Dungeon Siege is a unique game in that you can play the entire game without a single loading screen.

The average playtime to beat it is around 28 hours with a low of around 8 and high of around 104.

The challenge is to beat the game in one play session.

Have you managed this feat?

I'd expect playing everyone as melee would make it faster as Melee levels up faster.

What do you say? Is anyone willing to take this challenge or know of any instance where this game was beaten in one sitting?

There are speedruns of the game, and it appears the world record is just barely under 2 hours.

So, maybe check out some speedruns of the game?

(Note that this forum is not one I regularly check, as my only copy of the game is one I got in college for free for a class, and I quit once I reached a ruined town after the previous town lacked any recruits of the class I needed to cover all classes in my party. Also, the game editor is horrendously buggy, with some options always causing the editor to crash.)

Did DS1 require 1 of each class for some quest requirement or is my memory fuzzy? or are we talking about DS2? I know DS2 had some class specific doors, mostly for just extra loot.

I currently have a save around 10 hrs in for DS1 and about 12+ hrs in for DS2, but maybe will get back to one or the other some day, so I'm curious.
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I just wanted to have all the classes represented in the party, after deciding that my main character would be a nature mage, and it was frustrating that the game wouldn't let me.

Reach town, no combat mage. Go through dungeon without one, reach next town, and it's in ruins, so no recruits so no combat mage. It's at that point that I rage quit.

I'm just a big fan of Dungeon Siege. I've played this game quite a bit but always got lost in the ice caverns. I guess I wanted to see the same kind of enthusiasm. I guess I could have watched a speed run but I always found them to be confusing. I did watch someone else talking about replaying the game and he had talked about how he played the game and postulated how it would be to play the game in one sitting.

Please note that skipping areas by using bugs always bugged me and I would not consider that a true run.

I see where you're coming from now. I suppose the devs could have sprinkled a few more companion or merc NPCs in the world. After all, the first one you meet is in a dungeon.

Maybe a dev in the future will make a Dungeon Siege-like game while addressing all the shortcomings of the original DS1 and make all our wishes come true or close to it.

No game will ever be perfect, so long as it's made by human beings or the fact that every customer has their own unique perspective on what they consider is perfect lol.

Thankfully there are devs of rpg games out there these days that take customer feedback seriously. (ex. Stellar Tactics)
. I always found it hard to do speed runs in games personally. It would certainly require a replay. I'm too much of a 100% explorer type when it comes to games. I don't know if I could do it for DS1, but I do sometimes watch speedruns for some games.

I give props to the people who have the fortitude to finish any game in one sitting. Maybe if I was younger I could sit that long to do it lol.
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I disagree. I think that runs that skip major parts of the game using bugs to be just as valid as those that avoid using glitches, provided that they're listed as separate categories. (I could easily beat the world record marathon time if I only had to do a short sprint, and I'm not athletic, but nobody would try and put that time on the same leaderboard as marathon times.)

Glitched playthroughs aren't necessarily easy. In particular:
* Some glitches are not so easy to pull off, sometimes requiring precise positioning or timing. Furthermore, getting the glitch wrong can result in character death or, worse, a softlock/
* In games with growth systems (like Dungeon Siege), skipping part of the game means skipping the experience and treasure in such areas. As a result, you end up being lower level than you would be in an un-glitched run, so unless you're able to glitch high stats (or similar) or are able to trigger the ending early, the later part of the game (post-glitch) can be quite challenging.
* Some glitches have side effects that might make playing the game difficult. (Zelda 2 is an example of this; you glitch the game into a state that, among other things, causes the graphics to not match what's actually there, so things like pits become invisible.) I'm not into speedrunning myself, but:
* I like watching speedruns. I find the routing interesting, as well as the glitches.
* Sometimes I use speedrun-like strats when I'm playing the games. For example, in Bard's Tale 1 I actually don't go into the wine cellar until after I get a certain key, and that cellar is meant to be the first dungeon. (I've already cleared 3 dungeons at the point I go into the cellar.)

@dtgreene
well, I very much disagree with you. Glitching a game is nothing more than cheating. Glitch is not meant to be in a game. It is an unwanted side effect of developing. To me, it's similar to use drugs in sport.

As for the battle mage class, couldn't you rebrand other recruits to it? I did that in my gameplay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx7kqbGT8nc

I will try some speed run sooner or later, but not for the world record, just to see how low with hours I can go.

That is the wonderful thing about single player games. We can all play the way that gives us the most enjoyment and be happy for those who do it differently! I mod the heck out of a lot of my games and enjoy them!

I strongly disagree. Glitches are part of the game, can be good or bad, and frequently make the game more interesting.

Just because the developers didn't intend something doesn't mean it's "cheating" to use it.

To me, cheating is only when the game is actually being modified in some way; playing the game as is, even with heavy glitching, isn't cheating.

Also, sometimes a game is more fun with glitches; Zelda: A Link to the Past is one example of a game that I don't really enjoy much unless I use glitches to sequence break.

(A "sequence break" is any trick that allows a game to be played in an order other than what the developers intended, or what the developers guide the player towards.)

(Also, a bad aspect of a game might not be a glitch; I can cite Morrowind's super potion exploit (which allows you to grow your state exponentially) as an example here, as well as the time in Final Fantasy 6 that I encountered a non-glitch softlock.)

@dtgreene
All you said is about cheating. You just confirmed my theory about glitches.

Dungeon Siege (DS1) can be played single player or "multiplayer".

(Mine is a retail CD copy; I hope GoG's version does multiplayer.)

Multiplayer has three options: Zonematch, Internet and Network. The zonematch servers aren't there any more. Internet option may have problems these days with firewalls and anti-virus software. If you have a PC and a router you have a minimalist network and should be able to solo a "multiplayer" game by making yourself the host.

Multiplayer is a dumbed-down version of the game in that each player (of 1 to 8) controls only a single character, no formation controls and no pack mules, and that we cannot just reload anywhere we've saved, only at specific points (usually towns - my memory is a bit hazy on this). The great advantage, though, is that we can choose to import a character from a previous saved game - single player or multiplayer.

So play the single player game through. Import your lead character into a solo multiplayer (Kingdom of Ehb again, the official multiplayer map - Utraean Peninsular - or even a downloaded fan-made map) to keep improving. If your character is good enough - l believe level 54 or 55, if you are the host, which in a solo multiplayer you must be - you've unlocked Veteran mode, which scales up all the monsters so you can keep gaining levels at a decent rate, and should also find better items to equip.

Anyway, once you have a character up to say level 75, or 80, fire up multiplayer, start a new game, Kingdom of Ehb, Regular, importing that character. Run past all the monsters ignoring most of them, except those we must kill to unlock the way ahead, until you reach Gom. Then kill him.

Would this count as fulfilling the single-session challenge?