elements, art styles, and co-op. Our concentration was on the co-operative gameplay, of course!
The co-op demonstration was headed up by Project Director Richard Taylor. It focused on local drop-in/drop-out co-op. We were able to ask some questions as he demoed the game with Obsidian Producer Greg Lutton. Please remember, he was fielding questions while battling a giant spider. Rich had just picked up a controller and jumped into Greg's hosted game...
CO: If you were both playing on Xbox LIVE, would both players have to sign in on a gold account?
RT: You can play either not signed in, or with your profile, so we can both be signed in to our own profiles, or optionally he could be playing on his profile and I could jump in and opt not to sign in to my profile. Obviously, I would only earn achievements if I was signed in to my profile.
CO: Greg's hosting the game, and now you've joined in. Does everything stay in his game, or will anything carry back to your own game?
RT: Everything that happens in this game, in local co-op, is in his game. The quest states, the XP, and the items, all that is staying in his game. The target we’re looking at, we looked at games like Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, and other local co-op games like Lego Star Wars, something where players can jump in, play together. This is intended to be played with your friends, someone you're able to play the game with frequently.
CO: So any loot that you find is actually going to go to the host player?
RT: The inventory is actually shared. The (inventory) screen that the host is using is only going to show the inventory that he can equip. Most of the pieces are unique to the characters. The two types that are shared are rings and amulets; those can go on any character. Those are actually rare items that you come across in the game, but you can hash that out with who you are playing with…The gold is also pooled between the characters.
CO: So none of the items, the gold or anything, would go back to the guest"s game?
RT: That’s correct. When I jump in on his game as his companion, I’m playing with him on his game. The quest states, the gold, the items, and experience all stay.
CO: Are there any combination attacks that work together between players?
RT: There’s nothing hard coded, we’re not locking you into “Use this to trigger that,” but there is definitely synergy between the different attacks.
CO: Can a solo player switch roles, or take control of a companion character?
RT: No. The main quest is tied to the character he’s playing, like the story. But I (as a joining co-op player) can choose whoever I want. I could switch out mid-fight. If you are in an encounter and you think another character might be more helpful, you can definitely switch.
CO: As a second player you manage your entire inventory, skill points, etc…
RT: Yes, leveling up, skill points, all of it. If you come back later and pick it up, it will be where you left off at. Of course, if the character has leveled up since then, whatever (the host) player picked for me, I’ll have, so I have to trust that he picks the right skills."
So after this Q and A demo we were able to draw some conclusions.
Great news, casual co-op gamers! You can jump into Dungeon Siege 3 at any point in time and not have to worry about being under- or overpowered! You will be the same level as the host player. The host player will have maintained the character you have chosen, being that the host has had that character as an AI controlled companion since they have met them in the game. If you pick a character that the host has not unlocked yet, you will instantly be leveled up to the host's character level. You will then distribute skill points accordingly. And don't fall asleep during the conversation portions of the game, you will have a role to play there, as well.
Here's the rub. Bad news, hardcore gamers! It looks as if co-op will only benefit the host player. Any and all experience, loot, and story progress stays with the host player. You will take nothing but sweet memories back to your own game. You will not be jumping into your buddy's game with an uber-powered character of your own design. And if you are the host player, you better hope that whoever jumps in isn't a complete fool, because they'll be leveling up your companion characters, and you're stuck with them after your guest leaves.
Obviously, we still had a few questions.
Later on we got some quality alone time with Mr. Taylor, and here's what he had to say:
CO: If I want to join a game online, can you have two players using the same character? Can we have two Lucas characters or two Anjali characters?
RT: No, it’s only one player per character. We did that more for story reasons. Because when other players are playing those characters, they’re still weighing in on dialogs like they would in a single player game.
CO: So the joining players manage the host’s companion’s inventory and leveling. If you’re playing with random people online and they start specing your character, they could build the character in a way that totally goes against your play style. Can you re-spec?
RT: Right now there is not an option to respect. It’s something we’re talking about.
CO: A favorite excuse of developers for not doing co-op is to say they are focusing on creating a quality single player experience. Do you think it’s possible to craft a quality story where each player has some input in the story’s direction?
RT: Yeah, I do. I feel that we’ve done that in Dungeon Siege 3, and yet I still feel that there’s actually more we can do in future titles to pursue that. The idea of players playing together and exploring a story and discovering it together. A game that caters to multiplayer, that’s my kind of game, that’s what I want to play, and Dungeon Siege 3 is a great first step in that direction. You know, the players can experience the story together. They’ll see the same conversations together. They’ll never be locked out from playing with each other by mechanics or level discrepancies or anything like that. Literally, nothing stops you from playing with your friend at any time.
CO: The decision to have local co-op progression only affect the host player’s game, (quests, loot, gold, XP) may be an unpopular one. Joining co-op players may be disappointed that nothing comes back to their own solo experience.
RT: That’s fair. We didn’t want players to have to solve character management, you know, go to your character, well, is your character the right level? Are they spec’d right to play? We kind of wanted to stay away from that on this pass with the title, and at the same time I think we all understand that in the ideal world you’d have both solutions. In this case, we were going for the ability to literally pick up the controller and join, you can tell your buddy, “Hey, sit down on the couch we’re playing this game,”
CO: It’s like an arcade style.
RT: It is a lot more like arcade style. And you didn’t have to start that way, you can literally come in at any point. And you don’t have to keep playing that way, you can stop. The downside, of course, is that it’s all tied to the host. It wasn’t always that way, and (we) discussed a lot of other plans and options and things like that. But we ran into... What happens when you go back to your game? You’re now out-leveled for the content, do we scale the content to you? You know, what have we broken by letting you do that, and is that a satisfactory experience for you or not? So there were a lot of challenges like that: What are the quest states? Did you bring the completed quest back with you? Is the story world moving with what you did in his game, or is it not moving at all? And so there’s a lot of challenges there, not to say that there aren’t solutions for those, but we kind of picked what we could solve right now, there’s a lot of factors that go into it, but it’s certain that we would like to solve that in a future iteration. It was kind of a, 'Well, let’s start here, and see where we go.'
CO: Obsidian did Fallout: New Vegas. Do you think a title like that could be co-op, or are we getting into an MMO scenario?
RT: I think it’s possible. I think there’s a lot of challenges that that brings, it’s something I think about quite often, because again, I love playing multiplayer games. That’s a passion of mine, and playing with my friends online and exploring these games together's a great opportunity, and sometimes you sit down and you play a game and you’re like, 'Would this even work as a multiplayer game?' This open world experience, would it feel co-operative? Or would it be like we’re playing the same game, but not really together, you know, and Fallout is kind of one of those cases where you just look at it and you go like, 'Could it be done?' And I think the answer is, 'yes.' I just don’t think anyone’s done it yet. I think it’s an ambitious undertaking. And there’s a lot of balancing you’d have to do to pull it off. Multiplayer…it’s easy to do it wrong. It’s a lot of work and a lot of design decisions to do it right, and I’m really happy with what we’ve done, I think there’s actually room to even go further with future titles."
We would like to thank Matt Frary, and Brandon Smith from Maverick PR for hosting the event. Special thanks to Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart, Matthew MacLean, Jay Bakke, George Ziets, and a host of other Obsidian staff members whose names we won't do the disservice of misspelling here. Very special thanks to Richard Taylor, who put up with the nervous interviewer.
Please take note, our hands-on impressions were of a preview build. This post pertains to local co-op only, unless otherwise noted. We did not get to see how online co-op functioned. An interview in Destructoid suggests that online multiplayer characters will be separate form single player characters . That explanation of online co-op brings up even more questions. We sent a few questions to Obsidian a short time ago and haven't heard back, yet. Things may change between now and the game's May 31st release. As always, stay tuned to Co-Optimus for all your co-op gaming news, previews, reviews, and interviews.