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[UPDATE 8/7: For those who heard that the "Diablo III" art director has resigned and are wondering how that affects the game's look, check out our full report.]
For some die-hard “Diablo” fans, signing a petition protesting “Diablo III“’s decidedly new and colorful art direction wasn’t enough; they went ahead and made their own mock-ups for how they think the game should look.
When I sat down with lead “Diablo III” designer Jay Wilson last week we talked about why the team chose to go with the new, brighter color palette versus the older games’ dark, desaturated look.
Then I showed him some fan-altered screenshots that had all been posted on the petition to see what he thought.
So to the “Diablo” fans who aren’t sold on the colorful art style of the new game, read on to see what Blizzard thinks, pros and cons, of your suggested screenshots…
#1 - Light Radius on Witch Doctor in Dungeon (Blizzard shot followed by fan-altered shot)
Jay Wilson, Designer of “Diablo III”: The key thing to remember here is that this has been Photoshopped. This isn’t created by the engine. Though it looks really cool, it’s almost impossible to do in a 3D engine because you can’t have lighting that smart and run on systems that are reasonable. If we could do that, we probably would in a few of the dungeons.
Now in terms of the actual texturing, this texturing, where they grayed out everything and it’s very flat and the monsters are all kind of a similar tone — that does not play well. It’s very boring to run through more than a couple of times, and it’s very difficult to tell creatures apart and pop them out of the environment. So those things don’t really work for us. A lot of the lighting stuff I think is very cool, but it’s also not very doable for us.
#2 — Witch Doctor in Dungeon (Blizzard shot followed by fan-altered shot)
Wilson: It becomes really hard to see all the profiles. Look at the tables and see how hard it is to see the profiles of those.
And one of the things that I actually would argue about something like this is that it’s completely against “Diablo II.” If you look at the spell effects in “Diablo II,” they’re very over-the-top. To gray out the actual spell effects, to me it’s pulling out all the vibrancy and interest out of them and really going against a lot of “Diablo II” philosophy.
#3 — Barbarian in Outside Environment Fighting Skeletons (Blizzard shot followed by fan-altered shot)
Wilson: I will say I wouldn’t be surprised if we had areas in the game that had this kind of texturing in the background. They’ll probably be later in the game because they’ll be darker, but again, the biggest problem here is that the silhouettes don’t stand out enough.
And it’s easier [to see] in this shot because you’ve only got skeletons, but if there are three other types of creatures in there — which is not uncommon — and give them all that same desaturated tone, you won’t be able to play the game very well.
#4 – Barbarian on the Bridge… And Rainbows (Blizzard shot followed by fan-altered shot)
Wilson: More rain? It’s funny because if you watch later on in the [debut gameplay] video, we have more rain. It is much stronger than that. I’m sure they got rid of the rainbow. Yeah, rainbow — gone. I think our artist just put [the rainbow] in there because they knew that’d be controversial. And I’m sure they were like, “Well we’ll see how far we can push it.”
MTV Multiplayer: Just to be clear, are we going to see a lot more rainbows during the game?
Wilson: [laughs] After the announcement, one of our environment artists went to the darkest area in Act One and put a giant rainbow across the whole area. No, you’re probably not going to see a ton of rainbows. But we don’t think the one that’s in there is that big a deal. You know it’s like, it’s a waterfall. My favorite [criticism] is the one that analyzed the light refraction angle, and told us why from that angle seeing a rainbow would actually be impossible. Oh yeah, and it was upside down because the colors were reversed. And we’re like, “This is a whole different world than ours! Who’s to say that light refracts the same in the Diablo world?” [laughs]
We don’t think it’s that big a deal; we just think it adds a lot of interest to that scene. We don’t have specific plans to fill “Diablo” with rainbows. It’s not like we restarted the project and were like “Diablo III — now with rainbows!” Although I will say the pitch that I originally did, once we decided what we were going to do, said “Diablo III — now with pants.” Because we added a pants slot.
#5 – “How It Should Look Like” (Blizzard shots followed by fan-altered shots)
Wilson: A lot of this change is adding noise to the screen. If [the characters] weren’t centered on the screen — like find the witch doctor. Especially think about him as a friend [in co-op play]. Standing over there, you can’t even tell the difference between him and the zombie. And that’s another player, and when you can’t tell the player apart from the creature, that’s horrible.
You’ve got to think that there’s potentially up to seven other people in addition to yourself, and several dozen monsters. All that noise just translates into unplayable, especially when this starts moving. This texturing was actually very similar to one of our previous art styles. But when you started moving and the whole screen just kind of shimmers, you can’t really tell anything that’s going on.
MTV Multiplayer: So you ultimately decided to change the art direction only after play-testing the game?
Wilson: Yes. Because this is how we remember what “Diablo II” was like as well. This is what we were thinking what “Diablo II” looks like. And then we played through, and we were like this isn’t very fun. And then we started going, “Why was ‘Diablo II’ so much more fun?” And some of the Blizzard North guys [the team that made 'Diablo I' and 'II'] knew why right away. They were like, “Well, because we didn’t make all the areas like this.” And if you think about even the areas they did, the creatures were really bright. Like in the gray and dark dungeons, those are the places that you run into the ghosts who were almost like glowing brightness, and that was so that they would stand out from the backgrounds.
#6 – “Necromancer’s Choice and WoW Gayness” (Fan-altered shot followed by Blizzard shot)
Wilson: I think one of the things that these lack is if you stuck every one of these re-done shots right next to each other you would not be able to tell that they’re in different areas. One of the things that’s key to “Diablo II” — and I’ve gone through and done timing on it — it changes environments every 15 minutes, and every 45 minutes they give you an environment that looks completely different than one you’ve ever seen before. And when they change environments, the contrast is huge. It’s like I’m in green lush fields, and now I’m in the darkest dungeon you’ve ever seen. I’m in a bright sandy desert, and now I’m in a completely dim mummy tomb. There are these vast shifts in look, and it’s one of the things that keeps people interested in playing the game.
It’s a very simple game, and [you need to ] constantly vary what you throw at the player — big look changes in the environment, creature changes with different behavior. And not just behavior; we spent a lot of time trying to make creatures show up and die more interestingly. Because those are all the things that keep you going. Each one of those things is a reward. When you pull all the color out of the environment and you make it too homogeneous across the game, essentially what you’re doing is you’re pulling away the player’s reward of feeling like they’ve progressed because the area they’re in now looks like the area they were in 30 to 45 minutes ago.
So that’s one of the reasons why we really felt we had to do this. We had to move to an art style that had a lot more variety in it and was capable of a lot more.
[All images were posted on the "Renewed artistic direction for Diablo 3" petition.]
Related Posts
‘Diablo III’ Color Controversy Update: Game Used To Be Darker, Dev Says ‘There’s No Going Back Now’
‘Diablo III’ Producer Justifies Controversial Art Direction: ‘Color Is Your Friend’
August 4th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
the game looks very nice as it is. if people keep bitching about this is because they have no life. period. STOP WHINING PEOPLE.
August 4th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Photoshop is fun
If they (over zealous, pale skinned, fans) want this game a certain way, maybe it’d be more productive to stop signing electronic petitions from a computer chair, get a few Grants and Loans, and go to school to be a game dev. The developers with 3d software and all that, who know the business and what they are doing, or the guys with photoshop who make signatures and avatars and think they are Leonardo Davinci. Just play the damn game, or make your own, or at least photoshop something important…like airbrushing Paris’ blemishes…pfft.
August 4th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
arrogant ignorant i will pee on your faces “designer”
August 4th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
@Airdom:
I agree. The game looks fantastic as it is. I cannot stand the recent trend of desaturization! Gears of War looks terrible. Everything is just brown and grey. Let’s not make more of that, thanks.
August 4th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I gotta say, as someone who’s never played any of the Diablo games, those altered shots (though, in fairness, produced in photoshop and not using the actual game engine) look more appealing to me than the almost cartoony color palette of the originals. Specifically “Necromancer’s Choice” actually — the blue versus the blackness (of the altered shot) is a striking and important difference. Should Blizzard go back and recolor the game? Hell no. Doesn’t mean these shots are all bad ideas though.
August 4th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Well I think Diablo 3 does look a little too warcrafty, its not too bad.
But seriously, these designers are nitpicking at these altered shots.. some of them actually look way cooler IMHO
August 4th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Why do these fans want the game to look like Killzone 2? We don’t need any more games with no color!
August 4th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Diablo III? All I’m seeing in theses screenshots is WoW from a top-down view.
August 4th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
There is Warcraft influence and that is my main problem, they even reused a sound effect that was incredibly out of place in Diablo from Warcraft 3
August 4th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
This is a trend we’ve been seeing for a lot of films where people complain and flame something because it’s not what they think it should be. So because the product is not what they think it should be, it’s a bad product. Enjoy the game for what the developers envisioned and not what you in your holiness think it should be.
August 4th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
“So to the “Diablo” fans who aren’t sold on the colorful art style of the new game, read on to see what Blizzard thinks, pro and con, of seven of your suggested screenshots…”
i only see 6 of those 7 suggestions.
August 4th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
You will play this game.
People should stop complaining. The demonstration is awesome and I love that Blizzard is giving feedback on the screen shots. Sure the game is going to be more vibrant but from the looks of it, I think it will remain evil. And to those that think it looks a lil Wow-ish… well Duh, this is Blizzard?!
Doesn’t anyone remember that Diablo I and II have not aged well???
Sure its a different color pallete but I have a feeling this game will feel different no matter the area.
Good job Blizzard! Thanks for responding to these idiots even though you really didn’t need to.
August 4th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Diablo 3 more like World of Diablo 3 Craft: Wrath of the Crayola-Box amirite?
August 4th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
@Tim: I wouldn’t worry about a Warcraft sound in it at this point. It’s not even in beta. Use of pre-existing placeholder sound effects and sometimes artwork let them mock things up faster, play through them, see how they work, and then put in the requests for the final proper assets without constantly having to redo them as the design changes.
A great example of this is Dalaran in the WotLK beta. A few patches ago it was heavily existing models with [PH] on them. Now alot of those are replaced with more final revisions which fit with the city as a whole.
I think alot of these people are forgetting that the map of Sanctuary that’s been explored in D1 (Tristram only), and D2 (a lot more) is looking to be a small bit of what we’ll see in D3. If the whole world was as dank and dreary throughout, I can’t imagine there’d be alot of people who would fight to keep it from the darkness.
August 4th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Thanks for the interesting interview. Blizzard certainly has a touchy title on their hands - none of their other offerings comes anywhere close to Diablo II in terms of longevity, replayability, and dedicated fan base.
Yes, WoW enjoys huge market share & following, but there are still people playing Diablo II online numbering in the hundreds of thousands, ten years later.
It is really saying something when a game that ran on a Voodoo5 graphics card enjoys more playing time on my rig than Crysis, COD4, WoW, et al, combined.
It will be very difficult for Blizzard to both (1) make a true next installment of the series, one that both satisfies the lowest common denominator from a PC-hardware standpoint but also seems “nex-gen”, and (2) does not disappoint their most dedicated fans.
I think the biggest key to D3’s success will not be related to the color scheme. It will be how much Blizzard openly embraces the true ‘laissez faire’ nature of the D2 game & economy. If Blizz inserts WoW-derived “controls” into the game to keep out bots, duping, etc (like soulbound items, rolling for loot, etc), and if they push the focus too much towards guilds, they will not see the success of D2. Guilds + limitations = failure. They need to know Diablo II fans have drastically different desires in a game than WoW fans. Most true Diablo II fans really actually hate WoW. That hardwired hatred is a secondary reason for the fanboi screencap photoshops.
August 4th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
ok, so idk about you but the altered screenshots look allot more like diablo 1 and 2 to me, but according to wilson the darker more ominous look of the altered screenshots would make the game less enjoyable, yet i recall reading a few minutes ago that 1 and 2 sold 18.5 MILLION copies! people obviously dont care, or like it better darker. thats just my 2 cents but im not gonna let the cartoonish art style stop me from getting it when its released as i loved the first 2, although they had better prevent hacking in this one as that was a major problem in 2
August 4th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Rather it look like the game does now than the under-lit, limited color palette, washed out, grainy photoshops that were produced. That kind of artwork is a cop-out when it comes to game art.
I wouldn’t want to play a game where I feel like my character needs night vision goggles, or that I have to crank the gamma up.
As for “Necromancer” of “Necromancer’s choice”, the moment you start referring to someone elses artistic design choices as “gayness”, you lose any respect and credibility and deserve nothing more than to be outright ignored. Grow up.
It’s still very difficult to even get close to photorealistic graphics these days (both from a GPU power standpoint and an art creation standpoint), so some developers pull a cop out and go with sepia tones, film grain post effect, and lack of lighting. Blizzard acknowledges that a game does not need photorealistic graphics, comes up with an art style, and goes all out with it.
August 4th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
At this point there are a lot of Diablo fans out there that are simply upset that a game they feel is theirs is undergoing a transformation. The fact is that Diablo, as a product, doesn’t belong to the players and the developers are in a far better position to analyze the visual needs of Diablo III and alter the art style as required.
The fans of many series really only ever seem to want minor gameplay tweaks and a visual improvement that will bring the game up to snuff with the rest of the current gaming market. In short, they want the same game with a fresh coat of paint. It doesn’t even have to be a different color paint, just a coat that fills in the cracks and makes the game fresh again. So when that paint color changes from red to green instead of from red to cherry the fans get upset because they apparently know better than the developers and cry “that’s not how it’s supposed to be!”
August 4th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
I lol’d at the “WoW gayness” pic
But nevertheless, the fan made pics look awesome. The original are ok.
I get what the designers want to do, but still looks cartoonish like WoW. Sure, there will be some “darker places”, but the game overall won’t be what Diablo has been.
August 4th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I agree that character silhouettes are important in distinguishing the player from enemies/terrain, and that plants outside are sometimes green, but in a dungeon it really shouldn’t be that colorful. Theres other ways to generate contrast than rainbow colors. As for the lighting thing, that just sounds lazy. We do have the technology for that advanced lighting, and if it’s too hard on some people’s computers just make it an option that can be turned off. It sounds like they are spiteful towards their fanbase which is bad for everyone.
August 4th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
What I wonder is, will the servers suck as much as every other online blizzard game, or did they learn how to use the money we pay to limit how many people per server can play on it?
It nothing has changed with their servers, count me out of this. It got old in the 90s getting kicked then dying, what makes people still play these games when it’s still happening today?
August 4th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
People convinced the game isn’t “dark” enough must have been beaten as children. There’s already blood and guts everywhere, and the entire scene is cloaked in shadows. To suggest that the usage of “color” is somehow an affront to their sensibility just suggests a psychological disorder of some kind.
August 4th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
I agree with both sides…it would appear Diablo 3 is losing the “death-darkly-evil” aspect. Looking more like WoW, that is not surprising, but there should be a negotiation. I dont want effing teletubby coloring surrounding my deadly enemies, but I dont want the same drab dungeons over and over as mentioned by the Blizzard guy.
I have played and enjoyed every Blizzard product since WC2 and have never been disappointed. Keep them coming!
August 4th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
So many developers seem to adhere to the “next-gen is brown” philosophy. It’s nice to see a developer working on a title and NOT deciding that they need to completely desaturate everything.
August 4th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Did all of these fans just discover the Photoshop sharpen tool? It’s easy to criticize when all you have to do is run the brush across the whole image a few times…
August 4th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I find Jay’s counter-criticisms legit and important (esp. regarding variety and desaturation), but I think he’s too quick to brush off the basic idea of having a more gritty look.
The saturation can stay without being all soft-n-fuzzy, and perhaps the high-contrast look of the mockups could be leveraged for gameplay purposes, rather than being a handicap. (Contrast is good, right?)
August 4th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
As a former Diablo II player. I love what I’ve seen of Diablo III such far. It is brighter, and more 3D, but it still feels like Diablo, and not Warcraft (thank god).
My only hope is that they keep Hardcore alive. One of my biggest gripes with WoW, and most of the MMORPGs out there is that when you die, nothing happens.
Yeah, it sucked when my lvl 50 pet projects died after several weeks of development, but it just made the ones that lived all the more personally rewarding!
August 4th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
I think both parties have valid arguments. I don’t want to see another washed out greyed out game that you can’t tell the difference from monster to monster. But, then again i don’t want a game that looks just like wow. But these days it is hard to come up with a game that isn’t a blend of other games. I will say that the photoshopped designs look good but there is a much more savvy appeal to the orginals. It doesn’t look like your typical dungeon game which is nice and a new refreshing thing. As long as i can feel like i am in a dungeon without feeling like i have played this game before then i will be happy.
August 4th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
I’m going to play it.
August 4th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
I like turtles!
August 4th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
very simple solution for blizzard.
make 2 versions of the game.
diablo 3 - black
diablo 3 - white
black for saturated colors and white for the rainbows.
some will buy one and some will buy both, double the profits
August 4th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
What they really need to do is keep the characters and monsters colorful while making the backgrounds less bright, particularly when you look into a dark pit and see a colored haze instead of inky blackness. I understand the need to keep the characters and monsters bright, but the backgrounds/environment shouldn’t be so bright. Take the official screenshot characters with the fan-made versions backgrounds and you have a winning combo with the contrast the desingers rightfully say needs to be there without making the environment look so fakey…
August 4th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
while the fan-made “screenshots” definitely look appealing to me, they do because they’re stills. looking at them and imagining them in real gameplay, while they do add an air of spookiness i’ll have to concur with Blizzard’s design choice. i would certainly have a more difficult time picking out monsters from the environment as well as distinguishing between different monsters and other players.
there will the fans who complain and make fake screenshots, and then there are those who will buy and play the game and love it. i’ll bet there will be more of the latter.
August 4th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
I trust Blizzard to make badass games, not fans.
To me, Diablo III looks very much like Diablo II. Maybe these “hardcore” fans should go reinstall it so they can remember that sometimes Rakanishu was neon blue.
August 4th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
formula for altering images:
1) open image in photoshop
2) change hue
3) save.
4) whine about it.
August 4th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
if you want it to look like the later change the brightness of your monitor
August 4th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I love hearing people go insane criticizing about a game which isn’t even out yet.
August 4th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Having and still play d2 at this time.
I got to say, i agree with the designer, in some aspects and disagree in others.
In my view a blending of both, visual styles would be nice, yes add colors and variance in the surroundings but tone down the cartoony aspects a bit, beyond that im still going to try it when(lol) it comes out.
August 4th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
If you want it to look like that, just play in sunglasses…
August 4th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
I have been a long-time Diablo-2 addict. I knew for more than a year and a half that Diablo-III would show up, and as any fanatic would be - I was overly enthusiastic about it.
However, the closer we creep towards the release date, the less inclined I become to move over to D3. Instead I’ll probably be “Meph’ running on D2 ladder hell some more for them good drops!”
Ever since inception, I feel the game has been creeping towards the Teletubbies more and more. (no disrespect to these critters, they’re ideally suited for their market segment!) Diablo is meant to be dark, scary, breathing a terrific, horrific, scenery of a land decaying and cursed by the Prime Evils! (It’s not a freaking cartoon show!) Instead we saw a rainbow because Blizzard wanted ‘to see how far we can push it’. Beg pardon!? That sounds like the Mother Of All Paradigm Shifts!
No way the teletubbie WOW influences (up to the use of the Witch Docter where a Necromancer was required!) will lead to a real enhancement in my book.
From TFA I understood that the engine used isn’t flexible enough to use the filtering techniques that were used by fans, and that it’s really important to use over-the-top graphical effects for the spells.
Firstly, it’s ofcourse a lot of nonsense to say beforehand that you ‘cannot’ use filter techniques to get a dark atmopheric look in a game. Did Blizzard want to re-use too much WOW engine there?
‘cannot’ is a no-no in software development land. I should know, I code. ‘cannot fit in planning’ is more like the reality. What I read is that using the dark atmospheric filters was too much of a hassle to plan. Secondly, people **WILL** bear D2 in mind whilst looking at D3. It’s a follow-up! Ignoring the fans will undoubtedly lead to less sales.
Count me out, I’ll be saving up for something cooler, more mature, more sinister, than a teletubbies-remix of D2.
I fully agree with the statement that the screenshots look like WOW-gayness. Although it sounds puberal, maybe it’s downplaying it somewhat. If I were to give Blizzard one piece of advice that’d land I’d strongly suggest they get in touch with whoever photoshopped the images and hire him on the team to get the old vibe back..
/f a me on Europe (ladder and non). Acc’s eyolas
August 4th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
i’m a designer for interactive and movie stuff. and from a professional point of view the vivid toy-colors are quite childish and gay.
hey guy’s at blizzard: learn from hollywood - the industry evolved a few more years than you guys. and they moved on from gay all-colouful scenes we’re all were used to in the 80’s to sophisticated looks that create immersive experiences.
sure, they got a few more billions to throw in that fancy “lord of the rings”-look - but is it really THAT hard to get same tasteful color-grading-goodness?
August 4th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I rather disagree with the lead on whether or not this is even technically possible - it certainly is.
For the most part, the altered shots are a very basic process:
1. desaturate
2. tint brown
3. adjust levels
4. sharpen
5. vignette
1 through 3 can be done on the graphics card; in fact, most reasonably modern graphics cards (as far back as Radeon Mobility 9200) will do this in the driver… realtime.. no penalty.
The fourth would require a pixel shader.. or you can just disable anti-aliasing and/or reduce the texture filtering (pick a sharper filter). A pixel shader would incur a hit, the others actually speed things up.
The fifth would likely require a pixel shader as well - although I’ve seen many demos where some logo is embossed onto the gameplay.. in realtime. I don’t see why one couldn’t do that for the full screen.
Actually, an opacity-mapped poly right in front of the camera will certainly do the trick and save on expensive pixel shaders.
I don’t see what the problem is - if people want to play it that way, they can certainly do so for the most part already by messing with their graphics card’s drivers.
August 4th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I demand that Blizzard include a rainbow level in Diablo III! How else can you top the cow level from Diablo II? Now the Diablo has been sullied with rainbows you must allow the players to kick the crap out of them - banishing them from the game themselves.
August 4th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Looks like my comment didn’t get posted for some reason…
NEXT SCREEN/COMMENT
I agree 100%. It’s too processor intensive.
NEXT SCREEN/COMMENT
Scraping the barrel there… I don’t find it hard to see any profiles of tables… The tables and candles on the left stick out more in the edited image for me.
NEXT SCREEN/COMMENT
Disagree here. Silhouettes don?t stand out enough? Stinks of the previous answer.
On the other point, just because the ground textures are desaturated, it doesn’t mean the enemies have to be desaturated. Just look at that game called Diablo II. Maybe the devs of DIII haven’t played it. Those bright red Fallen were really hard to see in DII… NOT.
NEXT SCREEN/COMMENT
The guy spent 5 minutes in PS on that. Surely oh mighty Blizzard could figure something out.
He sort of underlines why I hate arty people. They choose colours/styles based on textbook reasons, instead of “because it looks good”. As long as they have their little textbook that says green means horror then they’ll use it and be in the clear.
August 4th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
There is no end to the amount of per-user color/contrast/gamma configuration that is at your fingertips.
This was the case 15 years ago, and it is *still* the case.
Set the gamma and contrast for Diablo III to what you like. Share these settings (likely some Windows registry key nonsense) with other anti-gayness color aficionados.
Leave the developers to the business of making the game better, not pleasing your panty-wasted color palette requirements.
You have 90-bagillion (give or take) color/brightness/contrast/gamma settings available.
Twiddle. Be happy.
August 4th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Airdom is wrong and obviously a WoW-freak. Those of us who have enjoyed the legacy of Diablo have been waiting this release for awhile.
We fans are simply stating what should be obvious to anyone with a somewhere other than their FPS trigger-fingers: Blizzard is selling-out to the success of WoW at the expense of they’re loyal audience.
Their responses are cookie-cutter B.S. to anyone with design experience and I hope they’re new coloring-book WoW knock-off flops. Change the freaking title and develop something that does the Diablo legacy justice.
August 4th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
The game looks too WoW-cartoonish for now, they need to adjust to the criticizm they got from their greatest fans. Making the animations less cartoonish will NOT make this game suck!!
August 4th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
The altered screenshots look more cinematic, but the originals are just fine. Remember that this is a video game; the visuals have to work for it. With the fan-altered look, it might be more appealing, sure, but it would be harder to play since it would be harder to see objects and enemies on the screen. Also, you’re playing the game, not spending a lot of the time admiring the visuals (at least I hope that’s the case!).
August 4th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
@diablo fan
Far less then double the profits. Making game art is very costly and a very involved process - hence art development times and cost will roughly double.
It also splits the player/fan base, which is bad. I could imagine all the “black” players putting down the “white” for colourful “gayness” and WoW look-alike, that they’re not playing a good game, where as the “white” would fight back, saying that their version is boring and there’s no variety to it.
Obviously that’s not a good thing.
I’m sure you’d remember Act 3 in D2. The starting forests are the most boring part of the game - it doesn’t change and just feels like a cheap rip-off from Act 1. It’s the most boring part of the game I feel, thanks to it being all the same. As Jay pointed out, changing all the dungeons to look the same, and same as the outside, is just a repeat of Act 3. Do you really want that to happen?
August 4th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
I do suppose a blend of each style would be best… People aren’t understand the “Diablo feel”. It’s not just about gothic unsaturated looks. It’s about bizarre and disturbing things. Think about the music in Diablo I, it’s just insane. For the graphics, Diablo II had contrast and was colorful. I believe the key is to have contrast between scenery and characters, but that doesn’t necessarily means color contrast. I think Dungeon Siege II, sucky as the ridiculous gameplay is, did look good as a pseudo-Diablo sequel. And it worked fine that way… Possibly that’s wh they’re taking this path: to keep DS and Diablo’s comparisons far, far away…