What environments will Dungeon Siege find the adventurer exploring, and how will this fit in with the story?

Chris Taylor: When it comes to the environments, we chose the most exciting places that we thought we could bring to life on the screen. We created huge lists of possible locations and picked our favorites... ice caves, bizarre subterranean river complexes, classic dungeons, fantastic desert canyons with deep gorges and vistas. We then had the writer work with these areas and weave the story around them.

Visuals next, how vivid and realistic is the world you are creating; what has been your inspiration behind this. Finally, how will the game square-up to the in this department?

Chris Taylor: We really went for broke here. We took it as far as we could, and at this point everyone feels great about the visual richness and detail we are putting on the screen. In terms of competition, only time will tell, but for now we are very happy with the results.

I hear you can take up-to eight-players with you to assist in you quest, is this purely a thing?

Chris Taylor: In the single player game you can have up to eight characters in your party. This includes Packmules. In multiplayer, each person plays a single character, but there can be up to eight players in the game at one time.

What kind of situations will the player encounter and how free-form / linear is the game's progression?

Chris Taylor: In the single player game the progression is more linear, but the player still has a lot of freedom. As they travel across the world, there are lots of side areas to explore, and extra quests that can be completed. In multiplayer we have opened it up and allow the player to head out into the world without restriction. In order to pull this design together, we had to build two seperate worlds, one for the single player game and one for the multiplayer game. This worked out great, and in many ways is like having two games in one.

Finally, what are your aims with the title and when do you expect us to be enjoying it?

Chris Taylor: Our aim was to push the action-RPG to new heights of design and technical ambition. To make a game that almost anyone could jump into and play, yet have the depth to attract the old school enthusiasts. If all goes well, it should be on the shelf in eary 2002!

By Luke Guttridge