Visit to DTP, day 4: Dungeon Lords preview
Gorath, 2004-08-05

Our last preview features Dungeon Lords. German publisher DTP gave us lots of new info while they showed us around Heuristic Park´s latest 3D RPG. Find out what we saw, why we liked it and that Dungeon Lords has almost nothing in common with DW Bradley´s classics Wizardry VI & VII and Wizards & Warriors.

What´s it all about?

Dungeon Lords is a very ambitious project. Heuristic Park wants to create an RPG which appeals to both hardcore and casual gamers, which is easily accessible without losing complexity, a game with explosive real-time action and tactical depth, with an epic story and open ended gameplay - and all this also in cooperative multiplayer.
The main quest is split into two storylines which overlap and influence each other. Playing through the main quest alone should take about 40 hours. With all sidequests it should be approximately 100-120 hours, if you look under every rock.

World & NPCs

The game world is big. Clearly bigger than Gothic 2 and according to the publisher only a bit smaller than Morrowind. It´s separated into zones to minimize loading and you won´t see a loading screen when you enter a building. At the beginning you´re near one of at least three big cities. There are more, but it´s unclear of what size they are. Entering the first city is not trivial - it takes a few quests and a detour through the canals until you´re in and you can easily spend ten hours exploring it.
Of course you´ll meet a lot of NPCs in town; DTP talked about roughly 250 NPCs per zone, while the number of zones is still undisclosed. Maybe we should simply translate this to "many" and take a wait and see approach.
No NPC looks like the other because the devs created an NPC construction kit which allows for the creation of diversified NPCs.
It goes without saying that you´ll have to deal with different factions: these factions treat you differently depending on your reputation in general and your behaviour to their members. If you´re hero of the day for faction A it´s rather likely one of the other factions is not amused about it.
Several NPCs can be hired, but doing so can also have disadvantages. If you hire a thief, for example, because you don´t have the ability to break a certain lock, this thief has his own stats and skills. He will evaluate how far he can go, and if he thinks he is stronger than you he probably renogiate your deal. This can go as far as stealing the valuable item in the chest he had to open and running back to the thieves guild. Then you can then negotiate with them to settle the problem.
As the name suggests, you´ll find quite a few sizeable dungeons. Fortunately Heuristic Park withstood the temptation to generate them. All of them are hand-crafted, so there´s hope they don´t look alike. Inside dungeons enemies don´t respawn; outside they do to a certain degree.
Dungeon Lords uses real-time shadows, particle effects and day-night-cycles. The whole world is animated, every tree and every blade of grass moves.

Character development

Not many facts are known about character development yet but here are the most important aspects as I understand them.
It all starts with the usual character generation. During the game you invest the earned XP in attributes and skills. This can be done immediately, without having to wait for a level up. Each attribute and skill has an experience point cost to improve it, which is determined by race and class. A few skills per class are locked, but most can be learned by other classes, too. Increasing such a skill happens slower, though. So yes, a fighter with low intelligence can learn magic, although he should have some patience.
You can switch between automatic and manual character development. If you choose a certain class and activate the automatic the game invests in the typical skills, until you deactivate it and make your own decisionsm which gives you 100% control. The automatic can be toggled as often as you want.

Combat & magic

Controls are similar to a FPS: WASD + mouse, complemented by several hotkeys. You can deal out single aimed blows or you can combine them to combos. From what I´ve seen -I didn´t have the opportunity to play the game- the controls are very responsive. Sword fights looked a bit like Rune.
Opponents have specific weaknesses you can (and should) make use of. To give an example, zombies are vulnerable at one special point in their spine. The AI was quite good, although it´s still work in progress. Melee fighters nail you down while ranged fighters and mages kill you. A nice effect are the stuck arrows in shields and bodies. They can be picked up if you survive the battle.
Picking up stuff has to be done explicitly, walking over an item has no effect. The action stops when you open the inventory, although not immediately - every enemy and NPC finishes his last action, so you shouldn´t wait till the last moment.
Equiped armour and weapons are instantly visible on your character. You´re not limited to the equipment supported by your stats, i.e. you can wear stronger armour, but it will have consequences on your fighting abilities. Your character fights visibly slower than he would with suitable gear, and if you overdo combat is almost impossible.
Mages can learn four schools of magic with about 80 spells. We´ll have some information about them in the interview tomorrow.
Two spells had really impressive effects. First there was the screamer, which looked like a small fireball, which hurt everything in and close to its path - quite usefull against bats. The other one was time warp: it slows done everything, but the hero is a bit faster than his foes.

Multiplayer

Dungeon Lords includes cooperative multiplayer for 8 people via LAN or internet. You can follow the storyline, but you don´t have to. Every player has complete freedom to do what he wants where he wants. Not even cooperation is forced. If you want to you can do sidequests in the far north while the other players join their forces to battle the powerful mage in the south. It´s even possible that players find themselves on different sides of the same quest.

Misc.

DTP intends to release Dungeon Lords in October. It´s rather doubtful if this is realistic because the version shown to us still needed a lot of work.
Here´s good news for the collectors among our German readers: According to DTP the first edition will come in an "EXTREMELY high quality packaging" [their emphasis] which is "a good deal more than just a beautiful card box". The data carrier of choice is probably CD-ROM.

Conclusion

What DTP has shown us looked very promising. If Heuristic Park finishes what they started we can expect a deep RPG experience, attractive to both casual gamers and hardcore RPG players.