Dungeon Siege 3 - Preview @ PC Gamer

PC Gamer has a preview of Dungeon Siege 3:

Obsidian’s president, Feargus Urquhart, talks about how the developer is finding a balance. His own career’s been pretty illustrious. From Interplay to Black Isle, he oversaw Fallout 2 and the critically acclaimed reading game Planescape Torment. He described how Dungeon Siege has had to change slightly to suit a multiformat release.

“It’s direct control versus mouse click. As soon as you make that change, a lot of time is spent on how it feels. The idea isn’t to turn it into an action game like Ninja Gaiden or a Devil May Cry, but you don’t want it to feel like there’s no action, which is why we’ve added a lot of combos.” The “combos” that Urquhart mentions aren’t a huge list of light-heavy timing combos – instead, they’re automatic animations that trigger on your third attack. “And then, blocking and rolling, they’re not RPG skills, and we’ve included them, too. In a lot of action RPGs, particularly on the PC, you run after something and you just hit it. Don’t get me wrong: I’ll play any of those, even the bad ones! But that’s not what this is.”