Have a good many of you actually PLAYED Dungeon Siege?
People are hoping DS3 won't be hack and slash. Every other DS was.
People are hoping DS3 won't be a "tunnel run". Uhm, "Dungeon" Siege :p
It would be like saying "I hope Fallout 4 gets rid of that stupid wasteland setting" or "I hope that Quake 5 isn't another stupid first person shooter".

Like Fallout 3 ended up being turn based isometric cRPG? ;-p Games can both evolve and degenerate (like happened in FO3 case, it ended up as 'yet another stale shooter with slight RPG elements' aka oblivion with guns) over time. Dungeon Siege 3 could well be an RTS about sieging dungeons :-p. Joking aside, Obsidian really should try something different with DS3 as neither of the previous two games had neither good sales nor reviews. It could even be something simple as optional paths to destination, wider tunnel allowing bit of exploration etc.

I'm yet to see what all the fuss with AP is about. It's an open spy game, yes? Something like Covert Action or SpyCraft perhaps? Or more action oriented thing?
Well, if they cannot be pleased, nor forced to port it, someone else will. Ultima prevails. ;D
I've always used Ultima as this unfair benchmark for RPGs, with all it's "can you camp in this house, can you kill him, can you open that, move that, loot that... what? no? meh.". That's what i look for in an RPG... my adventure, my choices, DS was a HNS without the open space and procedurally created world. I once said somewhere, perhaps not on GOG, Lazarus is [perhaps the best RPG remade on the engine of the [possibly] worst rpg ever.;)
BUT, it would be awesome, if they DID something as open as Ultima, but, alas they would have to call it something different than DS3. ;>
All hopes lie in the mod kits and in the skillful hands of modders. ;)
And again, we'll buy DS just to play it's mods.
[Kinda like with Crysis and Living Legends.;P]

It's more a case of whether or not it gets those patches. Or indeed the entire half of the game they forgot to include at launch.

A little harsh. Obsidian are more than happy to service their games when a publisher is willing to bankroll it. Look at Neverwinter Nights 2. It's when publishers like Lucasarts are in charge we get the whole "It's done, kick it out the door and forget about it" attitude. Bethesda are likely to want to sell DLC for Fallout: NV so we can expect plenty of patches. It remains to be seen what Sega's attitude is to Alpha Protocol.

Damn. I must be one of those few who love Dungeon Siege 2...
This is great news, at least for me. :)

Not really. If they had any grasp of project management they would have decreased the scope of the game long before they started on it.
If Lucasarts wanted a rapid follow up to KOTOR then naturally it's going to be a far shorter game. That much was clear from the start. But Obsidian simply don't know when to reign themselves in and be realistic about it. They had a deadline. It wasn't brought forward, but it was nonetheless missed by a mile. That's Obsidian's fault.
Just like with New Vegas. It's being produced in bugger all time (for a game of that nature), but it's supposed to be bigger and more complex than Fallout 3. That's why I don't have much hope for it. No hope at all, if I'm honest.
Edit: oh and did you notice how Bethesda only ever patched the game when a DLC was due? Patched it with the achievements for it, that is. Major bugs in that game were never addressed. Probably because they stopped producing DLC. The DLC itself was also never patched.

Well there are the community patches. Weird thing is that Bethesda did not fix the bugs even when community patch team provided both bug technical details and how both reproduce them and fix them to Beth dev team; more like the reports were completely ignored.

That is a valid point. Obsidian tend to behave like a super-developer like BioWare or Valve but they aren't. They have deadlines to meet and they never seem to meet them because they are too busy dreaming about the next innovation they can put in the game. In an ideal world they would be up there with the massive developers that are allowed to indulge their muse.
It's fine when a publisher is willing to indulge them like Atari were. Mask of the Betrayer was regarded better than the original NWN2. However when a publisher is only interested in getting a game out and shock horror making a profit then it all falls apart in the buggy unfinished mess that was KOTOR2.
They need the right publisher and it remains to be seen how Sega and Bethesda will handle them.

They also need the right internal management. I know the talent is there. But the direction seems off. Like you said, a little too much day dreaming, too little reality. The 'disgruntled employee' complaint posted on GOG not so long ago does ring true because of this.
Sega seem to give them the time they need. But did they use that time to fix the problems with Alpha Protocol? Did they hell.

The community has been responsible for elevating Bethesda's games to greatness since Morrowind. Why did Bethesda ignore them? Either because they have their schedule which is now focussed on their next big game, or because it's generally impossible for them to support community produced content without doing so causing problems.

Feargus Urquhart does seem to be the polar opposite of Bobby Kotick. While Kotick is interested in grinding people into hell to get a game delivered on launch day, Urquhart seems to be more about 'the craft' and 'we can always patch that later'. While I prefer Urquhart's attitude it must be said that the last person to talk about 'the craft' was John Romero and we all know how Ion Storm ended up.
I would not be opposed to seeing a bastard get hired in Obsidian because they do need a boot up the arse now and then.

I agree - Loved It.

Ion Storm did at least bring us Anachronox, Deus Ex and Theif 3. But yes, they were another massively mismanaged company that made mistakes reminiscent of 3D Realms. Only not to the same degree.

Well, I really was disappointed with DS2 but I loved DS1 and I played it for years.