I guess it's not too surprising that Roper wouldn't have the most complimentary things to say about the upcoming game, and I definitely disagree with his thoughts on it not really "ringing with Diablo". Having played the game at BlizzCon, I can say that it doesn't just ring Diablo... it screams it. It's the Diablo I was hoping for all these years, and the whole idea of starting in a somewhat lighter area and descending into darkness rather than just having the game begin in the depths of hell (ie: where do you go from there?) seems perfect to me. We've only seen a tiny bit of Diablo 3 so far, and sometimes it's easy for people to lose sight of that."Roper, ex-vice president of Blizzard North, the now defunct Blizzard satellite studio that was responsible for the Diablo games, told VideoGamer.com in an interview to be published later this week, that while he "didn't look at it (the released Diablo III gameplay footage) and go, oh my God that's horrible", "as a player it just didn't really ring with Diablo".
He said: "One of the things I always enjoyed about that separation between Blizzard and Blizzard North was that the Diablo games had a very distinct art style. They had different art directors, they had different people working on it, they had a different sensibility about them. Diablo was I think grittier and darker and a little more leaning towards the photo realistic. Whereas the Craft games that were being built down in Irvine were bigger and broader in scope, brighter colours, just different pallets and different presentation. Both of those were very strong from that visual standpoint, for example.
"But it makes complete sense to me where they went because they basically took the Diablo universe and then approached it from the Blizzard Ivine stance for the visuals. That's the way they approach things. It wasn't that I looked at it and went, oh my God that looks terrible. I was like, that looks like Blizzard. The guys in Irvine. That's what it looks like to me. Their interpretation of it."
When asked if he was disappointed or pleased with Diablo's new art style, Roper, who is now design director and executive producer of Atari-owned Cryptic Studios, and in charge of Champions Online, a superhero MMO due out on PC this spring, said: "You know, I liked the darker grittier. I liked the differences in art style, to be honest. So, I think I would personally from a player standpoint prefer that."
"I think that one of the things that we always tried to get across was that Diablo was Gothic fantasy and I think there was just a need that was put in there from the visuals that I didn't necessarily get. I got it from the architecture and to a degree from the character design but not the feeling of the world. I can't say that I dislike it. I didn't look at it and go, oh my God that's horrible. But I looked at it and went, it's not really... to me as a player it just didn't really ring with Diablo.""
So what are your thoughts on the interview with Roper?
Flagship Studios. Right?
I really wanted to play Mythos.
I got accepted for Beta but... I always had trouble getting it up.
Edit: (sounds wrong)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagship_Studios
I mean Bill Roper can talk about realistic and gritty style, but until they change their general art direction from this, to that, I'll take it as pretentious bullshit. He should know very well that when making a realistic game in 3D, the game only looks impressive as long as the best current technology lasts, after which it looks pathetic. He can only fool young and inexperienced gamers who don't understand that fact.
but i thought he was working with cryptic games on champions online
(btw runic games was the same that i was referring to earlier when i said matt uelmen was working on a diablo clone)
All of my respect for you is dissapearing with every new word you say.
What the hell is the point of that? He was pointing out that the concept art for the game they're making is childish. Which is true. So whats the problem?
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.
There was plenty of potential.
However, I also believe the new art style is the best way to go, for now. The reason being, photo-realism art style doesnt really work with today's technology, simply because we are at a point where we can create very realistic objects, but the human eye can still tell they are not "right". In the past, the lower tech covered up for this, by pixelating everything, and our imagination filled in the blanks. However, nowadays game graphics leave little to the imagination, and we end up finding more faults, the more "Realistic" it gets.
Check out this links if you don't understand what I mean:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4557935.ece
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6153667/index.html
http://www.psu.com/forums/showthread.php?p=167451
http://www.digra.org/dl/db/07312.11004.pdf
http://nerve.com/CS/blogs/61fps/archive/2008/11/10/crossing-the-uncanny-valley-part-1.aspx
http://www.edge-online.com/blogs/video-the-uncanny-valley
http://www.destructoid.com/gta-iv-the-uncanny-v-and-good-graphics--39172.phtml
All that said, I wish D3 kept to life-like proportions, and realistic graphical representation of items. But I also accept that it probably wouldn't feel as nice to play.
It comes up like that if you try and paste URLs and don't have the post-count requirement to do so.
Boy, Bill Roper is getting a lot of attention.
For at least the third time on this forum:
- 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
http://diablofans.com/forums/showpost.php?p=376208&postcount=96
Can you show sources for all of that to validate it?
As the link mentioned, mobygames lists all of the credits. You can also just look at the credits on the actual games in their documentation. I went over all of this with my source years ago, but can probably give a quick bio on any name in particular, if you're curious.
Yes, Bill went all the way back to 1994 with Blizzard, but he didn't move up to Blizzard North until 2002. Yes, the two Breviks and two Schaefers are brothers.
This is a good list of early Condor, Inc (which became Blizzard North shortly thereafter):
http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesis/justice-league-task-force/credits
And guess who worked on the Nintendo version of the same title:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/snes/justice-league-task-force/credits
Pay close attention to the 'thanks' in both lists for extra points.
People who have worked on this game have also collaborated on the creation of the following games:
Bill Roper is a jack of all trades when it comes to video game genres worked on. lol