Dungeon Siege 3 Demo

While the rest of the Gameslave Crew is at E3,  I've played through the new Dungeon Siege 3 demo, and have some quick thoughts on it. 

The demo is currently available on Steam and takes between 30 and 60 minutes to play through.  I had a good time playing it.  The gameplay in the latest installment is much more similar to Diablo than the original Dungeon Siege.  Unlike the tabula rasa farmer protagonist of the first game, this new Dungeon Siege requires you to pick a character before you begin.  Each character has some specific strengths and weakness (and there are some great trailers about each character's backstory also available on Steam).

In this demo you can choose to play either as Anjali who is a sort of fire spirit and Lucas who is a warrior trained in the traditions of the 10th Legion (the last remnants of a great empire that existed in this region of the world).  For my first playthrough, I choose Anjali. 

The game is very polished, and seems to be fun.  There seems to be a wide range of customization options available for the characters base on with talents and abilities are chosen during the course of gameplay.  There is a large amount of backstory information available in the form of books that can be found throughout the world.  This allows an interested player to seek out more information about the world without forcing all players to sit through a large amount of exposition.

The one large complaint that I have about the game is the portrayal of Katarina (a playable character in the full-version, but an NPC in the demo).  She really seems to fulfill the common RPG trope of the "busty woman in leather corset".  The characterization of women in video games is something that I've found to be increasingly plagued by these sorts of shallow, anatomically ridiculous cut-outs.  I think it is one of the major stumbling block in the video game industry and will likely only be solved when we see more female developers/artists/etc.

Anyways, the demo was pretty good, and I'm likely to pick up the full version at some point.  At the very least, it may prove to be a good game to fill the time until another 3rd sequel to a popular Action-RPG is released late this year.