Dungeon Siege 3 - Community Interview Part 3

The third installment of the community interview with Nathaniel Chapman is up at the Obsidian blog. He answers a couple of Dungeon Siege 3 questions and moves on to some general areas. A sample:

I play the game on PC, and really like it there (the keybinding helped me, though I only made very minor changes from default). Did you talk about simply not doing the game for PC? This forum suggests to me that PC gamers were always going to be angsty about a game on PC and console, particularly if the game was going to go for such a streamlined skills tree (no complaints from me there). PC folks were always going to yell “consolitis” because it offends their deep and complicated dignities about their mode of entertainment. I almost hate to ask, but is PC still worth it?

Sure, PC (generally speaking) is worth it. The questions are really the type of game, the budget, the control scheme, and the opinions of the PC market – PC gamers are very passionate about the platform and what they do and don’t want from PC games. Ultimately those are really the same considerations, when you’re developing for any other platforms, but in some cases they are magnified on PC.

One note: I do disagree that we have a more streamlined level-up system when compared to the earlier Dungeon Siege games. The level up and skill system from DS was actually quite simple – simpler than ours, for sure. I often think we’re really compared to games like WoW and Diablo 2 when people say “This isn’t as complex as Dungeon Siege.”. Now, that’s okay, people can compare us to whoever they want – but the issue isn’t that our mechanics are not as complex as Dungeon Siege 1 or 2, but instead that we’re not as complex as [insert Hardcore PC RPG here].