CES 08: Space Siege Hands-on

Developer Gas Powered Games is billing its PC RPG Space Siege as a spiritual sequel to Dungeon Siege, but that may be a deceptive label in many respects. Before I went hands-on with the game, I spoke with lead designer Daniel Achterman at length, drawing every detail and relevant piece of information out of the tired booth dweller.

And as he went on, I grew a little worried about the project.

Space Siege will be an accessible game, he said. It's kinda like watching a movie, he said. It will be a simple game. It will be a scripted game. Comparisons were made to Hellgate.

This isn't going to fly with my readership, I thought. Not in a million light years.

But then, maybe it will. Achtherman explained that the idea with Space Siege is to create a very focused 12-hour action RPG. As we talked, games like Portal and Half-Life and BioShock kept coming up, great games that largely offer a very specific, scripted experience, and do so within a budget of less than 20 hours. And though it sounds atypical for an RPG, you can't really argue against shooting for that pedigree.

For the most part, Space Siege is a top-down, point-and-click, shoot-em-up affair, with various skills and talents and armor to collect as you progress through the game's dungeons. That's where the Hellgate part comes in. That, and the implementation of the same Metroid-like, item-sucking hotkey as the Bill Roper MMO, which allows all loot to be collected in a rapid manner.

The game's pacing will be steady and relentless, which is where the movie part makes sense. One central town is featured, but players will not be returning there very often, instead moving through the game's challenges in a fairly straightforward fashion.

But here's the rub: unlike its Dungeon forebears, the player only commands a single hero in Space Siege. And unlike Diablo, its dungeons are not randomized in design. And unlike KOTOR, your decisions in the game will not lead you down a radically different good vs. evil path. There are multiple endings, but for the most part, the main story arc is the same. Rather than telling a sweeping story through elaborate cutscenes or dialogue, most of the story will be told through textual blurbs, presented at the top of the screen and adorned with a portrait of the appropriate NPC.

That doesn't mean that story and context have been pushed to the side. Space Siege is set in a world where cybernetics are beginning to take hold. You play as a typical hero fighting for humanity, but during your quest, you will be faced with the choice of adding permanent cybernetic attachments to your body, a sort of Deus Exian quandry.

These attachments--which do not function as a method of upgrading, but rather are always the same--will decrease your "humanity" meter as you begin to pile them onto, and in place of, various body parts. NPCs will react differently to you, and though you may gain immediate benefits over those who stay pure, you may also miss out on others. And as Achterman put it, once you cut off your arm, that's it. There's no going back. You are the Borg.

While you won't have a party of characters to order around during combat, this means you'll have more time to devote towards directing your own attacks. The talent tree seemed to be fully stocked with various options, and there were plenty of beefy weapons and skills to make use of. These range from area effect spells to simple grenades, which can blow up boxes or trigger exploding gas tanks thanks to the game's physics engine.

Playing Space Siege was a simple, familiar exercise. It's Diablo, in space. You move from room to room, shooting crab creatures and other beasts. Often these crabs were seen picking off other NPCs in advance of my attacks. Picture Half-Life's scripted headcrab sequences. They were fun enough to blow up, but it's not a revolution in RPG combat, or even a revolution in click-based attacking. Your player does a somersault on command, though, which is pretty entertaining.

The game looks nice enough, running on an unrecognizable-modified version of the Dungeon Siege engine. However, though the technical side seemed competent, the design of the space station environment--a bland series of airlocks and gray grating--did nothing for me. What I played amounted to the introductory level, so I would hope the scenery is mixed up considerably later on.

A multiplayer component is planned, but rather than running through the entire singleplayer campaign, it will instead be comprised of separate multiplayer quests, selected from a list. Space Siege will make use of Gas Powered Games' proprietary lobby system, GPG.net, to enable up to four players to cooperatively complete the challenges.

While GPG's RPG isn't looking like the most ambitious game in the genre, it's not looking too bad, either--especially if the story elements work out. Though Achterman was mum on the possibility of a beta or demo, you can look for Space Siege to hit shelves this Summer either way.