Diablo III, the bestselling but much maligned hack and slash loot driven action RPG hit from last year, is being released on Xbox 360 and PS3 later this year. However, in the transition to console development, a lot of changes have been made to the game. While most of them were necessitated as a response to the challenges that console game development often forces, a lot of them are just changes that Blizzard made as a response to fan backlash, and which objectively make this game better.
These include the exclusion of the Auction House of the game, leading to more normalized loot drop rates by enemies to compensate, like Diablo II (or, well, any other competent action RPG), as well as the inclusion of a dash mechanism, mapped to the right analog stick, providing for an entirely new dimension to battles altogether.
Other changes were more expected, provoked as they were by the nature of consoles- these include a redone UI, redone combat that maps each attack to a different button on the controller, drop in multiplayer, and a fast equip system, along with new, radial style menus more suited to console controllers.
Diablo 3 is hitting the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 later this year. Stay tuned for more coverage.
Source: Polygon.
