crimsonshrouds said:
Torchligh which is basically a diablo clone is pretty fun and done well for a hack and slash on the console. Your crysis complaint doesnt really make sense to me but i never played crysis. How is a game being less complicate = bad thing?
If a game is being made simpler because the mainstream audience is too stupid for it or if the mainstream audience uses a control scheme that's not viable for the more complicated stuff will mean one thing - content will be lost. Depth will be lost. Replayability will almost certainly be lost.
Exort said:
TW2 swings both ways. It can be way darker than Diablo 3 is shown to be, and it can be somewhat brighter and more lush than it. That's why it's a little bit fallacious to not call it dark and in fact call it standard colourful fantasy faire, or something to that effect.
Didn't say D2 is not colourful. But if you actually played it, you'll notice that there's not a single point where the colour was used to create a, how do you call it, peaceful environment? Not the case with D3.
About the interviews with the developers, the best you can do with them is simply ignore them. Completely. [http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/battle-net-2-0-the-antithesis-of-consumer-confidence] If we go with it for a second though, the devs either are incompetent if they can't make the game non-exaggerated with people being able to tell monsters apart, or they're catering to a group of people that is daft or half-blind.
OR they're using the new style because they have no artistic integrity, or because they want even the shittiest PCs to run the game, and are cutting corners while covering it up with the art style. Not only did Diablo 2 work when it was extremely dark in places and I can't remember anyone whining about it, there's another game that's a much better example of what Diablo 3 should be than Diablo 3. It's called Grim Dark (I know, the irony). Google it or something. The argument makes no sense whatsoever if you take it at face value.
That graphics argument of your makes little sense to me. Being top down means the number of objects to be rendered is quite clearly limited, and in the case of D3, the camera is not all that far out. They can do much, much better stuff with a mid-range PC. Although the SC2 screens, if what you're saying is true, give me a glitter of hope that maybe, just maybe, this won't be more than half a decade behind in terms of graphics.
John Funk said:
Well, here's the thing. I think the problem you guys have is with multiplatform games developed with a console in mind. That's not the case here; Blizz is clearly making D3 for the PC first. If it later decides to port D3 to consoles a la Torchlight, what's the problem in that?
Blizzard's games are always very light on the graphical requirements. This has been the case since, I dunno, Starcraft 1. They make up for it with great art direction. And I really don't see that D3 isn't "dark, grim and gothic." There are definitely areas like that in the game - but we're also fighting in places that still have something left to lose, which I think is an important distinction.
See, here's the thing - in a game like D3, the player needs to be able to read situations ASAP from a zoomed-out view, which means you want things to be instantly recognizable. I don't want to have to take five seconds to figure out what's coming at me, so I can deal with it as soon as possible. To that end, a visual style where the characters are more exaggerated and vibrantly colored to pop out of the background makes more sense in a game like D3 than it does in, say, The Witcher 2.
I certainly don't want all games to have the same art style, for one. But there is a *ton* of gore, grimness and spookiness in D3, don't worry.
Part of my line of reasoning for it is a slippery slope thing, I'll admit it right off the bat. The moment they start porting this to consoles is the moment have some sort of priority, and in turn will affect the way they develop games. The second line is - there is absolutely no reason for an inferior product to exist, in this case, apart from greed. Can't get behind that.
On the graphics argument, all I have to say is that for the most well funded developer out there, they aren't trying to be ambitious at any level. Breaks my heart.
I already mentioned why exactly D3 isn't gothic. It's because realism is an essential part of it, and Diablo 3 evades realism at every point possible. Surrealistic environments, exaggerated proportions and movements and the lack of details all attest to that. Perversion of reality was what Diablo 2 did so well, and this is not the case with Diablo 3. It looks like a whole 'nother universe.
I have to ask, did you have problems playing Diablo 2? Because if not, the argument you're making is no argument for the switch in styles. It's not even an argument, more of repeating what the designer said simply because a designer said it. As if they had no stake in saying whatever makes the product look better, not what the truth is.
