Diablo is undoubtedly the grand daddy of all action RPG games. We all know that Diablo 3 is under development and although details have been less about it, we have still managed to get a few tid-bits that will excite hardcore Diablo fans. In an interesting interview, Lead Content Designer Kevin Martens of Diablo 3 shares some new information about the game. Check out it below.
Martens talks about some of the new features in the game that the players can expect:
“The first thing of all the new stuff that we can talk about is that of the five classes we have, four are brand new to the universe. They have a lot of new play styles involved with that. Furthermore, when you have all these classes, there’s a lot of diversity, not just which powers you choose or which type of wizard you’re going to be, but whether you’re going to go with disintegration, fire, etc. But even within those, we have this system called “runes”, where you can take these powers and do just crazy stuff with them. You can take a witchdoctor power called “Plague of Toads“, and turn you into a giant toad. It literally swallows the enemy and spits out the gold inside of them and so on. So the customization is extraordinarily huge. It’s astonishingly re-playable. We have a lot more areas of the world that no one has seen before, so we’re changing the universe. The quest system itself is way better; the quest and the stories are much deeper and probably more re-playable than Diablo II as well. So that’s some of the new things that we’ve done. Additionally, I think that the co-op multiplayer is better than ever; Battle.net is going to become the new standard for multiplayer systems online.”
He also thinks that the sheer randomness of the Diablo 3 will separate it from the rest of the competition:
“I think, primarily, the randomness. So the fact that we have random dungeons, random monsters, random loops, pretty much random everything. Every time you go around a corner in a dungeon, you don’t know if you’re going to see a brand new quest that you’ve never seen before. You might see the same monster, but with totally new powers. You might see a totally different monster. That aspect of it is one of the things that Diablo is most well-known for, and I think that we do that better than anyone. I think that’s the feather in our cap, that and Battle.net.”
He also talks about the game’s visuals and whether it will be a notch above Diablo 2:
“… I think we’ve got a really neat and retro-cool thing going on here that we can push the video cards and everything and have a lot of fancy features with the higher-end cards, but it’s part of our policy to lower system specs as much as possible. When you have everything at the lowest setting, and you mix that with these hand-painted textures that we have, it looks like a painting that’s come to life. I think that’s a great way to avoid looking old. It looks retro-cool instead of old school.”
With games like Dungeon Siege III offering two camera options: over-the-shoulder view and isometric, it seems like Diablo 3 will follow Diablo 2 in this regard:
“We tried, but honestly, everyone will find that the game plays differently with different camera angles.”
“In Diablo II, the isometric view was definitely the right choice. We are making sure that every move and ability and every strategic, tactical decision you make works perfectly with that camera. A second camera angle makes everything play differently.”
He also thinks that Diablo 3 may have a future on consoles:
“We’re definitely looking into it. We’re seriously considering it. I would say that the whole system specs thing is one of the cool things about Blizzard. You’re always hearing in interviews with us about the death of the PC gaming. We’re always like, “What death?” I think one part of that secret…you know, quality and polish and all of that as well…but part of that is keeping the system specs low. Everybody had a PC, even if they just use it for nothing but e-mail and web surfing. Almost everyone has one, so we do have a pretty giant install base. That said, gaming systems like Xbox and PS3 and so on… Diablo is one of the more natural hits for a Blizzard title to go on those, so I think that’s why we are looking at it pretty seriously.”
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