Diablo III Announced
Posted by Nirav | Filed under Games
And it looks amazing. Blizzard, after a series of enticing splash screens on Blizzard.com, finally finished it off with the unveiling of Diablo III, the sequel to everyone’s favorite dungeon-crawling RPG.
My favorite parts of Diablo II were the wonderfully simple but deep character/skill system, the items, the audio, and the graphics. Wait, you say, the graphics? Diablo II was 2D! True, but it was one of the most gorgeous 2D games I’ve ever played. My big concern for a 3D Diablo game was that it wouldn’t be able to keep the attention to detail and amazing character, enemy, and environment art that its predecessors had. Example? Dungeon Siege, which was essentially a 3D Diablo, ended up feeling flaky and light because its graphics simply didn’t look as good as Diablo II’s. Good for a biscuit, not good for a game.
In any case, it looks like all of my fears have been allayed. After watching several minutes of gameplay video on Blizzard.com, I can say that it all looks great. The same decadently dark and decayed visual style of Diablo II returns, and it has indeed survived the transition to 3D. There’s obviously not the ridiculous amount of detail in the graphics from the previous game, but that’s to be expected: computers can’t yet drive a 3D graphics engine that looks like painted, hand-drawn art (that might not even be a bad thing: some would argue that Diablo II tended to be too crowded and busy, visually). It’s okay, though; the game looks very polished and has the visceral feeling of weight and substance that I found missing in Dungeon Siege.
The items are back, now looking cooler than ever. The game just sounds great, and players of Diablo II will recognize some iconic sound effects like gold dropping and town portals opening. Deckard Cain is back, with a hilarious moment in the gameplay video that I’ll leave you to discover yourself. The intensely strange, often disgusting, always entertaining monsters are back, perhaps even better than ever. Since the game has that newfangled third dimension, boss battles seem to have sized up, with the tougher enemies being much larger than anything in Diablo II.
They’ve announced two character classes so far: the Barbarian and the Witch Doctor, with male and female versions of each. There are 5 in this installation, and then I’m guessing another 2 or 3 in the inevitable expansion.
Anyways, along with the gameplay video, there’s a cinematic trailer, artwork (really good artwork) and bunches of other goodies on the website, which I’m going to go drool over now. In true Blizzard fashion, the FAQ states that it’s “too early” to determine a release date for Diablo III. I’m hoping by Christmas this year, though I really have no clue if that’s reasonable.
It’s good to see Blizzard going back to this franchise after so much time spent on Warcraft games, which I somehow just don’t find quite as delicious. See you all on Battle.net.