Video Game / Dungeon Siege

An Action RPG series created by Chris Taylor and developed by Gas Powered Games, published in April 2002. It was innovative in its open character building system not restricted to preselected classes, a continuous open world with no loading screens, and having the player instruct the party ahead of time while the characters act autonomously in combat.

The four classes are: Fighter, Ranger (archer,) Nature Mage (mostly defensive magic and some offensive magic) and Combat Mage (the reverse of Nature Mage.) The Expansion Pack to Dungeon Siege II, Broken World, adds two more: Fist of Stone (combination of Fighter and Nature Mage) and Blood Assassin (combination of Ranger and Combat Mage.) You can also create a party of eight hireable companions (six in DS II) plus a pack mule to carry all your extra stuff.

The first game takes place in the land of Aranna, specifically in the region of Ehb. You start the game as a humble farmer. Unfortunately, a normally passive race suddenly attacks your hometown. A dying friend of yours asks you to head over to the next town and seek help. However, it turns out the quest doesn't end there. As you gather up your forces and progress through Ehb, you find out that an ancient demonic race, the Seck (who once served under the tyrant Zaramoth the Unmaker, but that's expanded on in the second game) has returned to Aranna to seek revenge. It is up to you and your friends to destroy it and end the threat.

In 2003, an Expansion Pack was released: Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna, which offered a lot of new options for the player and his party (transformation spells, armor and weapon sets, a more combative pet, and new enemies to fight)

In August of 2005, a sequel hit the markets: Dungeon Siege II. It was greatly improved: the story was worked up, the world you travel through looks impressive, the hireable NPCs were very much fleshed out (they even got their own personal Side Quests, although the party size was reduced from eight to six,) and the character classes were given impressive powers to turn the tide of battle. Not only is the current story worked on, but the backstory was as well. A thousand years ago, Azunai the Defender clashed with the aforementioned Zaramoth. Both of their armies fought valiantly, but when the two warriors' personal armaments — the Shield of Azuna and the Sword of Zaramoth — clashed, the Endtime happened. The Age ended borderline-apocalyptically and a new one began. Many years later, a power-hungry prince named Valdis, the game's Big Bad, got a terrible fever and with it prophetic visions. When he recovered, he went to the ruins of Zaramoth's Horns. He found the tyrants sword (now a Sealed Evil in a Can) and became exactly what he wanted: a powerful tyrant bent on world domination. He even created an army of evil creatures called the Morden (an appropriate name, as "mord" is German word for "murder".) In a twist, you and your best friend Drevin start as mercenaries working for Valdis. Unfortunately, after you complete your first quest, things turn sour and you end up the prisoner of the people you were fighting: the Dryads. After a few quests to prove yourself, you form up a party and head back to your hometown of Aman'lu. Unfortunately, Valdis beats you to it, and the Archmage who serves him destroys it. Inspired to revenge, you and your party seek out Valdis and destroy him. Unfortunately, the game has a Downer Ending. Let's just say Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.

In 2006, another expansion set was added to the series: Dungeon Siege II: Broken World. It's a darker continuation of DS II and wraps up the story. An evil force — who is much worse than Valdis — has taken over Aranna in the aftermath of your Nice Job Breaking It, Hero moment, radically altering it and nearly killing all of its inhabitants. Don't worry, though; your friends have survived the Cataclysm and are ready to help you once again. Which is good because this time, It's Personal.

Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony was released for PSP alongside Broken World and serves as a side story to the events of Broken World. Both Throne and BW featured crossover items, special items that could be unlocked across both games by either linking the PSP's MAC Address to the player's copy of Broken World, or by using passwords given by each game.

Uwe Boll made a movie of the first game, titled In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. With Burt Reynolds as the king. And, it must be noted, Ray Liotta as an evil sorcerer.

A sequel to the first two games, Dungeon Siege III, developed by Obsidian Entertainment, was released June 2011. It tells the story of four descendants of the 10th Legion: Lucas, Anjali, Katarina and Reinhart as they attempt to rebuild the Legion and defeat the woman who disbanded them in the first place.

The only Downloadable Content pack for DS III, Treasures of the Sun, was released October 25th, 2011.

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This series provides examples of:

Multiple Games

• All Myths Are True: Especially prominent in III regarding Azunai, Archons and the Creator Gods.
  • Averted in the Utraean Peninsula map's main quest: While every town you visit has their own idea for what the ancient monument will do once the Town Stones are assembled, none of them spoke of the Sealed Evil in a Can waiting within.
• Ancient Tomb: A variety of these are present throughout the entire series, complete with puzzles, traps, and all manner of undead creatures and other nasty surprises.
• Anti-Grinding: Only happens in the first game. In the second game, the enemies respawn (sometimes only a few seconds later.) Also averted in III.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Especially in the second game, where amount of space in your party is dependent on the difficulty setting, and any setting above "easy" can only be unlocked by finishing the game on the earlier setting. On the plus side, the first four party members you can find all fit the 4 main classes, so it makes things a bit easier.
  • Also, in addition to the difficulty restriction, each slot beyond the first two requires a payment to the "Adventurers' Guild" in order to be usable. Fortunately, gold is fairly easy to come by.
• Black and White Magic: To some extent, with Combat Magic and Nature Magic, respectively.
• Clock Punk: The city of Stonebridge in DS III, and the wizards trained there especially. This is a result of the societal integration of the Goblins, who were technologically-advanced villains in the first game.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Almost every map in every release of the game has either a lava-filled area or, in the case of III, an area that is engulfed in flames during your visit. In none of these is the heat any problem. Actually touching the flames, however...
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: Azunai/The Radiant Youth.
• Game Mod: Lots for the first game, not so much for the second. Including remakes for Ultima V and Ultima VI (which are pretty handy, as while Dungeon Siege can easily be found on internet shops, "other methods" are the only way to obtain either game)
  • The most famous of these is the "Lands of Hyperborea," siegelet. It had custom skills, custom spells, a ridiculous amount of story depth, a ridiculous amount of level content, an ambitious suite of new creature types that stretched the game's engine to its limits, and its non-linear nature meant that its multiplayer content drove the game through the roof in terms of replay value.
• It's Up to You: Played with a little; in these games, saving the world isn't a one-man job. It makes for a great Self-Imposed Challenge though.
• Master of None: Going for multiple skills often results in a character that is rather weak for their level. One very early NPC in the second game warns against this, recommending to choose one of the four schools of combat (Melee, Ranged, Combat Magic, Nature Magic) and sticking with it.
• Medieval European Fantasy: The primary setting for all three games, although the lands visited also include dense jungles, arid deserts, frozen wastelands, and roiling swamplands. III also introduces more Industrial Revolution era advances, but still retains a medieval feel.
• Monty Haul: Even by videogame standards. In the first a
• One-Gender Race: All Dryads are female and all Half-Giants are male. Players can only play as male Dwarves, but female Dwarves are mentioned in the dialogue. All Archons are also female.nd second games, you had to bring along pack mules if you wanted any hope of carrying all the loot you'd find.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: While the first game had the more "traditional" RPG monsters in the vein of Dungeons & Dragons (with some unique exceptions here and there), most of the second game's creatures could be very bizarre and unusual, especially the Familiars in Broken World.
• Real-Time with Pause: A staple of the series, despite having very little actual value, especially in the second game.
• Recycled IN SPACE!: Space Siege, although it's a much more simplified game it's still based on the same engine and similar in gameplay.
• Ruins for Ruins' Sake: Especially in DS II, most ruins in the games get at least a feasible explanation for their presence. The Ruins of Okaym, on the other hand, do not.
• Scenery Porn: While particularly prominent in II and III, even the original had a wide variety of environments that were quite detailed. Too bad the render distance was so short in the first game.
• Schizo Tech: The Goblins in the first game have very advanced technology for a Medieval European Fantasy. While you're using bows and crossbows, they have miniguns and grenade launchers, which you can take and use for yourself. Strangely, they're nowhere to be found for the rest of the series, but other forms of technology still exist, such as elevators and sliding doors.
  • They're back in the third game, having made peace with the humans in the centuries between games.
• Shout-Out:
  • Some aspects of the second game draw some parallels with "The Lord of the Rings". For example, the Battle of Snowbrook Haven is similar to the Battle of Helm's Deep (except for the dragon), and the Morden-Viir who are doing the besieging look very much like the Uruk-hai. As a matter of fact, when you get to Act III on Mercenary difficulty, after a while, the armor salesmen sells a helmet, a unique chinless helm called the "Onyx Steel Helm", that looks just like the ones the Uruk-hai wore in the movie versions of The Lord of the Rings. Minus the White Hand of Saruman, of course.
  • The Morden's Head quest is a shout out to Babylon 5.
  • For another shout out, in the personal side-quest "Evangeline's Folly," has pretty much the RPG version of "Our Princess is in another castle." When Eva hears the second such answer, she even says "This is starting to sound familiar."
  • The Automaton Constables in DS 3 look remarkably like Clanks, right down to the triparate camera eyes, brass finish and shako hats. The only noticeable difference is Auto-constables have an Arm Cannon and a two fingered claw, rather than proper hands and a minigun rifle.
  • One of the enemies that appears in Legends of Aranna, the Skitterclaws, looks a lot like the Carakillers from The Future Is Wild.
• Spin-Off: Space Siege, which is quite literally Dungeon Siege IN SPACE!
• Standard Fantasy Races: In the first game, you could only play as a Human and hire Dwarven NPCs, although multiplayer also allowed you to play as a dwarf or skeleton. In Legends of Aranna you could hire Utraean NPCs. In DS II, including Broken World, the race selection was greatly expanded: Humans, Elves, Half-Giants, Dryads and Dwarves.
• Title Drop: Towards the end of the first game, the Droog leader says "Journey fast, kingdom child. The Seck dungeon siege may soon be underway."
  • In III, too - near the end of the game, you can get a quest to rescue some nobles from a dungeon, titled Dungeon Siege.
• Took a Shortcut: The Utraean historian in Legends of Aranna.
  • Not to mention the Azunite Scholar (who, as it happens, has the same voice actor) in DS II.
• Useless Useful Spell: The first Dungeon Siege unfortunately had a lot of them. Thankfully, the game developers learned from their mistake and removed such spells from DS II.
• Utility Party Member: Played with in the first game: instead of recruiting another adventurer, you can instead fill one or two of the eight party slots with donkeys who cannot participate in combat at all. Instead, their "special skill" is being able to carry twice as much Plunder as regular party members.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The ending of Broken World. Also happens in III by showing what the consequences are of your choices.

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Dungeon Siege and Legends of Aranna

• Abandoned Mine: The dwarf towns of Glitterdelve and Crystwind both have mine shafts that connect the game's grassy regions to the snow lands a few levels up. They are full of Krug, minecart railways, mechanical elevators, and Exploding Barrels.
• Aerith and Bob: The four dominant monstrous races in the first game, in chronological order: Krug, goblins, Droog, and Seck. One of those is not like the others.
• Artificial Animal People: The Zaurask and Hassat races were created by the Utraeans conducting magically-accelerated genetic science experiments on common lizards and jungle cats to serve as slaves for their empire, and were the only successful results from dozens of templates. After the Utraean Empire is thrown down by a genocidal revolt of the Hassat and Zaurask against their creators, the Zaurask king Nosirrom tries to create his own capable slave race, the Droc, from crocodiles, but even they break from his control and form their own society.
• The Atoner: Following the loss of their empire and shrinking of their population, some Utraeans seek to atone for the sins of their people and make peace with the Zaurask. It doesn't work, as the entire peace delegation was slaughtered by Nosirrom's forces, save one member who played dead. It's not clear whether this is because Nosirrom was insane, or if peace was never an option.
• Automatic Crossbows: As indicated by the trope's page quote, Dungeon Siege's crossbows have a fast rate of fire, trading damage per shot for higher overall damage, in contrast to the real paradigm. There are even two separate classes of crossbow in the base game, one of which is even faster firing. Legends of Aranna adds a weaker Clockwork Crossbow whose projectiles behave more like arrows.
• Broken Bridge: To an almost ridiculous extent. In the Kingdom of Ehb campaign, the first obstacle you encounter to impede your journey, sans the various beasties, is a bridge, which was caught on fire, and then had a wagon driven across it, with the monsters who did the catching riding it. The bridge collapsed, and you end up going through an army of the dead in order to reach the other side. The loot was nice, though. It doesn't end there, of course. Both games have many, many, many broken bridges, in both the literal and figurative sense.
  • The next major dungeon after the above is a fight through a Demonic Spider infested underground lair. The reason? A door was blocked by a rockslide. It gets cleared away later. Not that you'll ever go backwards in this game.
• Cosmic Keystone: The Great Clock is one for the game's world. The Utraeans had created it to gain control over the weather for the betterment of their empire, and eventually enslaved the Shadowjumper to power it after they defeated him. When he breaks out, he plans to spin the Clock out of control to destroy the Utraeans and the world along with them.
• Crystal Landscape: Present in all 3 campaigns.
  • The Kingdom of Ehb's Subterranean River is a limestone cave complex which follows the snow lands, loaded with multicolored glowing crystals, crystalline enemies, Trog warriors, and other cavey enemies. It also contains a temple which holds one of the keys to the Utraean Peninsula's big easter egg level.
  • The Utraean Peninsula features two crystal caves, also following its snow lands. The aptly named Crystal Caverns are more or less a more boring version of Ehb's, with a Displacer platform instead of a temple. The Sulfur Tunnels are another, with far fewer crystalline opponents and more organic enemies. Every glowing crystal formation is a red or yellow not found in the other cave.
  • The Legends of Aranna campaign has one in its final third, which is overrun with Zaurask who have tainted a magic healing well located inside. The player's party is tasked with cleansing it by killing the Zaurask presence.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: All 3 campaigns feature haunted swamps as their mid-story region, replete with mud, boardwalks, giant fungi, vicious wildlife, and loads of undead.
• Death Mountain: The Utraean Peninsula and Legends of Aranna campaigns both have enemy-laden mountains to contend with.
  • The Peninsula features Mount Utrae, which is home to a bandit leader and his army. It goes from open foothills to coniferous forest to snowy peak, then back down through more coniferous forest into swamp lands.
  • Legends of Aranna first has the Mountain of the Dead, whose climate is dominated by the undead-infested swamp which surrounds it. It then has Mount Kreth, the polluted and scarred Goblin wasteland that is home to the Great Clock.
• Door to Before: After fighting your way through Wesrin Cross, you find yourself on the back side of the blocked gate you saw when you left Stonebridge, with conveniently placed explosives ready to clear the rubble. There's not really any reason to go back to Stonebridge at that point, though, unless you want to grab one of the optional party members you left behind on the first visit.
• Dragon Hoard: Ehb and the Utraean Peninsula both feature a huge dragon boss in caves under their desert canyon biomes, each of which guard a large hoard of gold pieces and containers full of loot. The Ehb dragons were used by the Kingdom as an execution method, wherein those sentenced to death were given equipment and a sack of gold and ordered to slay the dragon, with predictable results. The Utraean Peninsula dragon just so happens to have one of the townstones in its hoard, and she needs to be killed for its acquisition to be possible.
• Easter Egg: In the multiplayer map, at higher levels one can stumble upon a dungeon full of giant chickens. The developers of Dungeon Siege and token Microsoft execs await, including Bill Gates.
  • Also from the multiplayer map, The Pit of Despair, and the infamously hard to find hidden pyramid in the desert, which leads to an entirely new island almost to reach otherwise.
• Emergency Energy Tank: Rejuvenation potions, which restore a greater amount of health and mana than either other alone, are very rare to find outside of shops and can only be used once before expiring.
• Fantastic Science: A hallmark of the Utraeans is that they have strikingly modern knowledge and technology compared to the rest of the world, up to and including genetic research and evolution, hormones, and computers. They power and apply these through their high cultural proficiency in magic.
• The Goomba: Krug Scavengers are among the first enemies in the game. They are the weakest among the Krug ranks; they have the lowest hit points, carry shoddy weapons, and move slowly.
• Green Hill Zone: The first portions of the Kingdom of Ehb and Utraean Peninsula maps are farmlands, rolling green plains, and light forest cover, and they are populated by the game's weakest enemies.
  • Each of the above two also has a Shadowland version; the pleasant but undead-threatened hinterlands of each region'sbig monster-overrun castle.
  • The Legends of Aranna campaign instead has a snowy alpine town as its starting zone. Its green hilly area is found in the second half of the story, and is home to a threatening cast of hostile wildlife, witches and their summons, and Hassat tribes.
• Healing Winds: Healing Wind is a spell of nature magic that creates a breeze that raises the health of the entire party.
• Hub Level: The Utraean Peninsula has one quite literally, in the form of the Helios Utrae Basilicus, which can be used by the player to fast-travel to towns which they are high enough level to start at.
  • The Legends of Aranna campaign expands on their story; the Utraeans had a whole network of displacer pads which linked their empire, centered at the Central Transportation Center in their capital city of Jherkal's Crown. By the time the player's party reaches it, all but one pad there has been shut down in order to prevent hostile forces who had sacked the city from using the displacers to quickly ravage the rest of the island.
• Legacy Character: The Player Character from Legends of Aranna is the latest in a line of Heroes of Arhok. Over the course of the story you find out what happened to the previous generation of Heroes, your parents.
• Lethal Lava Land: All campaigns contain zones which consist of volcanic caverns located beneath stone fortifications and contain plot-relevant fixtures.
  • The Kingdom of Ehb features the Vault of Eternity, in which the Seck were imprisoned for 300 years prior to the start of the campaign, underneath Castle Ehb's dungeons.
  • The Utraean Peninsula's volcanic Caverns are home to the Maljin, a monstrous warrior race created by the Utraeans that invade the land when the Townstones are finally united.
  • Legends of Aranna features the Lair of Cicatrix, inhabited by the undead forces of the titular skeletal centaur, as well as the lava caves under Fortress Emarard, the castle which protects and helps power the Great Clock.
• Loads and Loads of Roles: Voice acting power couple Yuri Lowenthal and Tara Platt make up the entire cast of the original game.
• The Lost Woods: The Kingdom of Ehb and Utreaean Peninsula each have 3 distinct stages of coniferous forest levels, increasingly enchanted with each subsequent one.
  • Ehb has these in the following order:
    • A forest that is occupied by Krug, Savage Wolves, and undead, and is the location of the first Broken Bridge which forces the player to navigate through the Crypt of the Sacred Blood to reach Stonebridge.
    • A dark forest that is home to black wolves, trolls, demonic forest creatures, and a horde of bandits, as well as a witch's garden and a black stone castle.
    • A haunted forest that is home to fairies, black wolves, demonic forest creatures, cyclopes, floating skeletal wraiths, dragons, and an unsavory bonepicker merchant, as well as ancient temple ruins and a waterlogged dungeon with its own roster of dangerous enemies.
  • The Utraean Peninsula has the following:
    • Instead of a direct analogue to the Ehb starter forest, there is a gigantic Great Northern Forest that can be traversed as an alternate path toward the first quest, or else hides pathways to hidden areas and contains the whole range of the above forest types under its canopy.
    • The Cloud Forest's terrain is expanded upon from Ehb's version, mixing grass clearings and sheer clifftops with its tree cover as it gradually ascends to being a snowy Death Mountain.
    • Redwood Gap is an analogue to the Temple Ruins forest, home to a similar water dungeon, the same monster set, and lots of fairies; though instead of temple ruins it contains the semi-hidden Pit of Despair level and a displacer back to the town of Lang.
  • The only forest of this type in the Legends of Aranna campaign can be found outside Fortress Emarard, occupied by elite Zaurask forces protecting their king Nosirrom, in addition to a smattering of monsters from across the other campaigns.
• Magitek: The Utraeans were masters of applied magic to technology, using it to power genetic research and accelerated evolution, war machines, robots, computers, and long-distance transportation.
• Mecha-Mooks: The Goblins and Utraeans fielded robotic forces. It isn't clear who developed and deployed the technology first.
• More Criminals Than Targets: Given the number of bandits clogging certain forest roads, you could be forgiven for thinking that bandits are the country's single largest demographic group all by themselves.
• More Dakka: At a certain point in an otherwise internally consistent fantasy game, you can get a minigun among other high-tech Goblin weapons.
• The Movie: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale tries to be this for the Kingdom of Ehb setting.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: Since multiplayer worlds aren't saved, multiplayer characters are able to visit various high-XP-yield locations again and again, while the more fixed singleplayer mode is trickier to pull this off.
  • For the Kingdom of Ehb singleplayer story, the ice caves and swamps are home to witches that can infinitely summon monsters as long as they are alive. These summons grant experience and drop loot like their non-summoned counterparts.
  • This XP-farming exploit is removed in the Legends of Aranna world, where summoned enemies do not grant XP when killed.
  • Of note for the Utraean Peninsula multiplayer map is Iliarth Canyon, which despite being populated by mid-high level skeleton soldiers is connected directly to the low-level town of Crystwind. Skilled and/or daring newbies may benefit greatly from quick XP gain and loot+gold drops which are scaled far above their current level.
• Plot Coupon: There are 7 Townstones to collect throughout the Utraean Peninsula map, which all need to be united at the Utraean Circle in the town of Hiroth for the plot to progress.
• Polluted Wasteland:
  • As one approaches the Goblin fortress in Ehb's swamp, one can see pipes discharging a sludgy fluid from their operations below. Its relation to the undead presence is unclear.
  • The Lands of the Great Clock are broken, dead, and rife with Goblin industrial development and magic bursts from mishandling of the Great Clock.
• Slave Race: The Zaurask and Hassat were bred to serve as slaves for the Utraeans.
• Slice-and-Dice Swordsmanship: All melee weapons other than staves use the same 1-handed or 2-handed attack animation. This results in daggers being swung as if they were broadswords.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The second quarter of the Kingdom of Ehb and Utraean Peninsula campaigns are heralded by snowy forested mountain landscapes, populated by hostile wildlife, snow demons, and ice elementals. The Legends of Aranna campaign, by contrast, *starts* in a snow land, albeit with the difficulty turned down.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Very calming and relaxing music plays in the background, even when your party is in the heat of all-out battle, thanks to a lack of Variable Mix.
• Spider Swarm: Wesrin Cross and its analogues are full of these. The spiders range in size from rats to wolves, and there are also the demonic mucosa, which are human and spider hybrids.
• Stat Sticks: The different classes each can benefit from an off-class weapon even if they never use it, so long as the off-class item provides magic buffs which aid their build; for example, a melee fighter equipped with a strength-boosting spell book, a mage with an intelligence-boosting bow, or an archer with a dexterity-boosting sword. It is prudent in a singleplayer campaign to shop for these items early on, lest the stat requirements of such items in later shops outpace the advancement of characters' secondary stats.
  • Legends of Aranna expands on this by including shields that require dexterity and intelligence, used almost exclusively for their magic bonuses.
• Swamps Are Evil: All the game's swamps are overrun by any combination of the following: hostile wildlife, vicious monsters, witches, and undead.
• Too Dumb to Live: A Broken Bridge in the first game is justified by a party of Krug setting fire to it and then driving their wagon across.
• Turned Against Their Masters: The Zaurask and Hassat were created by the Utraeans to be their slaves, but they revolted and destroyed the Utraean Empire in the process.
• You Can't Miss It: An inverted example is given by Overseer Ibsen Yamas in Glacern. His description of getting to Fortress Kroth implies that it's probably the game's next stage ("Just follow your nose through the ice cave and you'll get there soon enough."). Instead, the party has to fight through a full third of the game's length; through a crystal cave, a forest full of bandits, a haunted swamp, a Goblin warren, a haunted forest, a Fury cave, and a Seck commander and his legion of skeleton soldiers before finally reaching the fortress.

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Dungeon Siege II and Broken World

• Always Chaotic Evil: Quite a few examples, actually: the Morden (except for the Morden refugees in Broken World,) the Familiars, and the Cinbri.
• Artifact Alias: The Player Character is often referred to as "the mercenary" despite ceasing to be one by the end of the first act's first chapter.
• Bag of Spilling: During the first playthrough (on the lowest difficulty level), you lose your entire equipment between the first act's first chapter and the second chapter. However, this is quite justified, as the Player Character has just been taken as a POW by the Dryads at this point.
• Blood Knight: When the normally passive Taar says she fights the Morden because she must, Finala gives the near psychopathic response that she fights them because she can and has personal reasons to do so.
• Bloodier and Gorier: The first game had Bloodless Carnage^note Unless you used the proper cheat code. In the second dealing sufficient overkill to an enemy causes Ludicrous Gibs and leaves a puddle of blood where they once stood. The expansion to the second game is set in a post-apocalyptic world with Eldritch Abomination monsters.
• Bloody Murder: the Blood Assassin's abilities.
• Brutal Honesty: Deru after your initial meeting with Finala. Quite justified too, since the Player Character worked with the Morden under Valdis, who are terrorizing Aranna and most recently nearly destroyed their hometown.
  Deru: She hates you.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: The first act consists of the protagonist trying to return home, and happening to help various parts of La Résistance against Valdis. The second act begins with Valdis and the Archmage destroying said home, prompting the protagonist to continue adventuring with the aim of getting Valdis' head.
• Captain Ersatz: Amren is really Spock in disguise.
• Chain of Deals: There is a side quest that starts in Act I and spans all the way to Act III.
• Crapsack World: Pretty much the point of Broken World. Fortunately, this Crapsack World doesn't last forever, but you have to defeat a lot of tough bosses to make it happen.
  • On the other hand, the main game had some dashes of Crapsaccharine World. You may think the Dryads are sweet and lovely plant girls, right? Not in this game; a lot of them are a stern and no-nonsense Amazon Brigade. For example, Warden Celia equips prisoners with Rings of Submission, which can sense your intentions before you've even thought of them and then do painful and even deadly stuff to you accordingly. When did this turn into Nineteen Eighty-Four?
• Critical Hit: Prominently displayed in II by much larger and darker red damage indicators.
• Darker and Edgier: Also pretty much the point of Broken World, but also the case for the Blood Assassin. In the lore, death magic is described as pretty nasty already. The Blood Assassin's abilities are a shade darker than that.
• Death-Activated Superpower: The Familiars in Broken World have this. When they're killed, they come back to life three seconds later in a fiery blast. They resurrect with only a quarter of their hit points but twice their attack power. Fortunately, it only works once.
• Demonic Possession: It turns out that The Plague is caused by spirits from Zaramoth's army possessing people.
• The Dragon: The Cinbri Archmage.
• The Eeyore: Amren in Broken World. Heck, every elf you can talk to in the expansion is morbidly depressed, except for Finala.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Shows up in this game, unlike the first.
• Evil Chancellor: In Act III. While the Player Character is occupied with retrieving the final Plot Coupon, he even kills the ruler. Thankfully, the Player Character is Genre Savvy enough to recognize said chancellor as a villain and kills him.
• Evil Mentor: The Azunite Scholar, who is revealed to be a Dark Wizard, is this. He manipulates the player into assembling the parts of Azunai's shield at the hopes of making contact with Zaramoth's sword, causing a massive change across Aranna.
• Evil Uncle: It is revealed that Valdis is Evangeline's uncle.
• Extreme Omnivore: Pets can eat any magic item.
• Face–Heel Turn: Celia in Broken World. Given how the Dryads lost their hometown and their place to the world, she and her fellow people have no choice but to ally themselves with the villain.
• Faceless Goons: The Morden-Viir wear helmets that obscure the upper parts of their faces, showing only their jaws.
• Gladiator Subquest: The Aman'lu Arena in both II and Broken World.
• Herbivores Are Friendly: Until they get infected with the plague.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Valdis, full stop. He can't seem to stop himself from doing stuff to piss you off starting by killing Drevin and not even paying you. In the immortal words of Nathan Ford, "Yeah, you should've just paid us!"
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Not actually in the game, thankfully, but the description for humans in the DS II manual reads like it could have been written by Johnathan Swift.
  • In addition, the manual says that the Elves like being in control to the point of being Manipulative Bastards, but the Elves you meet in the game show no such egotism. You'd think the manual was for a different game entirely.
• Insubstantial Ingredients: A quest in Broken World makes mention of these. Fortunately, they turn out to be metaphorical descriptions for quest drops.
• It's Personal: The player character starts as a mercenary paid for Valdis at the hopes of satiate their love of adventure and glory. However, this wanderlust ends when Valdis kills their Best Friend Drevin and later nearly razed Aman'lu that killed the player character's parents drives them to destroy Valdis once and for all.
  • At the expansion, the player character once again considers the the Azunite Scholar, who is revealed to be a Dark Wizard as this. This is due of him manipulating the player into assembling the shield and comes contact once more with Zaramoth's sword, creating a cataclysmic event that nearly destroys various civilizations across Aranna. They spend much of the expansion hunting him while fixing the mistake that they unwittingly caused at Aranna.
• Jerkass: Warden Celia, who has no qualms about using the Rings of Submission on her prisoners and takes considerable persuasion from Amren to even consider giving the player character a chance to prove their good nature. The events leading up to Broken World only serve to increase her cynical side.
  • Finala the Elven machine expert also shows shades of this in her conversations with the player character. She is not entirely faultless however, given how the main character and Drevin worked with the Morden knowing that they were up to no good, so her hatred and mistrust towards them is justified. Thankfully, she does start to loosen up just before offering to join your party.
• Killed Off for Real: Drevin.
• Knight Templar: The Overmage considers the atrocities he's committing as good for Aranna, and he thinks his actions will redeem him in his races' eyes.
• Large Ham: Valdis doesn't so much as speak his lines, but rather angrily shouts them, particularly during the conversations taking place before the fights with him.
  • The Overmage of the Cinbri in Broken World, bizarrely enough. He never acted like this as the Azunite Scholar in DS II, being at most a Cold Ham during the scene after the final boss.
• Meaningful Name: Just like the Morden, Valdis's name also has a hidden meaning. It is derived from "valde", the Latin word for "great".
• Monster Compendium: In the base game, you first have to kill five monsters of a specific type to gain information on it, unless its an Elite Mook or a boss. In Broken World, on the other hand, you only have to kill a monster once to get the info.
• Mood Whiplash: The side quest "Sartan's Suspicion." When Sartan finds out the leader of the underground resistance movement is the same officer who imprisoned him back in Windstone Fortress, he kills the officer in a moment of vengeful anger. When the other soldiers call him out on it, Sartan realizes it and you set off to rescue some imprisoned soldiers so he can set things right again. However, even though the rescue mission goes successfully, the other soldiers only sort of forgive Sartan, and tell him he'll just have to live with his guilt. Uh...yay?
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: An early sidequest revolves around a Haku tribe that doesn't want to murder and devour everyone else.
• Noodle Incident: In Broken World, Celeb'hel wants to cast a spell that will allow him to impose his will on the world. He says that this particular spell was cast twice before in the history of Aranna, but the Ancestor of the Azunites says that neither casting had the intended effect; we aren't told what exactly happened.
• Not So Above It All: When the Azunite Scholar turns out to be the Overmage of the Cinbri, he chides Valdis for thinking he's Zaramoth Reborn. Later, when you fight and kill the Overmage in Broken World, he shouts "NOOOO! But this is impossible! I am Zaramoth!"
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Since the Player Character is named by the player, they are always referred to as "the mercenary" in voiced dialogue.
• The Plague: A plague that's spread by bites is ravaging the Dryads' island. It's actually Demonic Possession.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Taar and Deru are two dryads in II who can join your party. Taar's a softspoken, kindhearted nature mage, and Deru's a Hot-Blooded, abrasive archer.
  • Taar and Finala, being the default mages of the party. Befitting to her calm and gentle temperament, Taar is a Nature Mage, and the temperamental and no-nonsense Finala is a Combat Mage.
  • Likewise with the warrior half-giants of the party: Lothar is calm, soft-spoken, and humble, while Sartan is eager, boisterous, and always think highly of himself.
• Token Evil Teammate: The Blood Assassin Ressa, in the form of a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
• Treetop Town: The Dryads live in one.
• True Companions: Although there is a limited interactions between potential companions due of its limitation in regards to recruitment, they show but good camaraderie towards one another despite their differences. This shows in the epilogue that narrates their fate, such as Taar and Deru helping Evangeline rebuild her kingdom.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: In Broken World, even though a lot of peoples' friends and loved ones have been turned into murderous Bound creatures and insane Rogue Magi, said people still get mad at you for killing the Bound creatures. As a matter of fact, only the first questgiver in the game sees the wisdom of what you needed to do.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Much of the first few parts of act 1 are spent having characters chew you out for being Valdis' stooge. Oddly enough, once you get back to your hometown, the only one who antagonizes you over it is the resident Jerkass (though not without a reason).
• World-Wrecking Wave: A thousand years before, when the Sword of Zaramoth shattered the Shield of Azunai, it caused one of these, burning the entire southern half of Aranna into a vast desert that became known as "The Plane of Tears" and ended the First Age.

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Dungeon Siege III

• Anti-Villain:Jeyne is more delusional than evil.
• Bag of Sharing: Dungeon Siege III allows any character to access the shared inventory at any time. Also, to a certain degree, the storage chests in II, which can all access the same inventory regardless of which town you are in.
• Becoming the Mask: Jeyne Kassynder falls under this as she initially calls herself "The Living Saint of Azunai" in order to gain support from the church in her crusade against the 10th Legion. She secretly still worships the Archon's Creator Gods but eventually begins to believe her own propaganda thus beginning her leap over the edge.
• Brother–Sister Team: Lucas and Katarina.
• Came Back Wrong: This is what happens when one tries to resurrect a creator god with the intention of using it to destroy.
• Canon Name: In III, we learn a bit about the canonical PC of DS I — no first name, she's referred to as either "the farmer" or "Lady Montbarron". She's also the ancestor of Lucas and Katarina.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: When it's revealed that the Dapper Old Gent, a terrorist who's the Arc Villain of the Stonebridge storyline is actually a former Legion mage you are given the choice of having him join the Legion at the cost of betraying the Reasonable Authority Figure who's been helping you take him down.
• Continuity Nod: The third game is full of them.
  • You can plunder the crypt of the heroes of the first game.
  • When trying to guess a password for a magickal door, your character will come up with several references to enemies from the first game.
• Corrupt Church: According to all the stories Azunai was a pretty swell guy, his Church is a whole other matter. The Azunite Church appears to want complete and unquestioned domination of Ehb. So it appears that they stoked Jeyne's ego a bit and let her believe her own propaganda and even gave her an army. They have her declared Apostate and try to have her killed when she decides to give up her attempt to rule Ehb and help rebuild the Legion for all the evil she did.
• Deadpan Snarker: Lucas is not afraid to let loose with this whenever he's the active sidekick during conversations.
• Elemental Punch: Reinhart's standard attack in his Dynamic stance is a lightning-punch powered by his magic gauntlet. Anjali's last move on her string of standard attacks while in her Human stance is a fire-punch.
• Escort Mission: III has a fun one: You have to keep four unkillable (but not undefeatable) sentinels occupied so they don't kill Phineas. The sentinels prioritize you, it's a more or less stationary fight and it's not long, so it doesn't outstay its welcome.
• Evil Uncle: It's revealed that Jeyne is Queen Rosalyn's aunt.
• Face–Heel Turn: The Dapper Old Gent.
• Formulaic Magic: Reinhart's specialty is being good enough at math to kill people.
• Full-Contact Magic: Reinhart uses a Power Fist and is able to channel entropic magic.
• Genre Savvy: If Reinhart isn't the chosen player character, he states that he didn't come to the gathering in the beginning because he could tell that it was an obvious trap. He then apologizes for accidentally insulting you.
• Gonk: One of the quests in the third game involves dealing with a particularly ugly human who everyone thinks is a Krug and is the victim of misaimed Fantastic Racism because of it. Because of this he's chosen to hide in a jailcell to avoid dealing with people.
• The Gunslinger: Katarina dual-wields a Handcannon and a shotgun in close quarters and uses a rifle for range.
• Heel Realization: You can cause this for Jeyne by pointing out that Hugh Montbarron didn't come to the Mournweald to ambush her but for a place to hide. This, more than anything, makes Jeyne realize that her entire quest for revenge was pointless and she essentially killed her own Creator Gods with her own selfish pride.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Several characters/NPCs in III, most prominently Lucas. Interestingly averted with Anjali, although only the late-game helmets are actually displayed, otherwise she just has helmet hair.
• Heroic Bastard: Katarina
• Hot Witch: Leona and Katarina.
• Incendiary Exponent/Kill It with Fire/Woman on Fire/Wreathed in Flames: Anjali and most archons.
• In Name Only: III has many controversial departures from the previous titles' gameplay.
• Jeanne d'Archétype: Jeyne Kassynder is a villainous example.
• Judgment of Solomon: You can do this to settle a land dispute for a quest.
• Kill the God: You fight a corrupted creator god as the Final Boss.
• Knight Templar: Jeyne Kassynder.
• Man Behind the Man: The Azunite Church appears to want to put Jeyne Kassynder on the throne so that they can be this to her.
• Mecha-Mooks: Stonebridge has an army of these. They tend to be very sarcastic.
• Mercy Rewarded: Spare Rajani, and she'll eventually realize how crazy Jeyne is and help you defeat her.
• More Dakka: Katarina's final ability with her rifle.
• My God, What Have I Done?: You can inflict one of these on Jeyne Kassynder after you defeat the corrupted Creator God by asking her why the Mournweald allowed Hugh Montbarron and his Legionnaires in. You then proceed to point out that they were only looking for shelter and the Creator Gods granted their request. Jeyne realizes she essentially betrayed her own Gods in her blind quest for revenge when she used the Seed of Creation to kill Hugh Montbarron. She subsequently realizes that her entire quest was pointless and she essentially killed her Gods over a petty grudge.
  • You can also tell her that the gods allowed Montbarron's army in as a test of faith for Jeyne, to see if she would put her mortal desire for revenge above her commitment to her gods.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Anjali, the playable archon. Nearly every other archon swore allegiance to Jeyne, Anjali was raised seperately and joins the legion, which pits her frequently against her sisters.
• Mysterious Waif: The Radiant Youth. It is implied that he may be Azunai.
• One-Winged Angel: Rajani and Jeyne reveal their true forms when they are faced with enough pressure.
• The Paragon: Dungeon Siege 3's heroes, depending of your play style. Play your cards right and at the end, every faction they met will follow them. Hell, you can even convince a bloodthirsty genocidal borderline psychopath to tone down her hatred for your faction, repent for her crimes, and make her work for you.
• The Purge: In DS 3, the 10th Legion and their descendants are hunted down due to their role in a palace coup 30 years ago.
• Razor Wind: Lucas' Wind Shear ability will unleash a wave of air towards his foes.
• Relationship Values: Your companions each have their own Influence stat that can increase depending on your dialogue choices, and getting their influence high enough will grant you stat bonuses. Interestingly, while they can and will call you out if they disagree with your choices, you can't actually lose Influence. Each companion has their own general leanings for Influence.
  • Lucas is a Knight in Shining Armor who believes in fighting for justice and obeying the letter of the law.
  • Anjali is a Pragmatic Hero who favors swift, brutal justice for anyone who opposes the Legion and really wants Jeyne and her minions dead for what they did to her people.
  • Katarina is a Loveable Rogue who approves of cunning, sly choices that ensure big rewards.
  • Reinhart is a Nice Guy and Deadpan Snarker who approves of being a smartass and choices that help improve the power and publicity of the Legion.
• Reincarnation: Near the end of the story, it turns out that Anjali is the reincarnation of an old friend of Rajani, who died when the archons first came to Ehb. The Radiant Youth speculates that it may have been a plan on the part of the Creator Gods
  • Jeyne tries to pull something similar. It isn't pretty.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Jeyne's massacre of the entire 10th Legion is basically revenge for the murder of her father, the King.
  • Also, The Dapper Old Gent is a former Legion mage who's been waging an underground guerrilla war on Stonebridge.
• Save the Villain: This is deconstructed. While sparing Jeyne gives the Legion a much needed PR boost, Jeyne herself either is imprisoned in a pitch black prison cell forever, lets herself be assassinated, gets exiled from the entire dimension forever, or is declared apostate by the Azunite Church.
  • You can also do this to The Dapper Old Gent, on the basis that as a Legion mage he'd be useful to have on your side.
• Sexy Backless Outfit: Anjali in Archon form, particularly in the artwork for III. Subverted in that it's not really a backless outfit, but her actual skin when in that form.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: III can be pretty idealistic... if you want it to be.
• Stance System: All four characters have two different stances they can switch between, each with their spells and different attack styles.
• Static Role, Exchangeable Character: The characters you don't choose show up later in the story to join up with you as companion characters with some reason as to why they weren't at the gathering in the beginning.
• The Stoic: Anjali, except for the occasional Black Comedy quip.
• Teleport Spam: Playing on Hardcore as Anjali or Reinhart.
• Undying Loyalty: Odo, Jeyne and the Gent in 3. Archons in general are also pretty devoted to their dead gods.
• Verbal Tic: Katarina tends to end her sentences with "yes?/no?"
• Violation of Common Sense/Gameplay and Story Segregation: In the third game, at one point you have to enter an area filled with volatile gases, which can be set off by the slightest spark, even if you're Anjali, who has no attacks which do not involve fire.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: All Jeyne wanted was justice for her father's murder.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Your current companion will call you out whenever you make decisions they disagree with. Most notably, agreeing to Roslyn's proposal to capture Jeyne alive instead of just killing her will earn you an earful from both Lucas (whose lost his entire family except for his half-sister to Jeyne) and Anjali (who is obsessed with getting revenge on Jeyne for her crimes).
• White-and-Grey Morality: Everyone has their reasons for doing what they do/did.

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