Obsidian Aims to Fix Dungeon Siege III's PC Controls

Much as the blooming of the crocuses signals the arrival of Spring, so too does the blooming of complaint-filled forum threads seem to signal the arrival of a new Obsidian-developed game.

In this case, the complaints pertain to Dungeon Siege III, Obsidian's take on the classic dungeon crawling RPG series that saw release earlier this week. While the general response to the game has been mostly decent, many PC players reported dissatisfaction with the PC version's mouse-and-keyboard control scheme, which eschews many of the dungeon crawling genre standards to the point where some purists deemed the situation untenable, and just picked up a gamepad (which, by all accounts, works far better).

Lead designer Nathan Chapman is apparently well aware of players' issues with the control scheme, and in talking to Eurogamer this morning, explained that Obsidian plans to update the control scheme in the near future to something more traditional.

Actually this is one thing I would have liked to have spent more time on, and we are actually spending time on now. Basically, I think as long as PC gamers have a good way to control the combat they will enjoy it. One review - I can't remember which - said if you play with a game pad the combat is great, so right now we're working on improving the PC controls through an update.

Though there's no immediate timetable for this update's release, it sounds like Obsidian is already hard at work on it. What say you, Giant Bomb PC community? Are you looking forward to a new mouse-and-keyboard scheme? Or were you okay with what was originally offered?

Should have done this before release. But atleast the controls will be better when I pick it up fromthe bargain bin later.

Not to sound like a jerk here, but considering the focus of this game was on coop and they knew it was going to be a big PC game. Perhaps some extra effort should have been made in those two departments. Even if it would have taken another month or two. Cause June was kind of packed to begin with.

@Morningstar said:

Should have done this before release. But atleast the controls will be better when I pick it up fromthe bargain bin later.

Bingo. This was already a likely steam sale purchase for me, so I should be well set by the time that rolls around.

I feel like this is something they should have had in the game from the get go...

How do you fuck up PC controls? Just map shit to the mouse and WASD and call it a day.

We should know better than to expect anything but the bare minimum from Obsidian.

Well that sounds awfully nice.
But how about fixing the controlls before you ship the game Obsidian?

Based on the demo that I played, "fixed" controls aren't going to sway my wallet. I think Jeff said it best in the Bombcast this week, it plays like "a bad third-person action game," not a traditional action-RPG with an expansive world. But maybe the game opens up later on.

If it's on sale, I might try it.

Game is shit anyway.

It makes me sad that we live in a world where a game that lets you configure the keybinds is a bullet point feature on the back of a box, and needs to have entire news articles written about it when they patch it into a game weeks/months after the game releases. That's just such a common sense thing to include in games, that it would be like reading on the back of the box that you can adjust the gamma and sound levels.

The patch inverted the controls for me, making the game frustrating to play now.

At least this one isnt buggy. A first for obsidian :P

I don't think it's been getting mostly decent reviews.  I would say mostly mediocre at best reviews

Consoles ruined another PC franchise... thanks... I'm not even going to bother playing DS3. I'm going to replay Dungeon Siege 2 instead.

Don't worry about it Obsidian. No, seriously, you don't have to get up, I'll just play through Titan Quest again.

Maybe next time, just play the FIRST DUNGEON SIEGE BEFORE YOU TRY AND MAKE ONE YOURSELF.

@phrosnite said:

Consoles ruined another PC franchise... thanks... I'm not even going to bother playing DS3. I'm going to replay Dungeon Siege 2 instead.

Yeah, I just purchased Titan Quest from Steam.

10 bucks for a game far superior to DS3, the graphics holds up really well too.

@phrosnite said:

Consoles ruined another PC franchise... thanks... I'm not even going to bother playing DS3. I'm going to replay Dungeon Siege 2 instead.

How did the console ruin it? blame the devs not consoles, plenty of great PC versions of console games.

I am sick and tired of pc elitist asshats trying to blame consoles and console gamers, isn't our fault developers are lazy.

@Styl3s said:

@phrosnite said:

Consoles ruined another PC franchise... thanks... I'm not even going to bother playing DS3. I'm going to replay Dungeon Siege 2 instead.

How did the console ruin it? blame the devs not consoles, plenty of great PC versions of console games.

I am sick and tired of pc elitist asshats trying to blame consoles and console gamers, isn't our fault developers are lazy.

Pfft, console elitist.

You also ruined Starcade yo.

@Krakn3Dfx said:

@Styl3s said:

@phrosnite said:

Consoles ruined another PC franchise... thanks... I'm not even going to bother playing DS3. I'm going to replay Dungeon Siege 2 instead.

How did the console ruin it? blame the devs not consoles, plenty of great PC versions of console games.

I am sick and tired of pc elitist asshats trying to blame consoles and console gamers, isn't our fault developers are lazy.

Pfft, console elitist.

You also ruined Starcade yo.

I play everything, i don't come bitch about how X ruined X because i am far to busy enjoying games.

Fuck all fanboys/elitist, they are ruining the gaming community.

@Styl3s said:

@Krakn3Dfx said:

@Styl3s said:

@phrosnite said:

Consoles ruined another PC franchise... thanks... I'm not even going to bother playing DS3. I'm going to replay Dungeon Siege 2 instead.

How did the console ruin it? blame the devs not consoles, plenty of great PC versions of console games.

I am sick and tired of pc elitist asshats trying to blame consoles and console gamers, isn't our fault developers are lazy.

Pfft, console elitist.

You also ruined Starcade yo.

I play everything, i don't come bitch about how X ruined X because i am far to busy enjoying games.

Fuck all fanboys/elitist, they are ruining the gaming community.

I was joking, hence my Starcade comment.

It's definitely a development issue when these things happen, I'm a firm believer the more platforms a game comes to the better, and I want all of those platforms to either be great or suck equally.

All I know is this practice of "Ship the game broken or subpar, we can fix it later" really has to stop.  Just because you CAN fix a game after launch doesn't mean you should rely on it.  Whether it's the publishers or the developers that have to learn that lesson.

Just hire some damn testers, Obsidian, please!

Being able to control the combat usually makes gamers happy, too! :)

Had a controller plugged in to the PC when I first played it - when I saw the Xbox controller button prompts on screen, I just figured I'd play with a controller (tried mouse and keyboard for a few minutes though).  I guess if I didn't already have that option, I'd be angry?  Maybe?  Probably not.

Obsidian, because why release a good game when you can charge full price for a broken one and patch it later?

What changed between DS1 and DS3 in controls? Only played the first and it was just fine? What happened here? (Too lazy to get the demo, ISP having issues)

@HadesTimes said:

Not to sound like a jerk here

Hi! :D

Obsidian Aims to Fix

You're a riot, Navarro!

With the stupid Co-op design choices this game was destined to fail anyway. I didn't like the demo at all, so I'll wait for bargain bin price if at all.

Love the caption. :P

Should have done this before release. But atleast the controls will be better when I pick it up fromthe bargain bin later.

So let me get this straight.... we have a console version of a console version of a pc franchise?

@Heli0s said:

@Morningstar said:

Should have done this before release. But atleast the controls will be better when I pick it up fromthe bargain bin later.

My thoughts exactly. I will most likely pick this up when the wait for Diablo 3 becomes too much to handle. I'm sure there will be a nice discount on Steam as well as the updated controls by then.

Yup, for 20-25 bucks it will be a decent game. Shame they wont add a New Game+ feature though, it would have given it added value(and its kinda the industry standard with these games)

What changed between DS1 and DS3 in controls? Only played the first and it was just fine? What happened here? (Too lazy to get the demo, ISP having issues)

It's not like obsidian to ship broken products, so hopefully this game will be fully playable in a week.
 
 
...Oh wait

Cool! after it they will have to fix everything else to have me buy it.

@somejerk said:

What changed between DS1 and DS3 in controls? Only played the first and it was just fine? What happened here? (Too lazy to get the demo, ISP having issues)

Well, it's almost an entirely different game genre now, so the controls are different.  It's not a standard diablo-like, it's more like a Baulder's Gate Dark Alliance style of game where you're given direct control. Point and click movement is no longer present, and WASD directly controls the character.  You don't click a guy to attack, you attack where you are when you click.  The worst part is that the controls aren't rebindable and that A and D are turn left and turn right, respectively.  There are no move left or move right commands like you can do on the console, it's forced tank controls if you're using WASD, which in this type of game is very, very bad.  You can move with the mouse, your character basically moves in the direction of your cursor, but that's suboptimal at best.
 
I honestly don't know how much work it could possibly take to replace the A and D functions to move in those directions instead of turn.

I did like the demo, but the control scheme seemed to be unecessarily awkward. Fix it and i might consider a buy...

The only real blasphemy is the lack of customizing. I honestly can't even remember the last time a PC game shipped without the ability to rebind keys it's so rare, and now it's been done by a relatively PC friendly developer on a PC game series? Ridiculous.

Unless they change it completely to a Diablo style "click on stuff" game, which I doubt they will, it will probably still play better with a pad anyway. So a pad is how I am playing it.

A new control scheme for the PC would be nice, but that's not gonna be enough to make the game less boring.

"We couldn't be bothered to put any effort into the PC version before release, but now that the console version has flopped, I guess maybe we should try and rescue our PC sales..."

Fuck off. Maybe giving PC gamers "a good way to control the combat" is something that ought to be considered before release.

@buckybit: DS1 looks better? You sir, are blind.

How does it control? I would like it to control basically like Alien Swarm, with a crosshair, but being essentially dual joystick. Is that not what they did?

By the time this gets out, I will have already finished and sold this broken game. How about spending time with these things PRIOR to release, uh Obsidian? Or maybe, I don't know... this is probably a crazy idea, but how about hiring some testers next time?

I play my xbox games that i buy on PC due to steam sales with an xbox controller as intended, and i will continue to do so after this update. If a game gives me the option to use my xbox controller on pc, i will take that, as it's always more fun/comfortable than mouse and keyboard (FPS/RTS notwithstanding).

They shouldn't have had to fix the PC controls to begin with if they were customizable from the start.

so tired of the release-and-patch laziness

Jesus Obsidion are bad.....

Too little too late