BlizzCon 2010: The Art and Design of Diablo III

John Funk

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Dec 20, 2005
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BlizzCon 2010: The Art and Design of Diablo III

The Art Director and Systems Designer of Diablo III sit down with The Escapist to chat about just what's taking Blizzard so long making this game.

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Ralackk

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I'm very happy about what they said about the PVP I think thats what made it so fun in diablo 2 for me. Just spending time coming up with new and crazy builds then gearing a character up was half the fun.
 

Cmichaels

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Jul 14, 2010
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phoenix352 said:
i want this out NOW >.<
common people finish it faster.
I do believe that was discussed.
No idea what the rainbow jokes are...would love for somebody to explain :/
 

Shjade

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Feb 2, 2010
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Cmichaels said:
phoenix352 said:
i want this out NOW >.<
common people finish it faster.
I do believe that was discussed.
No idea what the rainbow jokes are...would love for somebody to explain :/
One of the early (first?) gameplay videos of Diablo 3 involved running past a rainbow in some waterfall spray in an environment that looked fairly colorful and upbeat compared to the environments in D1 and D2. This prompted a lot of fan uproar about how the game looked pansified and what happened to the horror and blah blah blah - I'm sure you can guess the kinds of things unhappy fans say about a game looking "too pretty" for their expectations.

At least that's what I'm assuming they're referring to.
 

Brotherofwill

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Jan 25, 2009
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Whoa??! Double rainbow XD.

We look at Batman.
Whoever said the Batman remark originally, don't know if that was you or Logan, is a genius. Genius!!!

They also looked at Legend? Hahahaha. In my Blizzard art and design thread I basically said that Diablo looks like the devil in Legend. I'm a genius aswell.

These guys are cool, although when they keep saying 'awesome' or 'fun' in every second sentence it gets a little stale.

Strange that they keep talking about the Demon Hunter in this dark mysterious way because she honestly seems like the most boring least mysterious character out of the lot. A hard talking double crossbow assasin? Not very intriguing. I mean compare that to a monk that lives his life in constant training and discipline and a Witch Doctor that lives his life with zombie bears, I mean that's mysterious yo!

I think the Demon Hunter is the weakest and she also seems to be the least fitting when you compare the lot to the D2 flair. That's just personal preference I guess.
John Funk said:
I'm totally rolling a Monk.

John Funk wishes the Monk could summon zombie bears, too.
Nice to see someone with good taste! I'll be rolling with my zombie bears and giant toads, just after that I'll try a monk :D.
 
Apr 7, 2010
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I'm very excited! Good article and really good to hear that they are constantly playing the shit out of the game. Quite literally actually!
I'm still not quite sure if I want to roll a barbarian or witch doctor first... Smashing demons into steaming blood stew with a huge axe or unleashing the zombie apocalypse while drinking shroom-tea?
 

kouriichi

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Sep 5, 2010
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Id hate to say it, but while every call looks amazing, and all the variation is great.....

Chances are i wont play anything but the barbarian.....

ROAR!! KOURI SMASH!!

.... with axes.....
 

technoted

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I've always loved the Blizzard concept art. Can't wait to roll another Barbarian.
 

Credge

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Shjade said:
At least that's what I'm assuming they're referring to.
It is.

The overall color scheme of the game was immediately altered after this uproar.

Diablo 1 and 2 have had fairly monotone color schemes which have made the games 'horror' games. ESPECIALLY Diablo 1. This monotone color scheme was made 'colorful' by enemies being 'colorful' to denote spell effects (poison, slow, etc) and power (those special guys were ALWAYS colorful). Color was used not for the environments but to clearly dictate what the living shit was going on on the screen.

Diablo 3 was the opposite with the initial video. Color was EVERYWHERE. Purple and green glows, multiple colored enemies and landscapes. Even with the heavily scripted first demo video it was very hard to tell what was going on.

So they put it back to the more 'horror' oriented theme and suddenly you can tell what's going on.

In other words, a less colorful world and colorful characters is easier to tell whats going on than a colorful world with colorful characters.

To put it another way, if Blizzard showed the exact same initial gameplay clip of D3 but didn't say what game it was, would you have been able to tell it was Diablo 3 or Warcraft: The Action RPG?

Because the design elements of Warcraft (NOT WOW, Warcraft) were HEAVILY in the initial Diablo 3.
 

wulfy42

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Jan 29, 2009
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The world is scheduled to end in a little over a year. If they do not set a release date soon we will never get to play D3:(


Please release it before 2012!!
 

StBishop

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phoenix352 said:
i want this out NOW >.<
common people finish it faster.
I read that as "Common (like not noble) people finish it faster"
Rather than "Come on people, finish it faster!"

I thought it was one of those weird sayings like: "Blondes have more fun"
"Queenslanders love it in the sand"
"Baketballers get it done up top"

Sort of like a jingle or catch phrase for commoners.

Anyway, I thought you were implying that Blizzard'd dev. team are a higher being than mere mortal humans, who take their time to make it perfect.
Which is why SC2 took so long and D3 is taking so long.
 

Coldie

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Credge said:
It is.

The overall color scheme of the game was immediately altered after this uproar.
They never changed anything after any "uproars", they only showed more as the time passed. There are still light and colorful areas and there still are dark and gloomy areas. The pathetic "uproar" just died down after more of the game was revealed.

The double rainbows were in that video as a "how far can we go with this" joke.
 

Credge

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Coldie said:
Credge said:
It is.

The overall color scheme of the game was immediately altered after this uproar.
They never changed anything after any "uproars", they only showed more as the time passed. There are still light and colorful areas and there still are dark and gloomy areas. The pathetic "uproar" just died down after more of the game was revealed.

The double rainbows were in that video as a "how far can we go with this" joke.
We are talking about two completely different videos.

I'm talking about >the very first gameplay video of D3 ever where the player saw rainbows, smiley faced lion statues,a bright, colorful world filled with Disney styled 'spooky' inside environments and a Winnie-the-Poo themed outside world.

They have completely changed the mood of that part of the Act since then. They have made the very first bit darker in mood by dulling the color scheme (which in turn made the character and enemies POP out) and changed the smiley lions in to snarling gargoyle. They didn't remove the ONLY rainbow showed in the video as it's realistic.

What you're talking about is a different video that they showed as a joke.

What I'm talking about is the reveal video of Diablo 3 and then what they have changed since.

To state that 'they haven't changed anything' since the uproar is just factually dishonest and a complete slap in the face to Blizzard, the quality of game they produce, and their love for their fans.

ETA: The game has also lost A LOT of the 'waterpainting' look that it originally had.

 

GoGo_Boy

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May 12, 2010
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Oh gosh of course there's another one of this wanna be designers (Credge) in a topic about Diablo 3.
Can't they just die out...

Telling Blizzard how to design a game. Actually even telling Blizzard how to design a game after a gameplay trailer that looks absolutely stunning and shits on ugly Diablo 2.
But a world without wanna-bes would be sad too :(
 

Coldie

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GoGo_Boy said:
Oh gosh of course there's another one of this wanna be designers (Credge) in a topic about Diablo 3.
Can't they just die out...

Telling Blizzard how to design a game. Actually even telling Blizzard how to design a game after a gameplay trailer that looks absolutely stunning and shits on ugly Diablo 2.
But a world without wanna-bes would be sad too :(
Indeed, if Blizzard followed all those suggestions, they'd still be in "concept art" and "tech demo" stages, instead of a playable game with actual content that will be released in our lifetime. I'm not sure if the aforementioned "wannabe designer" is ignorant, deluded, or just trolling (or all of the above), but I'm glad Blizzard didn't listen to those nay-sayers and kept the visual variance seen in all the videos and screenshots. Going again and again through the same Gloomy Dungeon of Dark Greyness and DOOM[sup]TM[/sup] would get old reaaally fast.

Hell, even the very interview this thread follows describes the design of alternating contrasting dark and light areas. Slap in the face, indeed.
 

GoGo_Boy

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You know Blizzard designer replied countless times arguing very well about their designing progress. Making absolute and 100% sense.

Then some angry Internet Nerd hears about people complaining about colorful D3 graphics, jumps on the bandwagon and does some kindergarten analysis sounding like this: "Me don't like because that other guy doesn't like and the reason why is mimimimimimimi".
 

The Journey

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Brotherofwill said:
I think the Demon Hunter is the weakest and she also seems to be the least fitting when you compare the lot to the D2 flair. That's just personal preference I guess.
I agree, frankly. Watching the reveal trailer was extremely underwhelming, which wasn't helped by the preconception I immediately built up when reading 'Demon Hunter'. It's just such a derivative and boring class. When you compare it to the Witch Doctor (zany!) and the Monk (very cool), it looks a little underdone.

It's a bit of a combination of the Amazon and the Assassin classes from D2 and that is not good. I don't like it and will not be rolling one.

Barbarian and Monk ftw.

All that said, I do love most Blizzard games and played D2 online for many years so I am greatly looking forward to D3.
 

wulfy42

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Jan 29, 2009
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Seriously your already deciding what you won't be rolling?

I'm quite sure almost everyone will roll at least one of each character eventually.

Honestly looking forward to the monk class alot since we were missing that in d2 all together (or d1 for that matter). The entire monk concept is just plain cool. I guess the assassin's martial arts tree was as close as you got to a monk in D2...but it was missing too much for me.

Since no other class is ranged specialized (unlike having multiple ranged specialized classes in d2) I think the demon hunter is going to be a very common character for people to play. There are multiple spellcasting and melee oriented classes but only 1 ranged oriented class.

Sadly in D2 the amazon which was the biggest pure ranged oriented class was never that popular. Too many other characters handled range attacks better either with spells or thrown weapons etc.

Hopefully the same will not be true in D3 and Demon Hunters will be the master of ranged combat.