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?
I know what i'll do, I'll go find a dinosaur to answer this difficult question. Excuse me everyone I have to travel back to 2003.
Wow, someone actually gets it! That's exactly what it feels like as well. It's not that I don't like the way it looks, it's just that it doesn't feel dark, spooky, or gothic. It feels very much like the Haunted Mansion at Disney World. Similar colors, similar spooky feel, but not frightful, scary, or believable.
In other words, it feels less like Diablo and more like you're playing as a human in WC3 and fighting against undead on a user created map. It's kind of jolting and that was where most of the fuss came from.
Admittedly, they have been changing it so the game is more dark (lighting wise), but I don't think they understand, like most of the people saying "Not dark?" and posting a screenshot of something at night, what dark in the context of scary is. Yeah, we've only seen a bit, but this seems awfully weird showing us a world that looks bright and colorful, coupled with bright and colorful monsters... it doesn't fit.
Yeah, Diablo 2 had brightly colored enemies and weapons, but only to denote a status (frozen, poisoned, special). It looked terrible when an enemy was poisoned or frozen and it using similar colors just isn't cutting it for me.
This isn't to say that the game doesn't look fun ~ it's Diablo. I still play it every now and then. It simply looks less like Diablo and more like Warcraft like Roper said and like what everyone who was icky about the art said as well.
I think they could have tried a bit harder to match the Diablo style instead of just saying "WELP, IT'S HARD DOING SOMETHING DIFFERENT THAN WHAT WE ARE USED TO DOING" and just going along with it. At least, that's what it comes off as to me. They have all the source material they need. Two games worth of content to look at and examine what made Diablo 1 and 2 Diablo instead of Warcraft or Starcraft.
The entire Blizzard North deal was that they had to relocate or get lost. Many chose to get lost, some chose to relocate. I don't think there was much hostility there so I don't see how some commission work would have been such a big deal, especially with WoW being the juggernaut cash cow that it is.
Mainly, it seems like Blizzard has a bunch of fresher blood working on the game and, with something as big as Diablo (really, this is Blizzard we are talking about... there should be absolutely no excuses made on their behalf) it's not looking like a very good idea.
Mainly, going back and reading the Jay Wilson interviews show his inexperience with the game. There are gems like:
No, they really aren't. Creatures that are not under the effect of an ailment, or are not special/stronger than their normal counterparts were not that colorful. At the time, and especially with 2D, it's hard to show that an enemy is poisoned, or if they are frozen, or if this guy is stronger than another. In a game like Diablo, that's pretty important stuff.
Things like that weren't a major issue in Diablo 1 because of the lack of ailments and special creatures. In 3D, though, it's much easier to show that an enemy is frozen (have them in a block of ice, as an example, or glow green for poisoned, or on fire for... fire). Which is funny because...
Which is pretty bogus.
Examine Hellgate: London. That game had Diablo written all over it graphically. It looked good in the places that weren't random. It looked like Diablo should look in 3D.
Even further, Watchmen. It has nothing to do with super hero costumes looking ridiculous when you change the medium from 2D to 3D. It has everything to do with the costume looking ridiculous to begin with. Does Spiderman look stupid in 3D? What about Superman?
No, they don't.
Going back to Hellgate: London, there are TONS of monsters that were straight copies from Diablo 2 baddies. The leapers in the desert are a prime example. Those translated very well to 3D.
But his statement also doesn't make sense. Unless I can move the camera around then, regardless of the world and units being 3D, it's still isometric. Last time I checked, this means the below is redundant.
Like in other isometric games? What? It doesn't seem like there is much in terms of lighting going on in the game anyway. Everything is roughly the same amount of light in entire areas, except for around torches and the like which are slightly lighter.
Isn't that exactly how Diablo 2 was minus the pallet and the light that exists in all parts of everything?
But isn't that the point? To be scared? To not be able to see your enemies very well? That was the entire point of the lighting in Diablo 1 and 2, right? Not knowing exactly what the thing that you can vaguely see is until it gets in to your light radius (or a light). That was chilling the first time through.
The irony here is that he came from Relic, the guys who made DoW and Company of Heroes, both fairly photorealistic gray/brown (especially for DoW seeing as how the source material is pretty vivid and wild).
He then goes on to say:
And then you have games like:
Mythos
Battleforge
The Maw
Spore
Age of Booty
Free Worlds
Civilization Revolutions
Red Alert 3
Almost every single Wii game
... Really, the color is coming back and it's because of WoW and it's been like this for some time now. Instead of banking on that and knowing that developers would cash in on it, they just went with the trend. Now, when I look at a sea of games that look awful lot like Blizzard made them I don't really see anything special in the game. Yeah, it looks like a painting. So did Valkyria Chronicles and Okami. There's nothing special there either.
And yeah, I know this Jay Wilson guy is new to the team, but it also seems like he doesn't really know what he's talking about. He seems really sheltered gaming wise. He also seems like he's only seen screenshots of level 80 characters in Diablo fighting monsters in Act 5 Hell.
Mainly, what I'm saying with all of this is that I don't believe that they actually tried to do what North did with the game. I also don't think they've been working on the game 'for years'. I think this is particularly true with the pace they have set so far with this game. I feel that if they had been working on it for years they would, at the least, have more 'fleshed' out area wise and simply be able to work that content faster. So far there haven't been much in the area of updates. Take away the rune stuff (awesome!) and the few monsters they've added and the majority of these updates are simply just pictures of the same classes we've seen fighting in the same areas we've seen.
But this isn't to say I'm not grateful they are working on the game or appreciative of the work they have done and are doing OR find the game to be ugly or anything like that. I'm just skeptical that they aren't pulling the confidence card and spreading a good bit of misinformation to save face.
I think they could have tried a bit harder to match the Diablo style instead of just saying "WELP, IT'S HARD DOING SOMETHING DIFFERENT THAN WHAT WE ARE USED TO DOING" and just going along with it. At least, that's what it comes off as to me. They have all the source material they need. Two games worth of content to look at and examine what made Diablo 1 and 2 Diablo instead of Warcraft or Starcraft.
The entire Blizzard North deal was that they had to relocate or get lost. Many chose to get lost, some chose to relocate. I don't think there was much hostility there so I don't see how some commission work would have been such a big deal, especially with WoW being the juggernaut cash cow that it is.
Mainly, it seems like Blizzard has a bunch of fresher blood working on the game and, with something as big as Diablo (really, this is Blizzard we are talking about... there should be absolutely no excuses made on their behalf) it's not looking like a very good idea.
Mainly, going back and reading the Jay Wilson interviews show his inexperience with the game. There are gems like:
No, they really aren't. Creatures that are not under the effect of an ailment, or are not special/stronger than their normal counterparts were not that colorful. At the time, and especially with 2D, it's hard to show that an enemy is poisoned, or if they are frozen, or if this guy is stronger than another. In a game like Diablo, that's pretty important stuff.
Things like that weren't a major issue in Diablo 1 because of the lack of ailments and special creatures. In 3D, though, it's much easier to show that an enemy is frozen (have them in a block of ice, as an example, or glow green for poisoned, or on fire for... fire). Which is funny because...
Which is pretty bogus.
Examine Hellgate: London. That game had Diablo written all over it graphically. It looked good in the places that weren't random. It looked like Diablo should look in 3D.
Even further, Watchmen. It has nothing to do with super hero costumes looking ridiculous when you change the medium from 2D to 3D. It has everything to do with the costume looking ridiculous to begin with. Does Spiderman look stupid in 3D? What about Superman?
No, they don't.
Going back to Hellgate: London, there are TONS of monsters that were straight copies from Diablo 2 baddies. The leapers in the desert are a prime example. Those translated very well to 3D.
But his statement also doesn't make sense. Unless I can move the camera around then, regardless of the world and units being 3D, it's still isometric. Last time I checked, this means the below is redundant.
Like in other isometric games? What? It doesn't seem like there is much in terms of lighting going on in the game anyway. Everything is roughly the same amount of light in entire areas, except for around torches and the like which are slightly lighter.
Isn't that exactly how Diablo 2 was minus the pallet and the light that exists in all parts of everything?
But isn't that the point? To be scared? To not be able to see your enemies very well? That was the entire point of the lighting in Diablo 1 and 2, right? Not knowing exactly what the thing that you can vaguely see is until it gets in to your light radius (or a light). That was chilling the first time through.
The irony here is that he came from Relic, the guys who made DoW and Company of Heroes, both fairly photorealistic gray/brown (especially for DoW seeing as how the source material is pretty vivid and wild).
He then goes on to say:
And then you have games like:
Mythos
Battleforge
The Maw
Spore
Age of Booty
Free Worlds
Civilization Revolutions
Red Alert 3
Almost every single Wii game
... Really, the color is coming back and it's because of WoW and it's been like this for some time now. Instead of banking on that and knowing that developers would cash in on it, they just went with the trend. Now, when I look at a sea of games that look awful lot like Blizzard made them I don't really see anything special in the game. Yeah, it looks like a painting. So did Valkyria Chronicles and Okami. There's nothing special there either.
And yeah, I know this Jay Wilson guy is new to the team, but it also seems like he doesn't really know what he's talking about. He seems really sheltered gaming wise. He also seems like he's only seen screenshots of level 80 characters in Diablo fighting monsters in Act 5 Hell.
Mainly, what I'm saying with all of this is that I don't believe that they actually tried to do what North did with the game. I also don't think they've been working on the game 'for years'. I think this is particularly true with the pace they have set so far with this game. I feel that if they had been working on it for years they would, at the least, have more 'fleshed' out area wise and simply be able to work that content faster. So far there haven't been much in the area of updates. Take away the rune stuff (awesome!) and the few monsters they've added and the majority of these updates are simply just pictures of the same classes we've seen fighting in the same areas we've seen.
But this isn't to say I'm not grateful they are working on the game or appreciative of the work they have done and are doing OR find the game to be ugly or anything like that. I'm just skeptical that they aren't pulling the confidence card and spreading a good bit of misinformation to save face.
I'm really really excited about Diablo 3, I don't think that Blizzard are going to release a bad game but I can't agree with all the Warcraft groupies who claim that the new art direction was the only way to go because otherwise it would be too dark and you wouldn't be able to see what you were doing. Utter nonsense.
I love Warcraft by the way (have played all of the games since WC2), spend far too much time playing it to be honest, but I always liked how Diablo was distincly different from Warcraft. Essentially I echo the sentiments of Bill Roper, and I think it's a tad unfair and myopic to just dismiss his views as being nothing more than the ramblings of a bitter ex-employee.
Here's what I meant:
"Gothic" doesn't mean "gray" - it's an architectural style. D3 has already shown more Gothic architecture than D2 did all together. Here's a shot from the right side of the Tristram cathedral:
Here's a few gore shots for a good measure:
People learn to understand opinions and be cool with it
i dislike the game ...you like the game.. coooooooooooooooool:thumbsup:
so what either You or ME can change it or do ANYTHING about IT :mad:
talking garbage cose we know lets say near to nothing about the game .... u cant tell if the game is gonna be dark or gothic from a tiny little dungeon ... So lets wait and see the final product
.. yeah i like it i play it you dont like it .... .well i gues you will play it anyway :D:D all this is personal every person feels something else for the game
and yeah gothic is an architecture style not colors ... and yes Diablo 3 showed it plenty of times allready
I think it would be cool to see the game Blizzard North would have created and compare it to the Diablo 3 that we are going to get.
I love what I have seen so far. Keep it up Blizzard.
Everyone here is behaving like Blizzard is their authoritative mother: Tell me what's good or not mommy.
I'm sorry for hurting your little feelings, by saying your mommy is simply making excuses. Looks like some people are still getting their daily share of breastfeeding...
between the 3 main blizzard games. Long before blizzard announced Diablo 3
this is how i saw the games.
warcraft- cartoony
starcraft- more realistic but still holding that cartoony edge
diablo- most realistic that they could get
you guys dont seem to get it, diablo 3 is way too clean.
sure it can be dark and gothic but it lacks the grit that diablo 1 and 2 had.
here is diablo 3 and u can compare it to the above and below pictures.
note the individual tiles on the ground and how cartoony and clean they look
this is just a small example but look at the stone in this picture.
especially the doorway to down under, its covered in dirt and its weathered.
if you look at the above pictures that dimebog posted
you can see that its just clean as balls like someone went through and scrubbed
down the ground and walls...
the dungeons we go through in d3 no doubt have been abandoned for quite a while
so should have developed a grime. however thats strangely absent
again here we can see grime all over the buildings and ground
thats what they got wrong with diablo 3... and that was a fundamental characteristic
of the diablo universe that they apparently ignored.
now if we compare that to starcraft 2 we can clearly see the similiarity.
just clean straight lines that look like they have been polished down to a fine standard
I think Roper was just trying to say that it is not the same as what he would have done, which is fine.
There is no reason to argue that people, who like what they've seen of the game, are crazy obsessed with Blizzard and will like anything they produce no matter what. The same could be said about people who side with Roper and say the game doesn't stay true to the Diablo look or style.
I think we need to get over the fact that the game, so far, doesn't look exactly like Diablo 1 or 2. It isn't going to. What we should do now is look at the ways that they have tried and are trying to give it the "Diablo" look and feel. And remember, we have only seen a fraction of the game so lets try to be positive.
I mean, Diablo 2 came out 9 years ago. Gamers wants have changed and I think they are trying to appeal to a broad range of tastes by giving new comers some of what they love about games nowadays, while trying to give Diabloers what they want. That's one tough cookie. I can''t wait to taste some more of it!!!
It comes down to personal preference really. I actually prefer the Diablo III look to the other Diablo's. I'd love to see more detail put into the textures and models, but I can't do much about that.
Maybe they will put more detail into it? Perhaps they're playing it on medium settings or so? It's still pretty early, they could fine polish it and put in more detail ... but maybe not.
I think a lot of the lack of detail has to do with them wanting it to run on 'any' machine. So if anyone here is complaining about the art style, and you have a low-end PC, then you're a part of the problem.
And also ... I don't see how the stuff that Dimebog posted doesn't scream "Diablo" ?