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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 5th, 2008 at 3:01 am
i had left a long comment here but the STUPID captcha failed and lost my entire comment. Get a decent web programmer, MTV.
So basically: good gameplay wins over graphics. These wankers who get off over shiny pixels need to go find a life. The atmosphere and gameplay of the game is what counts. If they mess that up though, to hell with them.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:03 am
While I’m rather liking the looks of the environments we’ve seen so far, I think some of the complaints are completely valid.
Shadowing as seen in the fan altered screenshot is entirely possible with multi-pass rendering, and at that scale it doesn’t have to be incredibly accurate, and so you can make it very quick to do, resulting in negligible performance hits, and even then you could always have it disabled via an option.
Removing the rainbow is just #$*##~??, its an environmental phenomena, and SHOULD be there in the correct circumstance, the only valid argument against the one seen in the gameplay trailer would be that it is the wrong way up given the perspective.
Lastly, some of the models seen in close ups are verging on that quality of geometry seen in WoW when it was *released*, which is just horrible.
Granted, I imagine most of the time the view will be zoomed out to the play area, but even semi modern game oriented pc’s can handle incredible amounts of triangles, on top of whatever post processing is going on, and I personally would rather not be slapped in the face with giant jagged edges whenever something is close to the player camera.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:04 am
Okay, this is what I wanted to say in my last comment that got f’d up by MTV.
Bioshock was a great looking game. It had great graphics, lighting, sound, and atmosphere. Now only if they had managed to pull out more than 30 minutes of original gameplay in it - so by the time you got to hour 3 of the game, you didn’t feel like you had been sucker punched into playing a demo game for the full price. Maybe it’s just me, but I expect more than 5 unique characters to be developed for something I’m going to play for more than an hour. Blizzard hopefully has learned this. But if they haven’t, damned them be.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:08 am
I agree with Blizzard, especially on the spell effects, I remember all the spells be way over the top and colorful and standing out like crazy. Also the game is dark but has more pop to it, dark and scary doesn’t always mean dull and drab
August 5th, 2008 at 3:17 am
There’s nothing like demonic bloodshed under bright blue skies.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:18 am
Thank God Blizzard isn’t listening to some stupid whiners.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:24 am
I had never seen these fan-made screens before. I don’t want to get flamed into oblivion, but I rather agree that the altered shots look scores better. They’re much more moody and in keeping with Diablo’s dour atmosphere.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:24 am
Same thing happened to me.
I was basically saying the same thing. Gameplay wins over everything, and making everything gray only hinders it.
If you’ve listened to anything the developers have said and aren’t an idiot, they’ve said they experimented with the art style. They’ve actually played D3 in both styles, so I think they knew what they were doing in selecting the art.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:26 am
Wah Wah Wah. Get over it. The game is going to be great despite it having more than 2 colors. So while you’re sitting in your mama’s basement shaking your clenched fist at the designers of this game and throwing a temper tantrum, I’ll be playing what is going to inevitably be an excellent game.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:29 am
Wow guys.
Does it really matter that much on the graphics? It looks good, and most people don’t care if it’s Warcraft 3/World of Warcraft. If the gameplay is awesome, then that’s really what matters. The graphics don’t make the game unplayable, so just deal with it.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:50 am
I think a halway compromise would appease the torch wielding masses. The altered shots are NICE, but it does need *some* colour.
I didn’t like WC3, cus its just too bloody bright and happy looking, and the same hopefully will not be true of D3.
What they have to consider, is that this is now the third installment of a game series, and they should follow on from 1 & 2, or call it something else and don’t trade off the name. Most of you may recall Deus Ex 2 and its plummet into the bedrock.
Gothic 1, 2 & 3 have kept very in line with the initial concept, and I just hope that they will slap the graphics people for Diablo 4 and tell them its not bloody Warcraft!
August 5th, 2008 at 4:15 am
the graphics look awesome, it shouldn’t be changed ( Personally I want to see my friend getting his head ripped off from that boss in the demo video xD ). The thing that I decide if a game is good is its storyline and gameplay. I don’t mind the graphics ( unless its polygonish or just plain ugly ).
August 5th, 2008 at 4:17 am
I for one love the new vibrant colours of Diablo III. The drabness of I and II were appropriate because the character was travelling though corrupted lands. From what I gather with this story is the that the hell fiends are on their way and not yet corrupted the beautiful landscape.
Besides those photoshoped pictures look terrible. Whats wrong with a little colour. Bring it on and make it good
August 5th, 2008 at 4:22 am
I hate to say it, but I for one am quite glad of the new approach to the artwork for D3. I also agree that there’s a heavy WC3/WoW influence judging by these screenshots, but in fairness I’m of a “do something even if it’s wrong” mentality, so I can hardly fault them.
When D1 came out I lined up along with everyone else to get my copy. I played it through in it’s entirety for 2 of the 3 character classes, defeating Diablo and watching the final cutscene. Then I quit. That was how long it took me to get bored with staring at the kind of stuff that is being suggested by the fan pics displayed above. And you know what else? It kept me from even looking at D2 while many of my friends happily put down their hard earned dollars, played it, enjoyed it, and talked to me about what a great game it was. I’m glad they feel they got their money’s worth. And I’m glad I didn’t buy it.
I need to backtrack here. I actually did “look” at D2. I browsed some screenshots and watched the opening cutscene after it was released. That was what convinced me that it would be a waste of money to buy the game, b/c what I saw (especially in the CS) was more of the stuff that was already boring me. Why the heck would I buy the same game twice?
Is that fair? Perhaps not. But it illustrates the role that marketing plays. Knowing that the world is going to look drastically different from the first two has opened my consideration to return to the Diablo series. That doesn’t mean I will buy it, but it has gotten my attention which is the true function of marketing. We will see what comes forth.
August 5th, 2008 at 4:23 am
All those altered shots are gray/brown, drab and uninteresting. Honestly though, everyone will still play the game, even though they constantly ~$$$@ about it. I hope they have rainbows on the box art.
August 5th, 2008 at 4:24 am
I see so many people telling everybody to shut up and accept what Blizzard has made. What ever happened to the idea of giving your customers what they want? People are paying money for Diablo III, and if Blizzard is not making it like their target audience wants it to be, then everyone is well within their rights to complain and make constructive criticism.
August 5th, 2008 at 4:29 am
The petition has over 50,000 signatures.
I think most of the people defending the WoW look (or more likely, just defending Blizzard in general) in here don’t really care about the game, while the people signing the petition (and taking the time to shoop screenshots) are the biggest fans of these titles.
Diablo really doesn’t share the same playerbase as WoW, and that’s the important distinction here. We really, really do want the game gruesome, dark and gloomy.
I find the excuses by the designer mostly lame, too - most of the changes (especially the most important ones) could be done with slight changes of tint, and with shaders. And not being able to tell PCs and NPCs apart? Come on, really? You could throw a dim outline around friendly players or whatEVER. You can’t really tell players from zombies in the earlier games either, until they start to get their gear on. I say, make it look like most loyal fans think it should and then fix these “problems”. You’re Blizzard, you can certainly figure it out if you want.
You don’t even have to publicly admit the art direction has f’ed up here. Just do something about it. It’s not too late.
August 5th, 2008 at 4:32 am
I was reading through and thinking, wow these fan art pics look like all they did was add noise, lower the brightness and raise the contrast. Then, Jay says basically the same thing.
I completely agree with Jay - I like drastic changes in environment and to easily distinguish between enemies. I just played through Titan Quest and the one thing I was always thinking is “what’s the next town/area going to look like?”.
Keep on keepin’ on Blizzard!
August 5th, 2008 at 4:33 am
I agree with the people complaining. Diablo 1 and 2 scared the bejesus out of me when I was a kid. I don’t want Diablo 3 to be all bright and happy, I want it to be dark and scary!
August 5th, 2008 at 4:45 am
this was a pretty great post!
it’s mortifying to see how meatheaded american twinkie-sucking kids are afraid videogames are going to turn them gay if they have more than one color in them. they should try losing fifty or a hundred pounds — then maybe they’d find themselves capable of appreciating color.
August 5th, 2008 at 5:20 am
I’ve never played Diablo before but those fan made shots look great I don’t know why the developer is so strongly against them. I don’t understand why Blizzard won’t diversify their games a bit and take a step outside of the World of Warcraft universe and do something original for a change.
August 5th, 2008 at 5:30 am
To sum it up:
People want Diable III: Doom 3.
Kudos to Blizzard for not taking the grimdark brown-and-grey crap design philosophy that has plagued recent games. As I remember it, Diablo/II weren’t desaturated into oblivion, and if you think there’s not enough shadows (perfectly valid complaint), adjust your monitor/in-game screen settings.
August 5th, 2008 at 5:32 am
i fail to see how brighter colours means theyre aiming it for a casual audience or that the game will suck
which just proves the fact that the majority of humans are retards ,who do not know what they want,are bloody stupid and somehow think colour changes mean that the game is now casual and that a game will suck because of that fact.
seriously how old are you people? youve been playing a game for 10 years and suddenly because of bright colours the new game automatically sucks to you?
August 5th, 2008 at 5:35 am
rather than taking anything we say on bored you guys just get all defensive and forget we are the people who buy and play the games you make, dont just flip us off, a simple we understand what you saying and the next area we release will be a dingy dark sector, i bet ive spent more time actualy playing diablo than you
August 5th, 2008 at 5:42 am
The artist is a moron, you do not need WoW colours to make characters distinct. Fallout wasnt ponies and rainbows and that worked fine didnt it, or how about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. thats dark and atmospheric, Not only is it very playable it actually makes the game ALOT better. Imagine running through a creepy underground enviroment and instead of the dark forbodeing place its all WoWfag green suddenly its not scary but actually silly like say.. Diablo 3.
August 5th, 2008 at 5:44 am
If you faggots want a desaturated game, turn down the colour on your monitor.
I for one welcome our new rainbow overlords
August 5th, 2008 at 5:58 am
No idea, why anyone says “D3 looks too bright/colorful” ?!
Take a look at Diablo II … D3 is definitly NOT brighter ..
August 5th, 2008 at 6:04 am
Hmm - I want to make loads of moolah. Do I:
A) Listen to a few diehard fans…
or
B) Push my game in the direction of another of my titles that has a gabillion subscribers
Whether you like it or not (I’m on the fence personally, as a long time D2 fan) it’s going to be option B everytime.
Don’t be suprised if you see some kind of “pay for play” news popping up too - maybe not a subscription, but some kind of better items/skills or in game currency malarky.
Probably.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:09 am
The new art style needs a rework.
Question 1 (answer quote)
‘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.’
So he’s saying we’re right and it is better cos he admits they’d do it at the end.
Question 2
‘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.’
So now they’re going to use the dark settings despite saying they weren’t suitable and had the problems of not being able to see the enemy as well?
Question 5
‘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.’
Why don’t they simply have darker backgrounds but lighter characters? It’d then stand them out and you’d get the dark and diablo like style in the backgrounds.
And why do they make it more like WOW when that’s not really just ‘fun’. They said D2 had bright ghosts in dark areas too, why not just do that instead of brighten the whole world up, ruin the light radius and make the character design chunkier and more like WOW?
August 5th, 2008 at 6:21 am
I don’t want to play WoW: Top-down. If I see purple fog I’m going to explode.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:23 am
The fan altered images looks superior in quality especially the bridge with rains splashing. Many games have become identical now-a-days. I have in-fact stopped buying games because they lack the difference that I would like to see. Blizzard needs to do a bit more work on the scenes they present. It can come close to the altered fan images to meet the ‘difference’ margin and make play more fun and involved.
Thanks guys.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:30 am
I don’t want an art style that feels like Blizzard. I want an art style that feels like Diablo, and when I come back to WoW I want an art-style that feels like WoW.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:31 am
As both a player of WoW and Diablo 1&2, i say the game looks awesome, Ok so its not dark and dreary, big woop, personally i prefer being able to SEE what i’m doing, Dungeons could look a bit darker sure, but eh. what people need to realize, is the Engine this game is running on, Can’t render Shadows like that, Your Using a BUDGET PHOTOGRAPH editing system to colour %**@ in black congratulations, you fail. Stop being so naive as to think that an engine rendering system and photoshop have ANY thing in common.. yeesh..
game looks great, personally i don’t see much similarity between wow and D3. i can’t wait for its release.
my final comments on these pasty face emo twit’s, get a job, get a life, and leave your computer room to see what an outside enviroment actually looks like!, a world thats completely dark and devoid of life everywhere; really wouldn’t be worth saving now would it.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:33 am
I will say, that the one relating to WoW is correct.
I think their colour choices are perfectly fine to be honest, but they are just a tad too saturated at the moment and I think they could do with a bit more contrast too.
But as for the browns and greys in the modified ones? Yeah no thanks, I have a 32-bit color lcd screen for a reason lol.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:35 am
I find it ironic that so many people whine about how some fans of the game “whine” about the art direction.
Remember, the only way to change the world is to be vocal about it. If someone doesn’t like the art style, let them “whine” about it all they want.
You say “if you don’t like it, then just don’t buy the game”. Well, the same can be said here. If you disagree with the “whiners” then just say that you think the art direction is fine. No need to berate the people who prefer the grimdark look over the new style Blizzard has gone for. They are, after all, entitled to their opinion.
Personally, I think the colors look alright, though from what I’ve seen so far, it could be a bit darker, and ease up on the bloom a bit. On the other hand, the character models I’m fairly unimpressed by, as it’s obvious to anyone who’ve played both games that they’ve taken a few pointers from WoW this time around. Now, this is not all bad. I can understand the argument about it improving the gameplay just fine. However, although it was a bit hard to make out items and such on the ground in Diablo 1 and 2, it worked just fine. Perhaps it’s a bit too complicated for more casual players to just hold the ALT key to see a list of items currently on the ground? Who knows.
In any case, I’m sure I’ll pick it up when it’s released. Although it’s somewhat sad to see Blizzard forsaking their oldest fans, I realize that it makes more sense to do so from a financial standpoint. You can’t really blame them for trying to make the game more appealing to casual gamers. That’s where the money lies, after all. I just hope some other company out there will take Blizzard’s place and develop some games that will satisfy a more “serious” gamer audience, while at the same time upholding Blizzard’s usual quality standard. A man can dream.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:39 am
I was hoping they were actually going to listen to the fans who care more about the game than the brainwashed WoW kiddies. It looks like I’ll be pirating WoWablo III and using a few mods that actually make the game look acceptable.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:59 am
There is a very simple solution nonetheless…
Create a custom ICC/ICM profile for your monitor with saturation ~0.35 and gamma ~1.5
And look, it’s magic!
August 5th, 2008 at 7:03 am
People could just alter their monitor profile in the display properties on their computers…
Color desaturated…
Contrast up…
Diablo is all dark again!
Everyone’s a winner!
August 5th, 2008 at 7:20 am
If I wanted to play a game that looked like high contrast, low colour photoshop mock-ups, I’d go with Gears of War.
August 5th, 2008 at 7:24 am
Maybe it’s just me, but the people that are complaining could just adjust their display to their liking. If you have a decent monitor, you probably can save different profiles. You could achieve the same look as the photoshopped pics with some exception. Any excuse to flame something or call it “gay”. Direct your energies toward the creative and show the developers how to do something by creating your own product and mass produce it. I would be surprised if you didn’t get some hate mail and death threats because your characters/weapons/color choices/etc…. suck. I don’t care how old you are, grow up and have some respect.
August 5th, 2008 at 7:39 am
Common ppl. Diablo 3 will be a success. Aren’t we all playing the not graphic intesive D2 and Starcraft. The only way they can ruing the D3 title is for them to make it for a monthly fee as WoW. Now then I will never go near D3 ever!!
August 5th, 2008 at 7:41 am
yes - the modded screenshots look better
yes - here should be more blood, it’s about hell and diablo
blizzard seems to focus on a broader audience, therefore ignoring such requests
but also yes:
- there should be different colored areas in the game (allthough in the end you will be playing only some which give the most xp ^^)
but the important thing is gameplay:
- i want to be able to grab (i can play with people i know/like if i want to get items they pickup)
- i want to be able to make fast game changes (i always got a disconnect when doing mf-runs with my soso, coz she was too fast ^^) or getting kicked after 3 baalruns, because the party was too fast and the server thought we were bots -.- (and no, we didn’t use maphack)
- it should still be a fast paced, easy to handle and fast to level (if you work on it) game (and yes, a hardcore modus is a must!)
but we’ll see how the game looks like when it’s FINISHED
atm we can only speculate - and for me, i trust blizzard in making a good sequel of d2 (to be perfect, they would have to do it completely the way i like, which is impossible i guess and then there would be more people arguing about ^^)
so let’s wait for the final version and then argue about existing good/bad features
August 5th, 2008 at 7:53 am
The fan critiques levelled at the artistic direction are whoefully inadequate, and reminds me just how much these exhasperating dregs that call themselves fans can ruin an entire experience - witness the brilliance of Wind Waker’s style, quickly dismissed as being too kiddie but rarely looked on as quite possibly being the first Zelda title to successfully translate Shigeru’s intention of translating his adventures as a youngster, with a child-like and dreamy aesthetic. And nevermind that Zelda was always peppered with childish undertones. Rescue a princess? Save the land? Become the hero of legend? Obtain the sacred thingamajings through perilous feats of strength and courage? No, certainly not the kind of childish fantasies children have. Just pepper those with enough gore and T&A to make even 50 Cent blush and it’s suddenly “mature”, I guess.
Sorry about the rant. But anyone complaining about Diablo 3’s style not only understands the game but can go replay those brown dredges of Diablo 2 until they climax on its rarely distinguishable environments. It’s the mirror opposite of Wind Waker - the traditionally moody set pieces and horror undertones do not lose their appeal nor do they stop being the mainstay of the series because of the current art direction.
Speaking of which, where were these detractors when Diablo 2’s art style was considerably different - and to some, less evocative - than the original Diablo? And where were they when Diablo 2 came out? Left-clicking along with the best of them. Yeah, I thought so.
Any fanbase who thinks a company taking a stand to carve out its own artistic signature in their games - while not forsaking their fans nor the company’s own background - is a bad thing simply isn’t a fanbase. These people aren’t fans, just people with a misplaced sense of entitlement. And Blizzard only stands to gain by not listening to them.
The core gameplay is very much the same. That’s the only thing anyone who enjoyed the previous Diablos needs to know about Diablo 3.
August 5th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Correction:
“But anyone complaining about Diablo 3’s style not only understands the game”
Should be “But anyone complaining about Diablo 3’s style not only does not understands the game (…)”
August 5th, 2008 at 8:09 am
the goth freaks here should just kill themselves
in d2 the worst areas were caves and the sewers, you couldnt see ?#?? when you were in those areas and was it any better or did it suck you in any? no. it was just plain annoying
as for the blizzard ignores fans part, its cuz they CAN
blizzard makes good games and theyre gonna sell a shitload whether you like it or not
August 5th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Maybe if they’d add a optional filter where you could choose to apply a certain amount of desaturation
everyone can have their pick =]
Regards
August 5th, 2008 at 8:26 am
I’ve read everything everyone posted and I too wanted to put my two cents in:
Original Diablo players feel left out of the fun because of the brightness and lack of pseudo-fear that the Diablo series used to envoke.
The creators realized the sucess of the Warcraft series (especially WoW) and thought about the money making potential merging a title like Diablo would have with the colorfulness that appeals to millions around the world in WoW.
I would venture to say: The is not a “Diablo 3″…this is a Diablo based dungeon scroll from the makers of Warcraft.
I agree that the game should be darker and more errie, but it’s too late in the development stages now to try that. So, here’s the plan:
I will not buy the game until I hear or see that the “darkness” can be increased in the Options/Setting Menu to at least attempt to make it a little scary or suprising. Unfortuantly, this is not a good fix because even outside renderings will be dark and it will cover the whole screen in darkness. Perhaps a “light rendering mod” will be made by fans who are programming savy…or better yet, Blizzard themselves will work on an optional one. One can only wait, hope, and see.
August 5th, 2008 at 8:57 am
The problem with the pale skinned, greasy haired fanboys who know nothing about using photoshop and making games (sorry, did I really say?) is that… oh wait, I already said it.
Firstly, it’s not WoW like, you only think that because it’s Blizzard.
Secondly, the designers right on a lot of things - the dark, grainy gothic look yes, looks alright as a still screen, but get it moving and ~?#@! I CAN’T SEE MY CHARACTER! If you really want a dark and saturated look to it - the simple answer is turn the saturation and contrast down on your monitor - problem solved.
Thirdly, shut up about the rainbow you whiney nit-pickers - no one cares.
Forthly, unless you’re designers yourself, you’re just making yourself look like some jumped up little twit - if your that bothered about shitting on games, become a games tester - you’ll still be just as unliked, but then at least you’ll be useful.
August 5th, 2008 at 9:01 am
“it’s all about the money”…
Do not believe Wilson, it is not about art or game experience or any BS he is selling here…
Blizzard did their homework, they already got Zillions of people playing WOW, they want those same people to play Diablo III…..then later after a year or so, they will announce “World of Diablo”….
The transition will be easy and more of those WOW players who are playing Diablo, will subscribe to the super-awesome-MMO-Diablo game…..
Thus, more millions to Bli$$ard!!!
“it’s all about the money”…
August 5th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Someone really got it in their heads that a change was needed, if you remember back to diablo 2 that was also very colorful - eg spell effects differet colour elite monsters etc. Don’t be so droll as to start an online petition - the petition will be unfaily biased as most of the people who will play this wont take part in it - only those who digest lots of diablo news on a daily basis!