Having watched the entire gameplay trailer in its 800 megabytes of glory, I’m going to report on what I saw and what I liked/disliked about it. I recommend you all download it asap because watching it on the D3 site or on youtube is simply not the same. You miss a LOT of the details. I also apologize for the length but when you see such a great looking game that you've an
The first thing you notice is how incredibly 3-Dimensional the world is. The trailer starts with the Barbarian entering a dungeon of sorts, crossing a bridge. Everything is incredibly detailed. The archway of the stairs is etched out in a beautiful design. A statue of a woman stands on either side of the arch with water dripping down from its edges. Cob-webs litter the ancient dungeon which gives you a real sense of depth.
The UI has remained very similar, with the red and blue balls representing health and mana accompanied by artistic depictions of Tyrael on the right side and Diablo on the left side. These are my guesses as it may be another demon or another arch-angel. You also notice with the full-screen and full quality version of the gameplay trailer that the health and mana orbs on your UI are spinning like a globe, adding a subtle touch of aesthetic appeal to this already great-looking interface. The UI is familiar and takes up a very small amount of space, increasing the immersion factor immensely. I am looking at the trailer on a big 47” LCD TV and the trailer is in 16:9 widescreen ratio, meaning the game will have native widescreen resolutions available. A big relief. Full-screening this also essentially shows me what this game will look like on my own computer. It’s remarkably clean and the only other piece of UI on the screen is your location in the top right, and in this case it’s the “Forgotten Tombs”.
As the Barbarian crosses the bridge, two small fountains feed water onto a platform, which has small waterfalls displacing the water while maintain a few inches of water depth. As the Barbarian steps through the water, you can clearly see ripples emanate from his feet. Ghoulish creatures then climb up the sides of this tall platform, giving you a great sense of how this new 3-Dimensional world helps create immersion as well as new gameplay elements. It’s not just eye-candy; you can have enemies climbing up walls and jumping out at you.
In classic Barbarian fashion, the would-be hero dispatches the demons with ease, hacking and slashing as only a Diablo Barbarian knows how. The special effects look fantastic and the blood that spills from each swing makes you thirsty for more. The developers know much of the fun of Diablo’s dungeon crawls were the mass amount of enemies you would face at one time. My friend, who was loathe to play World of Warcraft any further than level 40 explained to me why he loved Diablo so much, and it was for just that reason: He loved killing dozens and dozens of enemies at once. It was fun, it was a visceral experience and the pace of the game kept him playing. Sure, it took a hell of a lot longer for him to hit level 99 than it took me to hit level 70 yet for him, levelling in Diablo for 12 hours was less painful than a few hours in World of Warcraft. It was the fast pace, the mass killing and the sheer carnage of the hack’n’slash style of Diablo that kept him hooked, and it certainly looks even more appealing in this iteration of the franchise.
Some have complained that the pace is not fast enough, especially for those playing Sorcresses in Diablo II who are used to teleporting all over the place, but so far, for a melee class, the Barbarian doesn’t look to be sluggish one bit.
Speaking of pacing, a new change that the Diablo team introduced was health orbs that would drop off monsters randomly that regenerate your health. They wanted to get rid of the potion-spamfest that Diablo II had become and to quote a Blizzard employee “We want the reaction when you’re in trouble to use your skills and not just hit the potion button several times”. They also did not want, as the same developer said, to institute an eating or drinking system ala World of Warcraft, which would seriously hamper and kill the pace of the game.
The narrator of the trailer introduces the Barbarian and explains how there are new innovations to help players use abilities quicker. They wanted to get rid of the F1-F12 business and like the narrator mentions, “If you have a mouse, you can play Diablo III”. They did not want the game to become a key-binding frenzy and instead retain an easy-to-use skill system which many people could adapt to and learn in order to use all their skills, something Blizzard is evidently promoting and trying to make an important feature for Diablo III.
We get a glimpse of the inventory/paper doll of our hero. The days of the grid inventory are over; each item simply takes up one slot. The character screen shows a slot for a helmet, necklace, chestpiece, belt, shoulderpads, gloves, leggings, boots and two rings. The Barbarian then switches to two improved axes which are enchanted with frost and electricity which have special effects that can freeze or electrocute enemies on contact. This is a big hint that weapon enchants are going to be yet another part of character and item customization.
As the Barbarian toils on, we see him pick up a ‘minor energy rune’ and we also see the map appear in the top right for the first time. We are given a demonstration on how the environments of Diablo III are destructible and can be taken advantage of. This is the practical element to their Havok Physics Engine that the developers have incorporated. They wanted Diablo III not only to look better and play better but to be more realistic in terms of physical processes such as blasting a bookcase into pieces, and having those pieces rain down on nearby enemies, damaging or killing them.
The Barbarian is then outfitted with an entire set of armor to showcase what our hero can look like when he is clothed in Gothic Plate. We also see ladders which the Barbarian can climb down, adding another small but important feature to the game. With such depth in these tombs that can span at least several stories up and down, having ladders or other forms of climbing up and down levels through a medium other than stairs feels refreshing and inventive. We also see a Chipped Star Topaz drop, signifying the return of gems in Diablo III.
The Barbarian fights on and finds a group of NPC’s desperately fighting against the endless mobs of zombies, using knocked over tables and other objects as a barricade. As the Barbarian blasts away the enemies as well as the barricade, he befriends them and they join forces. One of them happens to be Deckard Cain. Right clicking on them tags them to follow you as combat aides, much like in Diablo II, yet here we have multiple NPC’s rather than the single we were allowed previously. There are a variety of fights that require different strategies. Certain magic-types need to be killed quickly before they summon demons while brute bersekers require a different strategy; let them swing and while they recover, counter and kill them. This kind of variation ensures skill prevails rather than simply potion spam. We then see our first mini-boss fight between the Barbarian and something that looks akin to abominations from the Warcraft Universe. As our Barbarian dispatches him, he drops a purple-coloured item. Deckard Cain departs into a familiar town-portal which remains blue in colour with a dark middle depicting something similar to a starry sky. Our hero and his new companion, a Witch Doctor, depart to the Leoric Highlands, into the wilderness.
My first problem with the game comes with the second portion of the trailer which features the gameplay of the Witch Doctor. The Barbarian and Witch Doctor step outside into the wilderness. Despite the fact that many are complaining the outdoors are too bright and colourful, my problem resides with the mountain wall and some of the greenery. It doesn’t match the texture of the cavern or even the stone path coming from it. It looks almost like a matte painting, overly smooth with no depth or dimension to it. It gives a different feel to the game, almost like a different artistic direction. Perhaps enhancing the trees to be affected by swaying winds with the new physics engine and sharpening the mountainous textures would alleviate my qualms. Anyway, onto the Witch Doctor.
We get to see some of his area effect abilities like the Locust Swarm which spreads and devours enemies. He then raises several mongrels, pets sprung from the corpses of fallen enemies to keep monsters at distance. He even applies Locust Swarm to them in order to deal more damage. The Witch Doctor can also ignite the pet to explode, causing area damage wherever the pet is located. Horrify is a mass-fear effect, similar to WoW, where monsters will flee from the Witch Doctor while the spell is active. Another is Mass Confusion which can make monsters attack each other and create real confusion, buying you time to raise pets, cast spells or make an escape. Another impressive ability features the Witch Doctor raising a wall of zombies that block the path and fight for you. We also see female iterations of the Witch Doctor and Barbarian classes. With male and female versions of both classes forming a four-person party, we are treated to a final battle against creatures that resemble Lord of the Rings Tree Ents. When they are dealt with, a huge creature bursts out onto the courtyard. With huge metal claws, he pounds on our party, running to and fro, swinging, screaming and blasting with all his might. In the end though, he is inevitably defeated by the more apt heroes. The fight is exciting, engaging and makes you itch to play this game. The final touch is his burning carcass dispersing into smoke and flame and summoning a final skeletal army to battle the heroes. The screen fades and we get that now-familiar Diablo III logo.
All in all, the video looks extremely promising. I don’t think anybody will have any trouble getting used to the detail and subtleties that the game offers in terms of immersion and aesthetic appeal. What remains to be seen is how well the game can induce the brooding and dark mood of the previous instalments and how the playability will be affected by it. We all know the main concern is multiplayer and I’m sure Blizzard is hard at work creating an engaging cooperative multiplayer game that will allow friends to play together and enemies to do battle. I look forward to the improvements made to Battle.net and increased functionality for PvP, clans and tournaments that Warcraft III has seen in the last few years. With the game just announced, I’m sure Blizzard has plenty of time to optimize and provide us with a great online platform to play this game on.
Errmm... You basically just gave us an abstract of the video, and not a review. You gave us a lot of text but most of it was just explaining what happened in the cinematic, which I'm sure almost all of us have seen. Try to make your post more concise and opinion based so we can actually comment on it other than saying: Yea... I saw the cinematic too... Cool.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
---- And the evil that was once vanquished shall rise anew! ----
Yeah I did summarize a lot of the trailer but my personal thoughts and experiences are peppered throughout. It's a lot of text, and I'm sure everyone has seen it but sometimes it's easier to explain things as a reference point rather than saying "I loved the waterfall on the platform" and people go "Wait what platform again?". Anyway I'll try to cut down on the word count next time and make it more concise, you are completely right in that regard. Its easy to ramble when the writing is so enjoyable.
It's too bad I didn't comment on the specific skills, damage numbers or any of those intricacies in my summary. I commented on the EFFECTS of the spells, like the particle shaders and how it looked visually, and most of my commentary was summarizing the video and commenting on small details I noticed as well as some of the stuff I didn't like, for example the mountain texture that looked like a bad matte painting. And stuff like that, the mountain wall, is something I expect the developers feel is finished. They wouldn't show us an incomplete version of the outdoor landscape. In terms of items dropped and that, of course it was scripted but that's not what I commented on. Before you call us morons, try reading a few lines. If it's too much for you, then skip on to the battle.net forums where you'll fit right in with the trolls.
No, I didn't but its something I realized later on. And I also noticed that some of the warrior's feats/spells/skills take up stamina rather than Fury, thus not all abilities are based on an energy system, in this case "Fury". Whether or not this is simply an aesthetic change or whether the mechanics of Fury and Mana differ remains to be seen.
Good post, not many can write what you wrote, especially since this forum is getting filled with loser people now calling each other 'morons' and such.
You realize that demo version, even demo walk throughs of the game have almost NO bearing on what the final product is like, right?
The skills, the loot, the drops, the damage taken, the damage given, almost everything involved is geared to the exact video you just watched.
Morons.
You realise you don't have to attack people for saying something that isn't AMAZING about the game, we do realize it's unfinished do you want us to wait until the game comes out until we can talk about it?
Well written, It lacked somewhat in opinionatedness, but it was a good read. I agree, although I would like to see them cut down on the green glow in the dungeon.
Having watched the entire gameplay trailer in its 800 megabytes of glory, I’m going to report on what I saw and what I liked/disliked about it. I recommend you all download it asap because watching it on the D3 site or on youtube is simply not the same. You miss a LOT of the details. I also apologize for the length but when you see such a great looking game that you've an
The first thing you notice is how incredibly 3-Dimensional the world is. The trailer starts with the Barbarian entering a dungeon of sorts, crossing a bridge. Everything is incredibly detailed. The archway of the stairs is etched out in a beautiful design. A statue of a woman stands on either side of the arch with water dripping down from its edges. Cob-webs litter the ancient dungeon which gives you a real sense of depth.
The UI has remained very similar, with the red and blue balls representing health and mana accompanied by artistic depictions of Tyrael on the right side and Diablo on the left side. These are my guesses as it may be another demon or another arch-angel. You also notice with the full-screen and full quality version of the gameplay trailer that the health and mana orbs on your UI are spinning like a globe, adding a subtle touch of aesthetic appeal to this already great-looking interface. The UI is familiar and takes up a very small amount of space, increasing the immersion factor immensely. I am looking at the trailer on a big 47” LCD TV and the trailer is in 16:9 widescreen ratio, meaning the game will have native widescreen resolutions available. A big relief. Full-screening this also essentially shows me what this game will look like on my own computer. It’s remarkably clean and the only other piece of UI on the screen is your location in the top right, and in this case it’s the “Forgotten Tombs”.
As the Barbarian crosses the bridge, two small fountains feed water onto a platform, which has small waterfalls displacing the water while maintain a few inches of water depth. As the Barbarian steps through the water, you can clearly see ripples emanate from his feet. Ghoulish creatures then climb up the sides of this tall platform, giving you a great sense of how this new 3-Dimensional world helps create immersion as well as new gameplay elements. It’s not just eye-candy; you can have enemies climbing up walls and jumping out at you.
In classic Barbarian fashion, the would-be hero dispatches the demons with ease, hacking and slashing as only a Diablo Barbarian knows how. The special effects look fantastic and the blood that spills from each swing makes you thirsty for more. The developers know much of the fun of Diablo’s dungeon crawls were the mass amount of enemies you would face at one time. My friend, who was loathe to play World of Warcraft any further than level 40 explained to me why he loved Diablo so much, and it was for just that reason: He loved killing dozens and dozens of enemies at once. It was fun, it was a visceral experience and the pace of the game kept him playing. Sure, it took a hell of a lot longer for him to hit level 99 than it took me to hit level 70 yet for him, levelling in Diablo for 12 hours was less painful than a few hours in World of Warcraft. It was the fast pace, the mass killing and the sheer carnage of the hack’n’slash style of Diablo that kept him hooked, and it certainly looks even more appealing in this iteration of the franchise.
Some have complained that the pace is not fast enough, especially for those playing Sorcresses in Diablo II who are used to teleporting all over the place, but so far, for a melee class, the Barbarian doesn’t look to be sluggish one bit.
Speaking of pacing, a new change that the Diablo team introduced was health orbs that would drop off monsters randomly that regenerate your health. They wanted to get rid of the potion-spamfest that Diablo II had become and to quote a Blizzard employee “We want the reaction when you’re in trouble to use your skills and not just hit the potion button several times”. They also did not want, as the same developer said, to institute an eating or drinking system ala World of Warcraft, which would seriously hamper and kill the pace of the game.
The narrator of the trailer introduces the Barbarian and explains how there are new innovations to help players use abilities quicker. They wanted to get rid of the F1-F12 business and like the narrator mentions, “If you have a mouse, you can play Diablo III”. They did not want the game to become a key-binding frenzy and instead retain an easy-to-use skill system which many people could adapt to and learn in order to use all their skills, something Blizzard is evidently promoting and trying to make an important feature for Diablo III.
We get a glimpse of the inventory/paper doll of our hero. The days of the grid inventory are over; each item simply takes up one slot. The character screen shows a slot for a helmet, necklace, chestpiece, belt, shoulderpads, gloves, leggings, boots and two rings. The Barbarian then switches to two improved axes which are enchanted with frost and electricity which have special effects that can freeze or electrocute enemies on contact. This is a big hint that weapon enchants are going to be yet another part of character and item customization.
As the Barbarian toils on, we see him pick up a ‘minor energy rune’ and we also see the map appear in the top right for the first time. We are given a demonstration on how the environments of Diablo III are destructible and can be taken advantage of. This is the practical element to their Havok Physics Engine that the developers have incorporated. They wanted Diablo III not only to look better and play better but to be more realistic in terms of physical processes such as blasting a bookcase into pieces, and having those pieces rain down on nearby enemies, damaging or killing them.
The Barbarian is then outfitted with an entire set of armor to showcase what our hero can look like when he is clothed in Gothic Plate. We also see ladders which the Barbarian can climb down, adding another small but important feature to the game. With such depth in these tombs that can span at least several stories up and down, having ladders or other forms of climbing up and down levels through a medium other than stairs feels refreshing and inventive. We also see a Chipped Star Topaz drop, signifying the return of gems in Diablo III.
The Barbarian fights on and finds a group of NPC’s desperately fighting against the endless mobs of zombies, using knocked over tables and other objects as a barricade. As the Barbarian blasts away the enemies as well as the barricade, he befriends them and they join forces. One of them happens to be Deckard Cain. Right clicking on them tags them to follow you as combat aides, much like in Diablo II, yet here we have multiple NPC’s rather than the single we were allowed previously. There are a variety of fights that require different strategies. Certain magic-types need to be killed quickly before they summon demons while brute bersekers require a different strategy; let them swing and while they recover, counter and kill them. This kind of variation ensures skill prevails rather than simply potion spam. We then see our first mini-boss fight between the Barbarian and something that looks akin to abominations from the Warcraft Universe. As our Barbarian dispatches him, he drops a purple-coloured item. Deckard Cain departs into a familiar town-portal which remains blue in colour with a dark middle depicting something similar to a starry sky. Our hero and his new companion, a Witch Doctor, depart to the Leoric Highlands, into the wilderness.
My first problem with the game comes with the second portion of the trailer which features the gameplay of the Witch Doctor. The Barbarian and Witch Doctor step outside into the wilderness. Despite the fact that many are complaining the outdoors are too bright and colourful, my problem resides with the mountain wall and some of the greenery. It doesn’t match the texture of the cavern or even the stone path coming from it. It looks almost like a matte painting, overly smooth with no depth or dimension to it. It gives a different feel to the game, almost like a different artistic direction. Perhaps enhancing the trees to be affected by swaying winds with the new physics engine and sharpening the mountainous textures would alleviate my qualms. Anyway, onto the Witch Doctor.
We get to see some of his area effect abilities like the Locust Swarm which spreads and devours enemies. He then raises several mongrels, pets sprung from the corpses of fallen enemies to keep monsters at distance. He even applies Locust Swarm to them in order to deal more damage. The Witch Doctor can also ignite the pet to explode, causing area damage wherever the pet is located. Horrify is a mass-fear effect, similar to WoW, where monsters will flee from the Witch Doctor while the spell is active. Another is Mass Confusion which can make monsters attack each other and create real confusion, buying you time to raise pets, cast spells or make an escape. Another impressive ability features the Witch Doctor raising a wall of zombies that block the path and fight for you. We also see female iterations of the Witch Doctor and Barbarian classes. With male and female versions of both classes forming a four-person party, we are treated to a final battle against creatures that resemble Lord of the Rings Tree Ents. When they are dealt with, a huge creature bursts out onto the courtyard. With huge metal claws, he pounds on our party, running to and fro, swinging, screaming and blasting with all his might. In the end though, he is inevitably defeated by the more apt heroes. The fight is exciting, engaging and makes you itch to play this game. The final touch is his burning carcass dispersing into smoke and flame and summoning a final skeletal army to battle the heroes. The screen fades and we get that now-familiar Diablo III logo.
All in all, the video looks extremely promising. I don’t think anybody will have any trouble getting used to the detail and subtleties that the game offers in terms of immersion and aesthetic appeal. What remains to be seen is how well the game can induce the brooding and dark mood of the previous instalments and how the playability will be affected by it. We all know the main concern is multiplayer and I’m sure Blizzard is hard at work creating an engaging cooperative multiplayer game that will allow friends to play together and enemies to do battle. I look forward to the improvements made to Battle.net and increased functionality for PvP, clans and tournaments that Warcraft III has seen in the last few years. With the game just announced, I’m sure Blizzard has plenty of time to optimize and provide us with a great online platform to play this game on.
The skills, the loot, the drops, the damage taken, the damage given, almost everything involved is geared to the exact video you just watched.
Morons.
http://www.diablofans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9654
You realise you don't have to attack people for saying something that isn't AMAZING about the game, we do realize it's unfinished do you want us to wait until the game comes out until we can talk about it?
Fuck you, I'm a dragon.