Retro Lets Play!! =-August-= Dungeon Siege

Dungeon Siege combines the immersive elements of a role-playing game with over-the-top intensity and non-stop action. Dungeon Siege plunges you into a continuous 3D fantasy world where you face off against an army of evil that has been unleashed.


Developed by Gas Powered Games and published by Microsoft in April 2002, for Windows, and the following year by Destineer for Mac OSX. Set in the pseudo-medieval kingdom of Ehb, this huge fantasy game follows a young farmer and her companions as they journey to defeat an invading force.​

This game is an absolute hum dinger, if you've ever played it, you'll know how much fun multi player was in this. An absolute hoot. I still have my original discs, dug em out a week or so ago and then discovered that there are now a multitude of mods for this game. (which is needed if your going on a trip to Ehb these days)

(8 player chaos unfolds)

This is the big box version, however, i am not sure if i ever had that, ive just got the sleave with the 3 discs in it.
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Remember it now?



How about now? yeah there you go...

Anyways, yeah, pretty darn cool game this, I seriously cant believe this came out 20 plus years ago. Absolutely crazy. Right! so where to get it?

you can get it at several places, Its on Steam, GoG and Archive.org
Dungeon Siege on Steam (steampowered.com)
Dungeon Siege Collection on GOG.com
Dungeon Siege - Legends of Aranna (PC) : Microsoft Game Studios : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Few things about the Steam version, no idea if the GoG version is the same, but the steam version has Legends of Aranna and Multiplayer removed from it. Why? who the hell knows, but its not on!! No Sir!

if you get the Steam version (I am using it) you can re-enable multiplayer by adding the Aranna expansion. Youll need to go here Steam Community :: Guide :: Legends of Aranna + Extras
and download

1. Legends of Aranna Killah Fix from the Mega link.

Pretty easy that, just uncompress the few files into the main folder of where steam stored your game data for DS. (just follow the steps)

Mines in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Dungeon Siege 1

right! that sorted you didn't it, nope? what? you cant see most of the screen, or its off-set.?? Bugger...

No worries, theres a fix for that too..

Right click on Dungeon Siege in your steam Library and then under General/ lauch options paste this:

nointro=true width=1920 height=1080 zonematch=true

That will fix it for ya. (yeah you can set that to whatever rez you like, but if you go 4k, the GUI will look all screwed up, at least it did on mine.)

right, whats next?

Oh yeah, it looks like shit right? cool! lets sort that!

High Resolution Textures Pack at Dungeon Siege 1 Nexus - Mods and community (nexusmods.com)

Download that puppy, decompress and follow the instructions to install the goodness into the games resource folder. right, shut it down, reboot.. (options and intro screens will still look like shit, but the game itself will look and run gorgeous)



and thats it!!!



There is one more mod, you might like to install, its called the SeeFar2020 mod.

SeeFar 2020 at Dungeon Siege 1 Nexus - Mods and community (nexusmods.com)
It has a couple of seperate mods in it that are handy if your playing on new fandago high rez screens. up to you. (this mod contains extra resolution options)

****This mod manager really does make life very easy..***
Zhixalom’s Dungeon Siege Manager v1.9 | Zhixalom's Lair

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Again, you can grab this game from various places, 19 bucks is a bit much for the trilogy, however, 2 and 3 are pretty cool too. You can however buy a Steam key for DS1 from Gamivo for just over a buck US.

Buy Dungeon Siege Global Steam | GAMIVO

anyhows, the magic really does lie in the Multi player part of this game, ZONEMATCH doesnt work (not that strange for a 20 year old game), but Internet and LAN work a treat. Let me know if your keen for a game.

Hope you enjoy this months Retro Lets Play from Chris Taylor !!! Dungeon Siege!!!

my original sleave (like sleave of wizard)*cough*
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great write-up for install there vanne awesome work

 

Thanks mate, just trying to make it as easy as possible to get going with this, as in the past, some of my referrals have left a little to be desired in the obtain/running department. (yeah not pointing any fingers Dark Omen)

My kids are going to BNE tomorrow for the summer, DS is light enough to be awesome on thier school laptops, so ill hopefully be having a go with them while they are away, you guys just happen to be along for the ride i guess



I remember when this game came out, i had a Creative Geforce DDR. Yeah the original, and i remember being blown away by the graphics in this game. I also remember it was chastised in the magazines for more being a tech demo than a game, i didnt agree.

 

Just a heads up guys, ive just spent an hour or so installing this on my kids school lappy, and it didnt go as easy as on my desktop install... but figured out why..

firstly Direct X 9 must be installed (was previously installed on my desktop i gather)
secondly, if you get errors about cant find direct x driver or some other crap like that, and it wont start after selecting the game difficulty, try this...

open the Steam game properties by right clicking on the title, then under Manage, go to Browse Local Files, youll find this..



The file above the Dungeon Siege.exe is what you want, the DSVideoConfig, just dubble click on that.



and select your hardware and available screen mode, click ok, and that should do it!!!

okay, one more thing, dont launch it with the icon from Steam, or press play inside steam, youll wanna launch it from the above mentioned .exe in the local files folder, otherwise it will crash back after selecting the difficulty. you can ofcourse create a desktop shortcut from the proper .exe in the local files directory.

I didnt need to do this on my desktop, nfi why i had to do this here on the kids lappy.

let me know if you have any issues.

 

Fantastic write up Vanne! A great game at the time. One of the key features of this (if I remember correctly) is that you could play through the whole game with no load times. I think this is what the reference to 'continuous' is in the game description.

 

Had many late nights in a share-house multiplayer on DS2. Some moments of hilarity. We all became greedy mofos, either a race to auto-loot after a boss or whenever we got near a vendor rushing to buy up everything they had, sift through what we wanted, then dumping the rest for the other plays to sift through.

 

Vanilla Legends of Arana works too from the internet archive linked.



(no idea why this pic is on its side)
(just mount the discs in windows 10/11 and the first time you run it, it will complain a bit here and there about stuff, but just click through it, no such dramas on the 2nd startup) Do however make sure you run the DS video configurator (shown above) before hand. and as suggested before, do install the "resolution fix" from the SeeFar2020 mod, that will sort all your rez issues.

 

Yep , the continu-es play steaming was unheard of at the time, which is why it was considered a bit of a tech demo. Great game though in its own right.

 

If your using a non creative sound card in your setup on win7/10/11, you can activate EAX with this app. (thanks goes to hutts24 )

"you can use Windows XP which supports EAX (last OS to do so). I found this link to a version of Alchemy that is supposed to support all sound cards." said hutts24
https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/28-creative-alchemy-universal/



Thanks mate

 

As an interesting side note, you can also play Dungeon Siege 1 in the Dungeon Siege 2 engine. Party management and control is much much improved, as is the levels of character control and pet functionality.Let me know if you’d like a write up,on how to do it. Those of you with keen enough eyes would have noticed the above screenshot I took in the DS2 engine.

 

had a bit of a go tonight, not too bad.

 

i have them all here big box editions and the expansions love the game completed them,God make me want to play it again

 

On the surface both DS games (we wont speak of DS3 in here *puke* as its not a real DS game) look similar, however DS2 is light years ahead in terms of usability/functionality and enjoyment. Lol maybe i should have done DS2 instead of one, but halas, this is what you find out when you play both a bit. The onluy thing that shits me about DS2, is that i cant get it to run full screen with my mouse cursor intact.. so that sucks a little bit, but doesnt brealk the bank. I run mine on widescreen full windowed, but with the taskbar auto hidden.

 

Ds 3 yes,I also have DS on my PSP I think it was called,let me have a look,it's called Throne of agony,it's not to bad.

 

Yep Throne of Agony is a proper DS-Chris Taylor title.. and its pretty darn good too.

 

That's the one I have

 

Damn you i had them on GOG i gonna replay them...

 

lolol.. awesome.. kick off with DS2 on peecee