That's a load of crap in what was otherwise a thoughtful post.
The original "Orcs and Humans" was actually quite fun, while "Rock and Roll Racing" and "The Lost Vikings" were both generally well-received.
You need to put this in context - back in the mid nineties, FMV garbage like "Seventh Guest" and incredibly boring non-games like "Myst" dominated the PC. The sad and ironic thing about Bliz's current focus on cinematics, card games, flashy animations, conventions, collectors' editions, etc, and full decade of releasing nothing but WoW iterations is that their initial success was based on them being actual action-based game alternatives to these kinds of overhyped yawners.
Dude, Warcraft 1 didn't sell as well as Warcraft 2, not to mention it was innovative in terms of RTS controls. It being fun has nothing to do with the fact that its sales were abysmal in comparison to everything that came after it.
I also think you're forgetting all those Dungeons and Dragons games they made before Warcraft as well, all of which were bad.
And Myst is considered by many to be the best game ever made. Of course next to non of the millenial gamers understand or care to appriciate that game for it's puzzled genius.
I think in the case of a Blizzard game, Photo Realistic means it shows the weather of time. That was kind of the subject of photo realism from the get go for most 3D games anyway, if you guys remember the first generation, things such as starfox were simply the designated colors, they showed no age, and then you skip all the way to the Resident Evil 1 remake and we finally begin seeing decay in environment, not to mention other things such as Red Faction with it's Geo Mod
I wonder if we will ever get something like a screenshot or sample of some kind of the older version of D3. You know, it got canceled later when Blizz North was scrapped. They should show some pieces even if very underdeveloped.
You know they won't though, because it might end up causing a shit storm, and besides that nobody in the community matters enough to ask that and get a real response.
Also, if I recall correctly a lot of the material was taken by Blizz Northies when they left to other ventures.
I agree that Diablo 2 aimed for highly-detailed photo-realism (which a 2D game can afford), and Diablo 3 aims for stylization (assuring a timeless quality). But they share the same spirit despite the difference in style.
This game is a clash of philosophys really. If Irvine were to break with the conventions they learned in their generic Craft games it would surely be a failure.
Regardless, this art style will maximize prospective profits, so the community probably can in their eyes stand to fracture.
Anyone know the link to the interview of the Bliz north employee where they said the team originally intended for Diablo 3 to be more dark before North was shut down?
- Less than 1/5 of the Blizzard North people with a credit on Diablo II worked on 'Hellgate'
- Roper didn't have an office at Blizzard North until AFTER the release of "Lord of Destruction"
- None of the 19 Blizzard North people with a credit on the original Diablo currently work in Irvine
It's kind of a complex situation, that hellgate game is, because it's sort of not Bill Ropers fault.
Marketing and Distributor really shafted the game, all Bill is at fault for is being overly optimistic and falling short of realizing in the real world of gaming, the Distributor dictates release dates, and the Marketing is responsible for giving the game an image both pre and post launch.
and in all honesty, Hellgate was pretty playable by the time of its last patch. It was, in my eyes, a spiritual successor to Diablo 2 in that the nature of how a player would conduct themselves was similar, as I observed.
That's primarily why I don't have a bias against Bill Roper like most people, because even though it wasnt a commercial success I accepted its loss because of it's ambition.
If you don't know anything just get lost and do not try to be funny kid, my son.
Brian Morrisroe was the original if you didn't know. Someone from within took over, but they have not stated WHO the new Art Director was, and if they have, it's in some arbitrary article because it doesn't appear to be very pronounced.
I get what you're saying at thats is easy to make good looking character models but comparing Killzone 2 (a fps which at most has around 20 guys on screen) to Diablo 3 (which will most likely be hitting 100 guys on screen) is pretty much pointless. On top of all the enemies on screen you have to take into acount all the different abilities/special effects happening. Add in shadows and physics, etc. you are bound to run into framerate issues on way or the other. Even the game you mentioned (killzone 2) has been proven to dip below 30 fps on heavy firefights.
You can indeed use many tricks to make a game look good but it comes at a big cost. Hell look at Crysis, most comps still can't run that game at max settings at a constant, stable framerate.
I didn't compare Killzone to Diablo 3, what I was doing was explaining a method of skinning Frames to make terrain and characters in an almost photo realistic manner. Also, if you notice the picture is under 100KB and it doesn't look bad, considering it's for an old game. Sure, it's no Crysis, but if you were to put something sort of like it on the Barbarian, could you imagine how much better it would look?
I highly doubt D3 is going to be high definition, so why can't they do this? Im willing to sacrifice the quest for Light Radius if they would just do this.
Also, I don't know if any of you know this, but rich vibrant colors make it easy for you to lose sight of your cursor, especially during action.
Exactly, so when the community grows, we hear more about it. Perhaps that wasn't worded right :cute:.
Well it wasn't just the community though, the Blizz north guys agreed that D2 wasn't dark (gore wise and story wise)
It's hard to pin it, there was a general consensus that something was wrong, but it wasn't serious.
Quote from "alexiskool12345" »
They really just need to show off some later areas of the game with blood and gore, etc. just so people will shut the hell up about the art direction.
Also people need to realise that Diablo 3 is 3D as opposed to Diablo 1 and 2. If they seriously tried to imitate the detail in the environments in Diablo 2 and move it over to a 3D engine...the system requirements would be rediculous.
Do people actually think that this
could transfer over to 3D without any problems and keep this level of detail/gritiness? Seriously...
I admit it's damn different but my god people. At least wait until we get some media that isn't the grassland or basic dungeon area.
Yes it can. All 3D is, is a bunch of straight lines making a wire frame, with 2D mapping covering.
It's especially possible considering all cameras will be facing one direction.
There are several ways of doing it, you can draw the pixels or you can use real-life objects to map a structure. Look @ Killzone 2 for example, they took high definition pictures of peoples faces and then wrapped it around the wire frame, and then look at custom faces on Arma. Here i'll give you an example of a custom face mesh that is wrapped around your character on Arma
I also think you're forgetting all those Dungeons and Dragons games they made before Warcraft as well, all of which were bad.
And Myst is considered by many to be the best game ever made. Of course next to non of the millenial gamers understand or care to appriciate that game for it's puzzled genius.
You know they won't though, because it might end up causing a shit storm, and besides that nobody in the community matters enough to ask that and get a real response.
Also, if I recall correctly a lot of the material was taken by Blizz Northies when they left to other ventures.
Regardless, this art style will maximize prospective profits, so the community probably can in their eyes stand to fracture.
Can you show sources for all of that to validate it?
Marketing and Distributor really shafted the game, all Bill is at fault for is being overly optimistic and falling short of realizing in the real world of gaming, the Distributor dictates release dates, and the Marketing is responsible for giving the game an image both pre and post launch.
and in all honesty, Hellgate was pretty playable by the time of its last patch. It was, in my eyes, a spiritual successor to Diablo 2 in that the nature of how a player would conduct themselves was similar, as I observed.
That's primarily why I don't have a bias against Bill Roper like most people, because even though it wasnt a commercial success I accepted its loss because of it's ambition.
Brian Morrisroe was the original if you didn't know. Someone from within took over, but they have not stated WHO the new Art Director was, and if they have, it's in some arbitrary article because it doesn't appear to be very pronounced.
I didn't compare Killzone to Diablo 3, what I was doing was explaining a method of skinning Frames to make terrain and characters in an almost photo realistic manner. Also, if you notice the picture is under 100KB and it doesn't look bad, considering it's for an old game. Sure, it's no Crysis, but if you were to put something sort of like it on the Barbarian, could you imagine how much better it would look?
I highly doubt D3 is going to be high definition, so why can't they do this? Im willing to sacrifice the quest for Light Radius if they would just do this.
Also, I don't know if any of you know this, but rich vibrant colors make it easy for you to lose sight of your cursor, especially during action.
It's hard to pin it, there was a general consensus that something was wrong, but it wasn't serious.
Yes it can. All 3D is, is a bunch of straight lines making a wire frame, with 2D mapping covering.
It's especially possible considering all cameras will be facing one direction.
There are several ways of doing it, you can draw the pixels or you can use real-life objects to map a structure. Look @ Killzone 2 for example, they took high definition pictures of peoples faces and then wrapped it around the wire frame, and then look at custom faces on Arma. Here i'll give you an example of a custom face mesh that is wrapped around your character on Arma
Do you see what I mean?