i am totally sick of PC game developers holding human progress back by using previous generation tech just because they think it's a way to get more money. i've totally lost all respect for Blizzard. and don't any of you dare give me that stylism bullshit.
Human progress? Stylism bullshit?
The mind reels and boggles, as if it had gone fishing with letter-dice. Or something equally nonsensical and mad.
edit: Okay, so that little nugget of wisdom had already been taken apart and properly ridiculed before I got here. Nothing to see here, move along! Still though, I like the feeling of unified disbelief at the stupidity. We're a team, right?
I'm surprised people are making the negatives about technology and art style they have.
I work with good technology, my company has a solid reputation for pushing tech and graphics
but I dont think D3 and Blizzard are less than us because they're using tech that doesn't
utilize normal maps and 2048 sized textures.
If anything, a company choosing to rely on older rendering methods, and taking them to such
a degree of refinement that its easily the equal in quality of normal map driven engines
such as UE3 , Crytek and Source actually argues more for their superiority rather than inferiority.
I think too often we can be too sure of our opinions because we've heard others saying similar and mistakenly thought that the more commonly expressed opinions were the smarter ones.
Typically its the opinions that are heard less often with less volume that tend to be the more
solid ones.
Simply making things more detailed because we can does not equal superiority of style, its generally more of a discipline to show restraint.... try it?
The thing I respect most about this gameplay video is the restraint shown to the environment rendering style, it may look at first, in a static screenshot, a little barren but when you see it moving you realize choosing that direction aides and elevates the clarity of the gameplay.
I'm surprised people are making the negatives about technology and art style they have.
I work with good technology, my company has a solid reputation for pushing tech and graphics
but I dont think D3 and Blizzard are less than us because they're using tech that doesn't
utilize normal maps and 2048 sized textures.
If anything, a company choosing to rely on older rendering methods, and taking them to such
a degree of refinement that its easily the equal in quality of normal map driven engines
such as UE3 , Crytek and Source actually argues more for their superiority rather than inferiority.
I think too often we can be too sure of our opinions because we've heard others saying similar and mistakenly thought that the more commonly expressed opinions were the smarter ones.
Typically its the opinions that are heard less often with less volume that tend to be the more
solid ones.
Simply making things more detailed because we can does not equal superiority of style, its generally more of a discipline to show restraint.... try it?
The thing I respect most about this gameplay video is the restraint shown to the environment rendering style, it may look at first, in a static screenshot, a little barren but when you see it moving you realize choosing that direction aides and elevates the clarity of the gameplay.
I want to know every detail about how they construct and light their foliage. Best Ever Foliage.
I'm pretty sure SouL has been working on this game for half of his life. Congrats on it being a pretty cool game
Yeah I gotta agree on the foliage. It looks really nice in motion and zooming in. Any time you stop it looks like some cool painterly concept art foliage. While it does have a little bit of WoW's flavor, I have to agree that it has it's own approach.
I keep watching the gameplay trailer over and over watching for all of the little details. I love how the fear spell has a giant demonic version of the witch doctor above his head scaring all of the creatures. How the fireballs erupt into a flaming figure as they impact the ground. The large boss creature moving in the rear shadows inside the dungeon foreshadowing the fight to come. The (assumed virgins) erupting into blood and gore as they are sacrificed to summon the Gluttony boss! Shit was awesome! Great details all around! Kudos to the art staff, another home run IMO.
MMM... this thing is panty creamin' good! I love teh art style... i can't wait to get my hands on it... I miss diablo... continue to rock my face Blizz!
I'm surprised people are making the negatives about technology and art style they have.
I work with good technology, my company has a solid reputation for pushing tech and graphics
but I dont think D3 and Blizzard are less than us because they're using tech that doesn't
utilize normal maps and 2048 sized textures.
If anything, a company choosing to rely on older rendering methods, and taking them to such
a degree of refinement that its easily the equal in quality of normal map driven engines
such as UE3 , Crytek and Source actually argues more for their superiority rather than inferiority.
I think too often we can be too sure of our opinions because we've heard others saying similar and mistakenly thought that the more commonly expressed opinions were the smarter ones.
Typically its the opinions that are heard less often with less volume that tend to be the more
solid ones.
Simply making things more detailed because we can does not equal superiority of style, its generally more of a discipline to show restraint.... try it?
The thing I respect most about this gameplay video is the restraint shown to the environment rendering style, it may look at first, in a static screenshot, a little barren but when you see it moving you realize choosing that direction aides and elevates the clarity of the gameplay.
Gameplay is god in games.
I think the biggest issue I have (and I've seen others stating the same thing) is that Blizzard could have broken away from the WoW art, and I know it doesn't look like WoW 100%, but this doesn't look anything like old Diablo (that could be good or not). I'm just saying that personally, Blizzard is too attached to this art style, the art style itself is awesome, and they are doing a good job at it.... but I've always been told to break out of your comfort zone, that's how you grow and evolve... and right now, I would give that advice to Blizzard.
I think they could have gone a more realistic route, still having the blizzard feel, and still look great.
But I do like very stylized cartoony games / models... so I'm a hypocrite
Blizzard is too attached to this art style, the art style itself is awesome, and they are doing a good job at it.... but I've always been told to break out of your comfort zone, that's how you grow and evolve... and right now, I would give that advice to Blizzard.
Well, let's hope they get by just fine If they're not reading this thread and miss your advice. Otherwise they might not grow and evolve.
I wouldn't really call these models cartoony, Warcraft is cartoony, This is just more stylized and painterly in appearance, which I think works very well, it's like watching a moving piece of concept art.
I'm super excited for this. Diablo II remains one of my absolute favourite games.
Though I do find the adament defense of everything blizzard from some of you a bit funny. I love the art style, but honestly for those bashing anyone who says something negative about it, it's a bit silly. They've changed the art style greatly from the previous games, it's bound to alienate people, and those people are fully justified in bringing that out.
I'd personally like to see them make it a bit darker and grittier. The previous games were quite gothic and gritty, I'd love to see some more of that infused into this. Seems a bit too clean and bright to be a diablo game to me.
And Daz... honestly, looking at the screenshots of D3 compared to D2 and WoW, I'd say the style is a tad closer to WoW... but maybe that's just me.
More so talking about the environment / texture style Daz, I didn't mean to sound like an ass though man.
But I mean... I'm not far off from saying it's sharing some of the style, they may have put a more darker touch on it, but you can take some of the environment pieces from those screens (and tile sets) and place it right into WoW and no-one would really notice...
Now again I'm not saying it looks like crap, like i said before... it looks great, of course it looks great its from Blizzard... but that's also my point. Blizzard is probably one of the top developers out there (in my opinion)... I just thought they would have taken a break from the more painterly style and go for a much darker tone / realism.
For me, its like going from Batman Begins to Batman and Robin (with Mr Freeze... :P) and I would have liked it to be the other way around.
Titant Quest's art style with a darker tone, and Blizza-fied (new verb).
@ Jason: While I think its ridiculous to abandon an awesome art style simply for the sake of change, I agree it could be a lot darker.
In regards to normal mapping, at that screen size your not going to notice that much, and it probably wouldn't be worth the time or resources to implement. The modeling workload would be cut in half by not having highpoly models, which means a lot more time to make other, more important things better. Good decision IMO.
Looks awesome! I think it will take a little time for me to adjust to the art direction, though. I was really expecting a darker, less colorful approach to Diablo 3. This isn't bad, just not what I expected. Some of those giant monsters in the gameplay video were incredible looking, especially for an isometric based perspective. Rock on
I might speculate that one of the main reasons the art has changed and moved in a more colourful direction is that they're not stuck with 256 colour tile sets any more.
Have you looked at diablo 2 lately? Its nicely done working with the limitations of the tile engine tile based environment, but its not exactly pretty, or not compared to what we're seeing from its sequel anyway. The world is either entirely green or yellow or grey green or red.
This isn't the diablo you want *waves hand* move along.
omg double-wield ice-bastard sword barbarian for teh win awesome!
totally agree with the idea of the voodoo/witchdoctor replacing the necromancer - and love the parki hand idle animation
though i'm still kinda iffy bout the art direction - diablo 1 and 2 was all tiled and near monochrome....but it was all gritty and dark and deep compared to the 'watercolor' style i'm getting form the screenshots..
meh i'd still sell my left leg for a preorder
heh - i wonder how quick a hex editor comes out to alter the stats - omg100+skill points for lvl one barbarian fist bash grrrrraarrrgghh!
Here is a link to to an art and narrative panel for Diablo 3. They discuss why certain decisions were made. It's pretty interesting. They keep saying they replayed Diablo 2 and realized it was full of color whereas previously they were hyped to make a grittier grayer version. /shrug
If I had to point out 1 thing that looked like WoW art it would be the small candles on the shelves towards the beginning of the gameplay trailer. I know, I know it such a picky little thing, but they look to have been boosted straight from Scholomance itself!
I guess I would have liked to see how blizzard would have handled something a little more realistic in the shader/painting department while still employing stylized designs and proportions. But I digress, it looks badass as is.
I might speculate that one of the main reasons the art has changed and moved in a more colourful direction is that they're not stuck with 256 colour tile sets any more.
I don't think they made the old diablo's dark and gritty looking because of limitations of the engines. There were plenty of colourful and brightly lit games made around the same time it came out.
That said, yes, I would prefer it to look more like the image you posted. Updated to the same sort of resolutions as you see in the DIII stuff of course, but yea.
Daz - I know, but the comparison to WoW is because it's being made by blizz, so if you compare it to other blizzard games, it looks very similar to WoW rather than to Diablo II. Not all of it, but some of those screenshots would actually fit fairly snugly into a WoW environment. Seriously, I went through the whole screenshot section and some of the outdoor stuff especially is similar.
Daz - I know, but the comparison to WoW is because it's being made by blizz, so if you compare it to other blizzard games, it looks very similar to WoW rather than to Diablo II. Not all of it, but some of those screenshots would actually fit fairly snugly into a WoW environment. Seriously, I went through the whole screenshot section and some of the outdoor stuff especially is similar.
I'm going to go ahead and disagree for now, for reasons I've already posted. There's a level of sophistication in the texturing, lighting and overall treatment that's completely different to WoW imo. People are seeing non photographic textures, no normal maps and saying 'WoW cartoon style' but If you actually look at the 2 games and compare them, it's a totally different approach.
I'm not going to continue to argue with people about how much this game does or doesn't look like WoW. It's a waste of all of our time. It never entered my head that it looked like WoW as I watched it, but clearly it did for other people, so it would appear to be a subjective issue (and yes, I play WoW).
I just thought they would have taken a break from the more painterly style
I've been thinking more about the question I posed in my first post. I think games that rely more on talent than tech to look good can piss people off, because not all studios can make them. EA couldn't make a game like this, because in their hiring practices there is little to no concept of talent, it's all based on experience. Furthermore, it's usually the wrong people doing the hiring and internal promoting. The big studios have little understanding of how fundamental individual team talent is. They think that all they need is tech to get them from A to B, assuming B is a good looking game. There's at least one big game in development at EA that I know of that doesn't even have an AD.
Blizzard are one of the few studios that get it, and that can sometimes make sectors of the rest of the industry all pissy and moody, without them really understanding why.
I'm just agreeing with Daz cos all the cool kids are doing it.
I personally love the style, and its definitely a style I would have loved to see for WoW. Its so refined, well executed, and just visually stunning to look at.
I played Diablo II for the first time last night and got through the first act and I was really enjoying myself (except for the IRS). With Diablo III, I'm sure I'll share that same experience only with art looking a tonne times better.
I'm slowly becoming a Blizzard fanboy ever since StarCraft 2 and now seeing Diablo III has added fuel to that fire.
And kudos to ror for his earlier posts! Well said, dude.
Looking Awesome!.. The art style has stuck to its roots along with the gameplay as they promised. Something I would like to see would be an in-game trading/auctioning system specially with the huge loot that this game is boosting about.
Although this game isn't MMO, running it like Guildwars (Which also isn't MMO) but has locations where it runs like an MMO for trading or looking for parties etc. would work well with this game.
What this game needs above all else is an account-wide stash. If I have to drop, leave and come back to swap items between characters again I'll freak.
The first thing I thought when I saw this game was "huh, looks like WoW", but the first video I saw was low quality and in one of the outdoor locations. The other videos don't look as much like WoW.
Seems like a bad choice, brand-wise to bring color into Diablo (I would have prefered a Giger-esque monochrome). They were already sharing sound effects and UI with WoW. I suppose they feel like they can sell more copies if the appeal to the new gamers that started with WoW.
All that said, the art looks great. I may pick the game up just on the strength of the visuals, because I really never could get into the previous game's grinding gameplay.
i was going to write a really long reply in this thread and then i figured... whats the point? and hey daz already said everything i wanted to say I think Blizzard is just going to do whatever they want, no matter what the people in this forum think or say, and you all know you'll shell out 50 or 60 bux for this game when it comes out no matter how much you bitch and whine, and you'll love it.
eh, whats this? played the D1 demo when i was about 11 or 12, was pretty fun.
but as for now, i don't see what the fuss is all about.
installed D2 3 years ago, played it for 2-3 hours before i got bored an uninstalled it.
this got some cool graphics, but looks like another boring blizzard grindfest, so i think i'll pass.
I don't think the art style in D3 has anything to do with trying to sell copies of the game to WoW players. Blizzard has had top-notch creative assets since the very beginning, across all their franchises. I can't imagine that the art direction for D3 is now coming from the marketing department.
Frankly, I think the game looks better with more color and contrast, whether it reminds people of WoW or not. Wandering around dark, monochromatic corridors got old with Quake 2; wandering around dark, monochromatic dungeons got old with Diablo 2. You can have mood and atmosphere without restricting your palette as severely as D1/D2 (Bioshock comes to mind - lots of darkness, but lots of variation with color as well.)
i was going to write a really long reply in this thread and then i figured... whats the point? and hey daz already said everything i wanted to say I think Blizzard is just going to do whatever they want, no matter what the people in this forum think or say, and you all know you'll shell out 50 or 60 bux for this game when it comes out no matter how much you bitch and whine, and you'll love it.
I never thought that this looks anything like WoW really, I think they've done a great job of making a game that will look nice on even lower-end systems. I just think it's crazy that everyone is creaming their pants (or panties) over another click-fest. The gameplay video looked interesting, like it is pretty cool how those dudes were crawling all over the walls, but I was bored watching it after just the first couple of seconds, really. Smash, spin, smash, PWR-ATTK, smash, spin, ... zzz. Oh, the Berserkers work together with the spell-caster enemies so that the spell-casters don't get killed instantly? I've never heard of anything so creative.
I wish that a company with Blizzard's resources was willing to take a few risks. If you're just gonna do a kill-fest, at least revive Blackthorne I miss taking a potion from a starving, chained-up slave, telling him "Thanks, BROTHER," then walking away, only to do a half-turn shotgun blast to end their misery :P
a different sort of badass than what i was expecting.
will have to summon my D2 Crew from their various haunts across the country for a massive Diablo circle-jerk extravaganza when this comes out.
the goat-man model on the beastiary page is underwhelming. i have a hard on for goat men so this is important to me. i want to be confused inside when i kill hordes of them and steal their armors.
NO Sacred love? Dungeon Siege? Makes me sad to hear
Nacire thanks for the linkage
EDIT: Ok i read the article, and I really liked what I read. Basically they are using this style (colour, shapes etc.) to help push the narrative... which is really cool. Using blue's and greens to give that horror type vibe... something is looming over you kinda thing.
It will be interesting to see if and how they use the style to their advantage in the end product, for now...
It will be interesting to see if and how they use the style to their advantage in the end product, for now...
Well, my ESP senses tell me that they'll sell a hojillion copies (all to Koreans), make an expansion, and have the game played for years on end on the b.net servers.
Seriously, if they released d3 with d2 graphics they could probably still make a killing.
It was great knowing you, but we must part ways soon. The eventual release of Diablo 3 is upon us. It's best that you seek new opportunities without me. You may want to check with The Sun, because I won't be seeing it much either. I will eventually return to you. but I can't say when.
Replies
Human progress? Stylism bullshit?
The mind reels and boggles, as if it had gone fishing with letter-dice. Or something equally nonsensical and mad.
edit: Okay, so that little nugget of wisdom had already been taken apart and properly ridiculed before I got here. Nothing to see here, move along! Still though, I like the feeling of unified disbelief at the stupidity. We're a team, right?
I work with good technology, my company has a solid reputation for pushing tech and graphics
but I dont think D3 and Blizzard are less than us because they're using tech that doesn't
utilize normal maps and 2048 sized textures.
If anything, a company choosing to rely on older rendering methods, and taking them to such
a degree of refinement that its easily the equal in quality of normal map driven engines
such as UE3 , Crytek and Source actually argues more for their superiority rather than inferiority.
I think too often we can be too sure of our opinions because we've heard others saying similar and mistakenly thought that the more commonly expressed opinions were the smarter ones.
Typically its the opinions that are heard less often with less volume that tend to be the more
solid ones.
Simply making things more detailed because we can does not equal superiority of style, its generally more of a discipline to show restraint.... try it?
The thing I respect most about this gameplay video is the restraint shown to the environment rendering style, it may look at first, in a static screenshot, a little barren but when you see it moving you realize choosing that direction aides and elevates the clarity of the gameplay.
Gameplay is god in games.
QFT.
Give a guy a machine gun and ask him to shoot at a bullseye
and given enough bullets, he'll eventually hit it with one of them.
Now if you gave him a sniper rifle and one bullet, the odds change
dramatically.
I think this is why, in art, sometimes less is more. I think the best artists
do more with one stroke than I can with a thousand.
Hahaha, that is one of the best metaphors I've ever heard!
Pun-tastic.
I'm pretty sure SouL has been working on this game for half of his life. Congrats on it being a pretty cool game
Goodjob!
Yeah I gotta agree on the foliage. It looks really nice in motion and zooming in. Any time you stop it looks like some cool painterly concept art foliage. While it does have a little bit of WoW's flavor, I have to agree that it has it's own approach.
I keep watching the gameplay trailer over and over watching for all of the little details. I love how the fear spell has a giant demonic version of the witch doctor above his head scaring all of the creatures. How the fireballs erupt into a flaming figure as they impact the ground. The large boss creature moving in the rear shadows inside the dungeon foreshadowing the fight to come. The (assumed virgins) erupting into blood and gore as they are sacrificed to summon the Gluttony boss! Shit was awesome! Great details all around! Kudos to the art staff, another home run IMO.
I think the biggest issue I have (and I've seen others stating the same thing) is that Blizzard could have broken away from the WoW art, and I know it doesn't look like WoW 100%, but this doesn't look anything like old Diablo (that could be good or not). I'm just saying that personally, Blizzard is too attached to this art style, the art style itself is awesome, and they are doing a good job at it.... but I've always been told to break out of your comfort zone, that's how you grow and evolve... and right now, I would give that advice to Blizzard.
I think they could have gone a more realistic route, still having the blizzard feel, and still look great.
But I do like very stylized cartoony games / models... so I'm a hypocrite
Well, let's hope they get by just fine If they're not reading this thread and miss your advice. Otherwise they might not grow and evolve.
WoW human:
http://aycu13.webshots.com/image/50692/2002458269957992285_rs.jpg
DIII human:
http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/characters/
Oh wait, no normals mapping, clearly no evolution there.
/still baffled as to why anyone would think this game looks like WoW.
Though I do find the adament defense of everything blizzard from some of you a bit funny. I love the art style, but honestly for those bashing anyone who says something negative about it, it's a bit silly. They've changed the art style greatly from the previous games, it's bound to alienate people, and those people are fully justified in bringing that out.
I'd personally like to see them make it a bit darker and grittier. The previous games were quite gothic and gritty, I'd love to see some more of that infused into this. Seems a bit too clean and bright to be a diablo game to me.
And Daz... honestly, looking at the screenshots of D3 compared to D2 and WoW, I'd say the style is a tad closer to WoW... but maybe that's just me.
But I mean... I'm not far off from saying it's sharing some of the style, they may have put a more darker touch on it, but you can take some of the environment pieces from those screens (and tile sets) and place it right into WoW and no-one would really notice...
Now again I'm not saying it looks like crap, like i said before... it looks great, of course it looks great its from Blizzard... but that's also my point. Blizzard is probably one of the top developers out there (in my opinion)... I just thought they would have taken a break from the more painterly style and go for a much darker tone / realism.
For me, its like going from Batman Begins to Batman and Robin (with Mr Freeze... :P) and I would have liked it to be the other way around.
Titant Quest's art style with a darker tone, and Blizza-fied (new verb).
FLAME ON!
In regards to normal mapping, at that screen size your not going to notice that much, and it probably wouldn't be worth the time or resources to implement. The modeling workload would be cut in half by not having highpoly models, which means a lot more time to make other, more important things better. Good decision IMO.
Have you looked at diablo 2 lately? Its nicely done working with the limitations of the tile engine tile based environment, but its not exactly pretty, or not compared to what we're seeing from its sequel anyway. The world is either entirely green or yellow or grey green or red.
This isn't the diablo you want *waves hand* move along.
totally agree with the idea of the voodoo/witchdoctor replacing the necromancer - and love the parki hand idle animation
though i'm still kinda iffy bout the art direction - diablo 1 and 2 was all tiled and near monochrome....but it was all gritty and dark and deep compared to the 'watercolor' style i'm getting form the screenshots..
meh i'd still sell my left leg for a preorder
heh - i wonder how quick a hex editor comes out to alter the stats - omg100+skill points for lvl one barbarian fist bash grrrrraarrrgghh!
If I had to point out 1 thing that looked like WoW art it would be the small candles on the shelves towards the beginning of the gameplay trailer. I know, I know it such a picky little thing, but they look to have been boosted straight from Scholomance itself!
I guess I would have liked to see how blizzard would have handled something a little more realistic in the shader/painting department while still employing stylized designs and proportions. But I digress, it looks badass as is.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/885/885161p1.html
My post never made a comparison of D3 to D2. I exclaimed my confusion that people could think this game looks like WoW.
I don't think they made the old diablo's dark and gritty looking because of limitations of the engines. There were plenty of colourful and brightly lit games made around the same time it came out.
That said, yes, I would prefer it to look more like the image you posted. Updated to the same sort of resolutions as you see in the DIII stuff of course, but yea.
Daz - I know, but the comparison to WoW is because it's being made by blizz, so if you compare it to other blizzard games, it looks very similar to WoW rather than to Diablo II. Not all of it, but some of those screenshots would actually fit fairly snugly into a WoW environment. Seriously, I went through the whole screenshot section and some of the outdoor stuff especially is similar.
I'm going to go ahead and disagree for now, for reasons I've already posted. There's a level of sophistication in the texturing, lighting and overall treatment that's completely different to WoW imo. People are seeing non photographic textures, no normal maps and saying 'WoW cartoon style' but If you actually look at the 2 games and compare them, it's a totally different approach.
I'm not going to continue to argue with people about how much this game does or doesn't look like WoW. It's a waste of all of our time. It never entered my head that it looked like WoW as I watched it, but clearly it did for other people, so it would appear to be a subjective issue (and yes, I play WoW).
I've been thinking more about the question I posed in my first post. I think games that rely more on talent than tech to look good can piss people off, because not all studios can make them. EA couldn't make a game like this, because in their hiring practices there is little to no concept of talent, it's all based on experience. Furthermore, it's usually the wrong people doing the hiring and internal promoting. The big studios have little understanding of how fundamental individual team talent is. They think that all they need is tech to get them from A to B, assuming B is a good looking game. There's at least one big game in development at EA that I know of that doesn't even have an AD.
Blizzard are one of the few studios that get it, and that can sometimes make sectors of the rest of the industry all pissy and moody, without them really understanding why.
I personally love the style, and its definitely a style I would have loved to see for WoW. Its so refined, well executed, and just visually stunning to look at.
I played Diablo II for the first time last night and got through the first act and I was really enjoying myself (except for the IRS). With Diablo III, I'm sure I'll share that same experience only with art looking a tonne times better.
I'm slowly becoming a Blizzard fanboy ever since StarCraft 2 and now seeing Diablo III has added fuel to that fire.
And kudos to ror for his earlier posts! Well said, dude.
-caseyjones
Is that you Wirt?
Although this game isn't MMO, running it like Guildwars (Which also isn't MMO) but has locations where it runs like an MMO for trading or looking for parties etc. would work well with this game.
Daz
Seems like a bad choice, brand-wise to bring color into Diablo (I would have prefered a Giger-esque monochrome). They were already sharing sound effects and UI with WoW. I suppose they feel like they can sell more copies if the appeal to the new gamers that started with WoW.
All that said, the art looks great. I may pick the game up just on the strength of the visuals, because I really never could get into the previous game's grinding gameplay.
but as for now, i don't see what the fuss is all about.
installed D2 3 years ago, played it for 2-3 hours before i got bored an uninstalled it.
this got some cool graphics, but looks like another boring blizzard grindfest, so i think i'll pass.
Frankly, I think the game looks better with more color and contrast, whether it reminds people of WoW or not. Wandering around dark, monochromatic corridors got old with Quake 2; wandering around dark, monochromatic dungeons got old with Diablo 2. You can have mood and atmosphere without restricting your palette as severely as D1/D2 (Bioshock comes to mind - lots of darkness, but lots of variation with color as well.)
so when are you coming over???
BLOOD AND GUTSSSSS YESSSSSSSS
I wish that a company with Blizzard's resources was willing to take a few risks. If you're just gonna do a kill-fest, at least revive Blackthorne
will have to summon my D2 Crew from their various haunts across the country for a massive Diablo circle-jerk extravaganza when this comes out.
the goat-man model on the beastiary page is underwhelming. i have a hard on for goat men so this is important to me. i want to be confused inside when i kill hordes of them and steal their armors.
Nacire thanks for the linkage
EDIT: Ok i read the article, and I really liked what I read. Basically they are using this style (colour, shapes etc.) to help push the narrative... which is really cool. Using blue's and greens to give that horror type vibe... something is looming over you kinda thing.
It will be interesting to see if and how they use the style to their advantage in the end product, for now...
HUGZ EVERYONE?
Well, my ESP senses tell me that they'll sell a hojillion copies (all to Koreans), make an expansion, and have the game played for years on end on the b.net servers.
Seriously, if they released d3 with d2 graphics they could probably still make a killing.
Dear My life,
It was great knowing you, but we must part ways soon. The eventual release of Diablo 3 is upon us. It's best that you seek new opportunities without me. You may want to check with The Sun, because I won't be seeing it much either. I will eventually return to you. but I can't say when.
Best Regards,
Chris Holden
We are hiring many Environment Artists for Diablo III
http://www.blizzard.com/us/jobopp/
Now back to your regularly scheduled program.
/End blatant Advertisement
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /us/jobopp/ on this server.
Now comes the interminable long 3 year+ wait till the bloody game is released.
Time to re-install D2