On June 28th 2008, finally, after 7 long years of waiting, Diablo fans had their sequel to Diablo 2. It’s been 1 year and 2 days (as of the first publish of this article) since Blizzard announced it, what’s happened since?
Well what we do know is that good old Deckard Cain (who feature in both Diablo and Diablo II) is still hanging on in there in II. And, from the screenshots and videos available to us, we can clearly see that the point-of-view the developers are trying to encorporate into D3 is thankfully a throwback to the isometric view so beautifully employed in D2. The game is still set in Sanctuary (the world where both D1 and D2 were set) so no need to worry about the possibility of new and awful worlds and lore.
However, what’s new and exciting in Diablo III is the use of Havok physics. Which means one thing, the holy grail for many gamers, destructable environments (demonstrated well in the video below). Replay ability is also set to be enhance in D3, with an apparant random level generator of sorts being employed into Blizzard’s latest installment. Since Blizzard also own the World of Warcraft franchise, it’s not surprising to hear that an inventory system similar to the ones vastly used in WoW in being implemented into D3. And like all good RPG’s, cut-scenes are being added to the ever growing list of new stuff in D3.
Two new classes (along with the good ol’ Barbarian) have been announced in the last 12 months, which gives us the Witch-Doctor and Wizard. The remaining two classes are to be announced, however Blizzard have announced they do not intend to bring back the much loved classes in D2 (necromancer etc.) in the initial release. Speculation still runs rife about the possibility of older classes returning in possible D3 expansion packs. The latest D3 news came to us on the 1st of April, 2009, the Archivist class was announced, however, if you’ve just noticed the date, you won’t be at all surprised when I tell you the Archivist is yet another example of Blizzard’s lack of humour.
However, not all of the news has been received so lightly by Diablo fans. When initial artwork was released, fans were not at all happy (so much so an online petition was created) with the visuals which were apparantly
“Cartoon’ish art direction, obviously influenced by the Warcraft universe, Diablo isn’t Warcraft.”
To which lead designer, Jay Wilson replied (and commented on the fact he thought gothic graphics are hard to attain):
“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 “
Current gameplay footage looks promising, with the visuals looking good compared to D1/D2. Personally, I love the Diablo series, it’s always been the bad boy of RPG’s, constantly unwilling to conform to the happy-go-lucky, bright and colourful visuals of most moder RPG’s, and constantly looking to add more gore to make it live up to its Hack and Slash name. If Diablo III continues to develop as it is doing, it will be a great game.
Updates will arrive as soon as I hear anything!
Videos:
Diablo III is set to be released for both the PC and Mac OS X, however a release date is still uncertain
If we haven't bored you, here is some more:
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- Star Wars: The Old Republic, EA say it could get 2 mil subs
- “Ghosts of the Past” Starcraft 2 Trailer
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