The textures, the animations, the amount of action on screen and, most impressively, the lighting effects now combine to create a wonderfully immersive environment that begs to be explored. Perhaps the most startling thing about our playthrough this time around was just how far the graphics have come from the alpha build we played back in January. Taking placed roughly an hour beyond the events of our first preview, this quest took place in Gunderic Manor, a beautifully lit, grandiose environment housing some rather nasty enemies.
so, I won’t bore you with them again here, I’ll instead focus on the juicy new bits and bobs that we saw for the first time. If you’ve already read our hands-on with the single player (if you haven’t go read it) then you’ll already be familiar with the basic mechanics of combat and levelling up etc. Local co-op (the focus of this ‘ere preview) supports two players via the fashionable ‘drop-in/drop-out’ mechanic whereas online always for up to four to get their quest on. Dungeon Siege III supports both online and local co-operative play. Local multiplayer modes are becoming increasingly scarce nowadays first-person shooters, RPGs and even racing games tending to opt for the ‘online-only’ path into multiplayer. Following on from January’s hands-on with Dungeon Siege III’s single player, we took a trip to Square Enix’s offices to see how the game handles local multiplayer co-op.