Totally agree with OP, especially as regards character/environment models. It's not just the colors and lighting, it's the damn drawing style too. Fiddling with photoshop doesn't change this.
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And to the guys who worship Blizzard, please, /wrists. You are a customer and as such you have the right to suggest or even make demands. Blizzard is a company that makes exceptional games and as such our demands will be the same. If we never demand anything then well, that's just unhealthy consumerism where you are paying someone to tell you what to like and if you don't you STFU. Not cool.
A hearty amen to that. Some Blizz fans worship whatever they put out, and then paint critics as whiners without a point. And they of course assume everyone but the critic agrees with them.
Doryah, that's an excellent illustration of what I'm referring to. I didn't even realize how the darkness makes everything sharper and more defined. The monster models could stand to be improved/made darker of course, but lighting makes a world of difference. I probably would not have even noticed the change in style had only the lighting been made darker.
The skill bar reminds me of a pez bar.
Diablo is and always will be dark
Diablo is whatever Blizzard makes it. Bottom line is as someone said before, different people are making it, so the style is going to be different. Diablo 1 and Hellfire were made by different entities, and were rather different. Diablo III is no exception. Can't wait to play it, esp. because I'm curious to see how a different Blizzard team does it.
I meant Blizzard North, wrote that the first time I wrote the thread, but IE crashed on me. Thanks for correcting that.
Quote from "Tiger" »
Diablo will always be more dark/scarey just because it was so "local" and "smalltown". A small grotty town with a single dungeon which was under a church.
To have multiple parts of the world like this makes no sense, they expanded into the world lore with D2, personaly I am very happy so far with D3, it was bound to become more epic and so loose some of the horror story.
Yes, that's definitely true. Also, when you increase the sheer volume of enemies on screen, it likely detracts from the horror aspect. So there it's a matter of preference, a balance of gameplay vs. style and feel. That said, the style of the characters, monsters, environments etc. differ in a relevant way as well.
For the seriously gritty look you would have to take the art direction towards something like age of conan (high poly models, high system reqs), for blizzard thats not something they care about anymore, they want there games to have mass market appeal and sale lots of copies.
Perhaps it was a bit much to expect high resolution models, but that's not an integral part of the style, as Diablo I & II demonstrate. The skeleton models of Diablo I & II look more lifelike (probably due to the darker color palette or something) than the Diablo III models do.
At first I did agree on what you are saying, I missed the dark feeling that I had in the previous games. Then I thought again, we've seen so little of this game and we would probably say the same thing about Diablo II if they would've shown us something from Lut Gholein, of course depending on which zone but yet again. Give it some time and we'll see what emerges from the dungeon of Blizzard Entertainment.
Of course, our conception of Diablo III will become more accurate as more information is released. But I'm not referring to an unfinished look/work. The monster models and environments have a distinctly cartoonish look that isn't a product of being finished or not. In other words, if you doubled the resolution of the screenshots, or polished it, it would retain the cartoonish look.
I skimmed the artwork for Diablo III, and the style there varies quite a bit from picture to picture, so singling out any one picture will give you an inaccurate sample. I looked for Diablo II artwork, but couldn't find one good source. Overall though, the latter is much more uniformly dark in style, and the Diablo I work even more so, eg [Diablo I work follows] Taking an overall average, D1 and D3 are very different. .
The trailer did have a very LOTR feel, but that's not evident in the screenshots. Hell, I wish the trailer style carried over into the game, but it clearly doesn't.
I think I speak for the majority of the Diablo community when I say:
"Good enough"
It seems not. I'm not a negative person, it's just disappointing to see Blizzard take a step backwards stylistically. The style does not fit the story.
different artists make a different game.
Exactly. The artwork is different, more colorful, less photorealistic.
In anticipation of Diablo 3, I replayed Diablo I a bit in the last month. I was impressed by the uniquely dark feel to the game, and reminded me of how the game genuinely scared me when I first played it. The effect is subdued somewhat in Diablo II, but remained very much a signature element of the game. Relative to the times, the style was sophisticated, sometimes subtle, sometimes just raw and shocking.
With the screenshots of Diablo III now out, it's obvious that this element of the series has been mostly scrapped. From the environments down to the monsters' posture, the game just isn't very intimidating.
It looks like an isometric WoW with a darker color palette. Everything has that rounded pastel-ish cartoon look. There's an obvious disconnect between the graphics and the dark storyline. It's like having Charles Schulz illustrate Dante's Divine Comedy (from which, FWIW, Diablo could afford to borrow). The end result is just ridiculous.
It seems like Blizzard shifted the WoW artists to this game, but without much new direction. So the artists just remake WoW on a different scale.
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Character and monster models are overly squat, round and undefined. Characters are not menacing whatsoever. Everything glows too much.
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Edit:
A hearty amen to that. Some Blizz fans worship whatever they put out, and then paint critics as whiners without a point. And they of course assume everyone but the critic agrees with them.
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The skill bar reminds me of a pez bar.
Diablo is whatever Blizzard makes it. Bottom line is as someone said before, different people are making it, so the style is going to be different. Diablo 1 and Hellfire were made by different entities, and were rather different. Diablo III is no exception. Can't wait to play it, esp. because I'm curious to see how a different Blizzard team does it.
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Yes, that's definitely true. Also, when you increase the sheer volume of enemies on screen, it likely detracts from the horror aspect. So there it's a matter of preference, a balance of gameplay vs. style and feel. That said, the style of the characters, monsters, environments etc. differ in a relevant way as well.
Perhaps it was a bit much to expect high resolution models, but that's not an integral part of the style, as Diablo I & II demonstrate. The skeleton models of Diablo I & II look more lifelike (probably due to the darker color palette or something) than the Diablo III models do.
Of course, our conception of Diablo III will become more accurate as more information is released. But I'm not referring to an unfinished look/work. The monster models and environments have a distinctly cartoonish look that isn't a product of being finished or not. In other words, if you doubled the resolution of the screenshots, or polished it, it would retain the cartoonish look.
I skimmed the artwork for Diablo III, and the style there varies quite a bit from picture to picture, so singling out any one picture will give you an inaccurate sample. I looked for Diablo II artwork, but couldn't find one good source. Overall though, the latter is much more uniformly dark in style, and the Diablo I work even more so, eg [Diablo I work follows] Taking an overall average, D1 and D3 are very different.
The trailer did have a very LOTR feel, but that's not evident in the screenshots. Hell, I wish the trailer style carried over into the game, but it clearly doesn't.
It seems not. I'm not a negative person, it's just disappointing to see Blizzard take a step backwards stylistically. The style does not fit the story.
Exactly. The artwork is different, more colorful, less photorealistic.
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With the screenshots of Diablo III now out, it's obvious that this element of the series has been mostly scrapped. From the environments down to the monsters' posture, the game just isn't very intimidating.
It looks like an isometric WoW with a darker color palette. Everything has that rounded pastel-ish cartoon look. There's an obvious disconnect between the graphics and the dark storyline. It's like having Charles Schulz illustrate Dante's Divine Comedy (from which, FWIW, Diablo could afford to borrow). The end result is just ridiculous.
It seems like Blizzard shifted the WoW artists to this game, but without much new direction. So the artists just remake WoW on a different scale.
For instance, see http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/_images/screenshots/ss13-hires.jpg [The image is too high-res to post directly)