Dungeon Siege 2 Deluxe Version released..
| Submitted by Blondin235 on Wed, 2006-10-04 23:16 | ||
Both the original game and the expansion in one box - like DS1 and Aranna - see here for more info.. - released in US in October, and due for release in Europe in November.. ..sounds like it would make an ideal Christmas present - Hurray for Dungeon Siege!! PS: Has anyone seen it yet..?? forums: |
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That seems like a good way to build interest. I know some folks were complaining that the expansion did not include original DS2.
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Total absence of humor renders life impossible.
Colette
Hehe, I remember people complaining that LoA came with DS1.
If anyone is interested here's exactly what is included:
- Dungeon Siege II
- Dungeon Siege II: Broken World
- 8x12 fold out map of the entire continent of Aranna
- Six printable portraits of Princess Eva
- "The Making of Dungeon Siege II" Video
- Dungeon Siege II Wallpapers and Concept Art
- Dungeon Siege II: Broken World Short Story: Katala's Journey
~2k GamesNo offence, but it sounds to me like a way to just generate more money for them...
It is.
Yup... some folks might want to try the game, and buy everything all in one package (probably at a savings over buying the two separate boxes).
cover picture..
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..the world is full of beauty, and life is wonderful!
Looks like a very nice cover.
Did you buy it?
I had been waiting to get BW until I found a second copy of DS2 since it wasn't included in the expansion and was no longer in the stores, as I wanted to get both for my SO (who also plays DS1). Then I found this and we waited till February and bought each other copies (for Valentine's, if a bit early). So I for one am glad to find it with both the original DS2 and the expansion.
I haven't installed anything yet, but after opening the package and finding that map, I have to say that, as far as I'm concerned, the Deluxe Edition rocks. Finally, I know where everything is in relation to everything else! Hey, it's important to me to know where the heck I am in relation to where I've been.
Now if we could just get somebody to make one huge ds2map with everything in it so we could travel back and forth between UP, Ehb, Yesterhaven, the Island of the Utraeans, Greilyn Isle, the Azunite Desert, etc, etc, etc ...
Hint hint, nudge nudge.
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Giovanna
Haha, that is no small request!
That would be one massively massive map.
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Total absence of humor renders life impossible.
Colette
You're not alone in wanting such a map conversion Giovanna... Any skilled volunteers with a spare year to spend (full-time) on such a project? :P
I was kinda hoping that someone at GPG would see how many times I've posted about this (here and elsewhere) and take the hint. I realize it would be a massive undertaking, especially for a volunteer who would receive nothing in return but reputation and gratitude, but if there's going to be a DS3, GPG undertaking to build all of these current maps into the new game (with its map or maps) would be less unrewarded, dontcha think? Maybe they could do a *real* "Deluxe Edition" for DS3.
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Giovanna
Actually combining the DS1 maps would be fairly easy to do, other than it would create a massively big file. Connecting it to a DS2 map would be a lot more work. The thing with combining the DS1 maps would be that to combine them all you would basically require the player to have DSLoA to play it though, otherwise the new content in LoA would bonk the game, exception error city. But maps using original map material is easy to do. Look at LoH, there is massive re-use of UP/Ehb map regions it it.
Abstraction Webpage
Abstraction Forums
The cover picture ..again
- this is one really nice presentation!! :dance1:
- I think something's awry at Imageshack..
- some of my images have gone walkabout... :nervous:
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..never mind the weather, just as long as we're together!
Travelling between the maps isn't just travelling in space, it's also travelling in time. BW is set after the DS2 game, which is also set after the DS1 maps. If you could go back in time, why wouldn't you use the knowledge you got to change things? You wouldn't save the "Scholar" from the plagued Dryads if you knew who he'd turn out to be, you'd join them and get your hacks in!
Abstraction site
Dungeon Raider
SPOILER WARNING:
Not a good idea... you aren't strong enough at that point in the story to take on that foe. You'd get slaughtered.
Not only are you not yet strong enough to take on the "Azunite Scholar," if I recall correctly, you can't target him as a foe at that point in the game.
But regarding the time travel element, there is time travel in the Yesterhaven map, and there seems to be some time differential between DS1 and LoA. I strongly suspect that LoA takes place before DS1. The "Mutated Goblins" in LoA, for example, seem to have evolved into the "Krug" in DS1 (and that's just one example). Nevertheless, you can take the same character you played DS1 with into LoA, and vice-versa. Thus, it doesn't seem that time travel presents that much of a challenge, at least in terms of the viewpoint of the game designers.
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Giovanna
But you would only be able to do that in a multi-player game or via the toolkit. Are you leaning more to the idea of this connected map being geared towards multi-player? I think combining maps in DS1 regardless of time line would be a wonderful idea, except for the technincal issues surrounding it.
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Total absence of humor renders life impossible.
Colette
Hi, Kathy.
Yes, I think multiplayer is best for such a project, for a variety of reasons. I personally prefer multiplayer, since you can do more in that format (for one thing, you can switch maps easily, and for another, you can edit characters in multiplayer, and there doesn't seem to be any way to do that in single player --- some people probably have figured out a way to do it, but I'm sure it involves more work than editing a character in multiplayer). I was also under the impression that some mods won't work in single player, for whatever reason (naturally, mods that are made using shopkeepers in UP to sell certain gear wouldn't work in single player, unless you have some way to do UP in single player, but I thought there were some other issues with some mods being used in single player as well).
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Giovanna
A lot depends on what is included in the dsmap file and what is in the dsres. If the map has been carefully designed to be self-contained then some of this would be possible. GPG did a good job of that with Yesterhaven, where the dsmap file contained all the map-specific extras that you needed to play it.
I'm not so sure that Mad Doc and 2kGames have been so careful with the expansions, although they did have to leave things compatible. My experience with modding attempts for DS2 so far has been that the dsres content is much more map-specific that was the case with DS1, which makes it all harder.
In each of these cases, however, the basic engine stayed the same when the expansion was produced. Between DS1 and DS2 there have been incompatible changes that prevent a DS1 character from being used in a DS2 game, as well as changes to things in components.gas that make for a lot of work on other parts of the game. A lot of those items are built into the maps, so even though the terrain nodes might be compatible, the triggers, moods, and all the other bits probably aren't.
There are a number of things that make me believe GPG are headed the right way, despite the map-specific templates, like the way they parameterized the item levels, and drop macros, so it might become possible for the levels to be all in the map, and not in the templates. Better yet, if there were a single file with all levels in it for each map, then the Mercenary/Veteran/Elite (and more) are much easier to do, and maps can more easily be chained together by setting the starting level for one to match where the previous one left off. The pieces are all there, just not assembled properly yet. For example, the mob templates have absolute level numbers in them, instead of referring to an external character level variable, so you have to have multiple templates for progressively stronger versions of the same monster. If a level (relative to the map level!) was specified in the region, then any monsters placed in the region would inherit the right level. There would still be room for weak, tank, ranged, magic biases in the calculations of strength, hit points, damage etc. DS3 could be the one where they get it right.
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Dungeon Raider
One thing about multiplayer that would work well with this is the option to save one's game. The transient nature of game play (at least in DS1) always turned me off of playing multiplayer for anything more than a hour or two's entertainment.
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Total absence of humor renders life impossible.
Colette
Although it would be nice to have Ehb, UP, Yesterhaven, LoA, and Return to Arhok maps, all as they are now (i.e., with all the same monsters, gear, quests, etc), included in a ds2map with the DS2 and BW world maps, what really matters is the maps themselves. The actual regions. Some of the sweeping vistas in UP aren't seen in anything else. So, for a huge ds2map combining all of these areas, it wouldn't be undesirable to have the dsmaps "updated" so as to have DS2 monsters and gear (which would naturally affect the quests as well, at least to some extent), as long as we got the older territories added to the new game. Of course, if it's possible to retain the old content, that would be grand (but I suspect that a DS2 character would have significant advantages, so the monsters would need to be beefed up, the quests made more challenging, and the rewards/drops made more rewarding). The graphics could also be updated to be up to DS2 standards (which are undeniably superior to the graphics in DS1).
But maybe by the time GPG (or whomever) got around to doing this, DS3 would be out, and if changes in DS3 were as significant as those from DS1 to DS2, we would be looking at one huge ds3map with all the old and current territorial content included in a future map ...
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Giovanna
So... are there any new additives to the games themselves, or nothing new?
As far as I know, the answer is no. They are just combined.
And as for that bonus 'making of' cd, that shouldn't be your incentive for buying the game; you can just find that video on youtube. It doesn't even go into much detail.