DiabloFans

I think that the artist director needs to draw a clean line between Warcraft and Diablo. This game right now is more Warcraft - which is a bad thing. They need to bring back the gorey, brutal and dark world of Diablo. Yes i know its 20 years whit no evil, but still i dont think the world changes from a hellish place to a happy little fairyland whit purple zombies and rainbows in just 20 years. I doubt they painted all the places whit happy, warm, cartoonish Warcraft colors either. Almost all of those colors are just wrong, they seriously are just too cartoonish, and so are the models, Diablo used to be more realistic in graphical appearance than cartoonish.

So to put it straight IMO the current Art direction is very, very bad.

Elmo

VOTE : Φ Graphics Discussion (New art style proposal to Blizzard)
http://www.diablofans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9283

VOTE : D3: Character Rerolling
http://www.diablofans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10148

VOTE : 1 Item per Slot or Inventory Tetris
http://www.diablofans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9974

Its not about the latter levels being darker.... its about the graphical, visual, artistic, elements of the design.
We all know we will go to more evil areas later in the game.
But that doesnt stop characters consisting of 20 polygons 15 of which are the shoulders alone.
It doesnt stop the fact that the textures look like a water-coloured telly-tubbies trip-fest.

Natima

It really saddens me looking at a screenshot of the successor's to one of my favorite games is almost unbearable. Like I was trying to identify individual zombie's in the witch doctor's zombie wall, and it was really hard. Everything looks blurry or something.

In fact, I also have some of this problem in Starcraft 2, but THEN I didn't complain. Because Starcraft is much more about the RTS and strategy than it is zooming into the action. That's just not a big deal in a game like that. Though some of the community spoke up, I didn't say a word.

But Diablo is different. I want to admire my armor and admire my character. If it looks fake and cartoonish and totally out of place, I won't care about the loot, meaning I won't care about leveling and mfing, meaning that after a few quick spin-throughs, the game becomes like those other games from lesser companies that just sit on your shelf, for rare weekends.

XanderV

I agree with the OP, as stated countless times in these few days, the game needs to look more like previous Diablo games and less like WoW. Yes, the characters are more detailed, but they still look cartoony, and I will really miss realistic looking items from Diablo 2 inventory, they were really unique, beautiful, you had a feeling someone photographed them. These new itmes just don't look right, no metallic glare on armor and weapons, oversized shoulder pads etc..

Blacksmith

=====PETITION=====
http://www.petitiononline.com/d3art/petition.html

The final list with all the comments will be sent to Blizzard, when you sign please commen.

Thanks!

====================

Well, as some of you might have noticed, Blizzard changed the art style of the Diablo franchise, they made it cartoonish and less realistic, it dont feel as gothic, dark and evil as the two first games, instead it looks like a cartoon with vivid colors and hand drawn textures, just like World of Warcraft, what im proposing is a change of art style, something more dark, claustrophobic and cryptic, just what Diablo is all about.

Blizzard changed the art style of starcraft 2, it was too cartoonish too, with vivid colors, shields on marines and a lot of other visual elements that made the game look like Warcraft, the community didnt agree with that look and Blizzard accepted their opinion, Diablo 3 is going in the same way so I made 2 pictures to show what Diablo 3 should be about (in my opinion):

Light radius / Shadow:









And these made by others:







What we can do is just changing the colors but there's a lot more things (cartoon models, hand drawn textures, humour in the chat with Cane (this isnt Warcraft damn it!), character models that look taken straight away from World of Warcraft and much more), that just dont belong to Diablo, take a look at this statue, for example:



At first sight it would be a statue from World of Warcraft, right? But not, its in Diablo, it's cute, funny, fluffy, happy and cheerful, we dont want those things in Diablo!

Tell me what you think, i think it fits much better the Diablo world, ill make more pictures if i see that more people agree with me, maybe we can send them to Blizzard and make they know this.

Ultrameqazord

http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/3618/badiablocopyjk3.jpg

Raven

Quote from "Silocibe" »

Originally Posted by cycloverid

The solution to the cartoony character problem would be: Dynamic Ambient Occlusion like in Crysis and higher poly models. This would add tons more lag, and this is against Blizzard's policy of making games that run really well.

Quote from "Millitia" »

im sure all these people against the darker diablo theme are all wow fans.

Quote from "Shiniku" »

Yeah I agree. the armor is way too bulky and WoW like. I wouldn't mind the colorful aspect if it were just desaturated a little.. not that D2 didn't have colorful armors, but it seemed more rare then and certainly wasn't the norm.
And as for dark cultists.. when i think of the name 'dark cultist' and picture them in a diablo universe it looks something like this to me:

Whereas the current ones look more like:

Quote from "Genesis" »

Originally I thought Diablo 3 had too much color and too big of armor. And I have too agree that these things have increased somewhat BUT Diablo 2 had more color and bulky armor than you remember

Quote from "Spoonman" »

They should also do something about the armors if they are all going to look like that. Just look at the barb's armor when he's zoomed in in the gameplay video. Those huge-ass pauldrons with spikes coming out of them, and all painted in fluorescent colors? No, thanks.

Quote from "Spoonman" »

They should also do something about the armors if they are all going to look like that. Just look at the barb's armor when he's zoomed in in the gameplay video. Those huge-ass pauldrons with spikes coming out of them, and all painted in fluorescent colors? No, thanks.

Quote from "nasser" »

lol are you serious?

Age of Conan has perfect realism graphics and 48 vs 48 players PVP, but you need a monster system to run it.
24 vs 24 PVP is no problem.

And the characters look like real people, like in Diablo 2.

Here is the most colorful pic I could find:


Even in day time with all that color it still looks real, like D2.

Quote from "Ultramegazord" »

Guys, regarding to the light radius / shadows issue here's some concept picture i made, it's obviously not accurate but you can get the idea, i just slightly changed the colors but what I want to show is how the light radius from Diablo 2 should look like in Diablo 3, something like this:

Quote from "Rev9868" »

Is it really too much to ask for you guys to just be excited for the announcement? Seriously, we've seen very little of the game so far and you guys are tearing it to pieces.

Quote from "lethlan" »

Check out some of the concept art on the site, the artisitic direction is looking pretty good.

Quote from "lethlan" »

Saying something as generalising as that is staggeringly ignorant.

The only thing that has been changed in the OP pictures is an overlayed 'grey'. If you want to play like that, turn the brightness down on game release, turn the lights off in your room and potentially suffer eye strain when you can't see what the fuck is going on.