GC08: Diablo III interview

It's only been a couple of weeks since Blizzard announced Diablo III, so there are still tons of unanswered questions - just the way like Blizzard's veteran PR guys like it.

Thus Leipzig was the place where every games journalist wanted to get more Diablo III information and Boomtown had the rare chance of a one-on-one interview with Lead Designer on Diablo III, Jay Wilson. In fact we had him all to ourselves for 20 minutes at the Leipzig Games Convention – somehow he survived the onslaught of questions...

Even if Diablo III hasn't been official for more than a couple of weeks, development has been going on for years. A good portion of that time has been invested in bringing the right look to the game (and resulted in a massive outcry, ed.). A full 3D perspective was chosen - but it wasn't an easy choice to make.

- To move from primarily 2D to 3D increases the demands on artists and game designers a lot. There is so much going on visually in Diablo III, and our primary concern is to make sure that the player doesn't lose the overview. For example darkness doesn't work the same way in a 3D world as in a 2D world. You have to take lighting and surroundings into account, things that are much easier in a 2D world.

Since Diablo III will be much more tactically oriented than the previous games, it's crucial that the player can distinguish the monsters. Thus the team initially tried to emulate the visual look of the predecessors - only now in 3D. However, the result was not satisfactory. The gamers couldn't tell the monsters apart from each other. However, Wilson is aware of the widespread criticism over the visual style, which a group of fans has been voicing since the announcement:

- It's something we expected and you know, I can understand it. However, I can assure you, we've tried a lot of things and the less dark graphics work better in a 3D environment. It's very easy for a 2D artist to make areas more or less dark without the player losing his orientation. But that's not the case with 3D graphics. I think that as soon as the gamers try Diablo III for themselves, they will realise that we made the right decision.

But the developer has taken notes and has actually decided to change some of the things the players have been worried about - for example the very clean caves. These will get an improved look but it will not happen till the final portion of the development process.

Another important reason for the visual look is the tactical approach that Diablo III requires. You will still slaughter tons of monsters - of course - but in the latter parts of the game especially you need to start using that meatball between your ears.

- We knew from the start that we wanted to change to fights in Diablo III. You used to be able to teleport back to the city even during a fight, or survive a huge numbers of monsters just by consuming one healthpot after the other.

- That makes it difficult for a game designer. The only thing you can do is to make the player take enormous ammounts of damage, which we used to do in the previous games once the player got into the final parts of the games. That's the kind of situation we want to avoid. Diablo III won't just be a matter of having enough health pots.

Blizzard is not prepared to talk about boss fights, yet. Thus the only thing resembling a boss we've seen is the armoured cow (...) on steroids at the end of the announcement trailer. However, according to Wilson that's only going to be a mini-boss. He loves the boss fights in God of War and Zelda, so there's no doubt we'll have to come up with better strategies than just rushing:

- The goal is to make players use the specific strengths and weaknesses of a class and utilize the environment - while still retaining the series' focus on fast action. Don't worry - Diablo III will not be a tactical game but it doesn't hurt gameplay to make the player consider all options before launching the attack.

At the moment Wilson and his team work on getting new content ready for the presentation at Blizzcon later this month. Apart from that the days (and nights) are spent on Act I and II work. Just like tradition demands there'll be four acts in total, and the game will for most players take the same amount of time to complete as Diablo II did.

The team has been working on Act I for nearly two years now, but don't be alarmed - the other three acts won't require the same amount of development time. Act 1 has been the focus of massive tests, and the team has scrapped all art work and started all over again several times, because they weren't satisfied. That's why they are sure they've hit the right art style for the game.

Another reason for the long development time is the game's random content generator, which required a ton of work from the arts guys. They had to create 10 times as much content, but once it's all done, the maps can be created extremely fast.

The developer has also decided on using five classes, of which the four are implemented in the game at the moment.

- We made the decision to go for five classes pretty early in the game design, which had to be really unique and challenging in their own ways. Actually I announced that at a presentation by a mistake, I simply got a little carried way by all the excitement, Wilson says with big smile on his lips.

An important part of any Diablo III game is of course loot - which apart from the story itself is the reason to fight foes (story? there's a story? I only ever thought about the loot, sweet sweet loot, ed.). In Diablo III loot will drop individually for every player. That means that even in co-op you can't see what the others got. But if they decide to drop their loot, you can pick it up afterwards. This actually lead to an unexpected social element:

- During tests players would suddenly gather around a player who was dropping items on the ground. Even if he couldn't use it, others could. That's a nice side-effect and shows you that we as developers can't always predict the consequences of our own choices.

Our 20 minutes were over, so now we have to look forward to BlizzCon to get more information. Perhaps we will be told what the final class will be?