Diablo 3

    Quote from dux

    WoW lover.

    Exactly.

    Quote

    I love Diablo 2 but those screens don't look better than Diablo 2.

    They look more like D2 than what they're working on now, and that's why I like them more. We're also looking at an unfinished product so who's to say how well it would have looked compared to D2 (let's not forget, 800x600 max screen res isn't so smexy these days.) The first 2 diablo games looked and felt a certain way, I wanted the third to at least attempt to retain said look. Instead we have this hand painted, stylized version that just doesn't do it for me.

    Quote from Minotauro

    I love Diablo 2 but those screens don't look better than Diablo 2.

    They contain a lot of the spirit of d2 and that's what matters for me and looking at them they were clearly WIP.

    Quote from insta

    Ya'll are chumps, d3 looks awesome wtf

    Quote from Dark

    I agree Insta And for the record, D3 looks much better than Diablo 2

    Clearly trolls.

    As someone who's never played a Diablo game I find the reactions to the new style kind of weird. The new artwork is clearly beautiful and looks fantastic, and just because something's colourful doesn't mean it can't have a dark, disturbing tone — I've seen a good few anime films that prove as such.

    On a purely aesthetic note those screenshots linked above look really unimpressive to me, like any number of generic isometric RPGs released in the 90s. The original two Diablo games look OK but that style is going to struggle to stand out nowadays.

    Clearly Blizzard's new direction is a way of both attracting new fans already familiar with their work and making the game stand out in an industry that's had more than enough dark, grey top-down games.

    I personally kind of want to try Diablo 3 because I think it looks beautiful, even though I know almost nothing about the game. Can't say the same for its predecessors.

    Quote from Dark

    And for the record, D3 looks much better than Diablo 2

    Agree with this, D2's style is hit really bad by the resolution limitations. It's like the 2d equivalent of PS1 3d. Fallout 1 has the same problem imo, both games are ugly now.

    D3 looks amazing.

    Man, you're right. Those old diablo 3 screens just don't feel happy enough, you know? So I brought them up to scratch to match the new art direction!

    Quote from Thrik

    As someone who's never played a Diablo game I find the reactions to the new style kind of weird. The new artwork is clearly beautiful and looks fantastic, and just because something's colourful doesn't mean it can't have a dark, disturbing tone — I've seen a good few anime films that prove as such.On a purely aesthetic note those screenshots linked above look really unimpressive to me, like any number of generic isometric RPGs released in the 90s. The original two Diablo games look OK but that style is going to struggle to stand out nowadays.

    Clearly Blizzard's new direction is a way of both attracting new fans already familiar with their work and making the game stand out in an industry that's had more than enough dark, grey top-down games.

    I personally kind of want to try Diablo 3 because I think it looks beautiful, even though I know almost nothing about the game. Can't say the same for its predecessors.

    Had I never played either Diablo game, I'd probably feel the same way. Problem is, I've played both and there's a reason I like them so much. Aesthetically speaking, every thing came together in a near perfect way. I really felt like I was in an ever descending dungeon on my way to hell (D1), slaughtering my way through countless demons and monsters. Had the music (oh the music!!!) or the art direction been slightly different, I find it hard to see how I could have been absorbed into the atmosphere as I was.

    D2 was very similar but different. It's easy to see that the game, while still conveying a dark, gothic mood, had made a transition of more action. Whereas D1 was walking in the footsteps of horror.

    I'm not complaining that the new art direction has color. D2 had lots of color in the environments, D1 didn't have so much but the monsters were extremely colorful, none of this broke the immersion. However, the first two games had more realistic representation of surface types. Rough stone looked like it felt rough, wood looked like it felt coarse, etc. Take a look at the D3 screens from the latest build we've been shown, everything be it grass, stone, rock, sand, wood, and so on is smooth. It bugs me so much, I can even see where the artists brush strokes end and begin. When I play a Diablo game, I don't want to feel like I'm in a painting. I want to feel like I'm in a real world that will do me harm if I go against it in the wrong way. I might as well put some socks on and slide everywhere when I play D3.

    To add to all of this, one of the first impressions I got when I saw D3 for the first time was 'Winnie the Pooh'. I didn't even know how D3 was going to look before I clicked on the screen but as soon as I did, it instantly reminded me of a scene from Winnie the Pooh. Not that that's in and of itself a bad thing, I thought visually it looked great, but Winnie the Pooh isn't Diablo and never will be.

    Quote from PogoP

    I think that looks horrible!

    I think yer face looks horrible

    The first clip they released was a dark dungeon where cultists exploded into red mist and giants ripped barbarians in half and spat them across the room. This is neither twee or like WoW. The entire case otherwise comes from one selective screenshot where a rainbow was refracted in a waterfall, and while this is too nice for a world like Diablo, you still need some contrast and don't want to be wading through black and red all game.

    Quote from Taylor

    The entire case otherwise comes from one selective screenshot where a rainbow was refracted in a waterfall, and while this is too nice for a world like Diablo, you still need some contrast and don't want to be wading through black and red all game.

    Not really, the rainbow exacerbated the issue for some but people were complaining on almost every aspect of the new art direction. In my view, it's just too different a style from the other games, in a bad way. D3 looks more like Torchlight than it does it's predecessors.

    There's also a lot more than 'black and red' in both Diablo games. The enemies in both games were extremely colorful and the spells and missiles in D2 were even more so. Play a game of D2 on BNet and see how colorful it gets when 4+ of you start in with your skills. Color isn't the problem for me, it's the art style.

    this whole discussion is pathetic

    i 100% guarantee that if blizzard had made diablo 3 an isometric game built in the same style as d1+2, people would be complaining that blizzard can't make bold changes with art direction and that they are a 1 trick pony, or that the grimdark theme is so 1990's, why don't blizzard get out of the past? etc etc etc ad infinitum.

    people will complain about anything and personally i am sick of all the shit surrounding d3 - it looks like a great game, i love the art style, i love the use of colour (people make judgments and you don't even know if there's a shift of colour and theme across the game, the zones, etc, speculation based on self-entitlement and a desire to complain about everything).

    i'll be buying and enjoying the shit out of this regardless

    The people who are so invested in a game series that they go on the internet to complain about the colour palette of the latest iteration are precisely the ones who pick up the title in stores on day one (if only to complain some more afterwards).

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