Diablo 3 - Interview @ CrispyGamer

Jay Wilson chats with Crispy Gamer about Diablo III, covering the art style controversy, pleasing the hardcore fan base and some of the design:

Crispy Gamer: Are the dungeons still going to be randomly generated?

Wilson: Yes, we have a ton of random generation in the game. All the dungeons' layouts are randomly generated. The exteriors are not. We have a new system of adventures that allows us to cut sections out of the terrain to put random -- whatever -- in there. We can put random terrain, we can put in scripted events -- we wanted to add a lot more scripted events into the game.

Crispy Gamer: That's got to be pretty challenging for you as a designer…

Wilson: Yeah. It's probably one of the biggest challenges we've made. But you got to take it on because it's Diablo! There's like seven things that we've identified -- replayability through randomness was one of them. Absolutely everything that we can do to improve the randomness. But we looked at the exteriors in Diablo II and realized, the fact that the layouts were random actually didn't improve the game that much. If anything, it hurt the look of the game, because organic environments don't lend themselves to being randomly generated.

You end up generating an outdoor environment like you'd generate a dungeon. So you create a room-like outdoor environment that also has no permanence to it. The world feels very transient. We decided to change that but add in things like the adventure system. On top of all that, all of the monster encounters are randomly generated. The rares and champions -- which are the mini-bosses -- are randomly generated. The items, and attributes on the items, are randomly generated. Essentially we're trying to match the amount of randomness you see in Diablo II.

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I think this is the big differece between FO3 and D3. The people making D3 are trying to make a better D2, or D2+++. The people making FO3 are not trying to mkae a better FO 1 or 2, they are trying to make their own version of FO, which includes removing core aspects of what made FO 1 and 2 FO 1 and 2.

Thats fine, Beth bought the liscense, they can make the game they want to make. My only beef has been calling it FO3. Its not FO3. The only thing it shares with the FO's is a basterdized version of the setting.

If a game is going to take on a 2 or 3 at the end, it has to have the same game play. If people just called new things "something else 2 or 3 or 4" it wouldn't make sense.

Thats why shoots and ladders was not called monopoly 2, or candyland was not called Risk 2.

People have to see that this is a valid reason for the hateful FO "hardcore" fans to be complaining. If D3 can have the same gameplay and game mechanics as D2, and be developed by devs that really understand core gameplay aspects and mechanics, why should they have to take it silently in the ass without complaint?

Fans of a series want a game in that series to be a better version of the last, not a whole new different game with grossly differnt gameplay and mechanics.

Having said that, having the same gameplay mechanics as D2 guarantees this game is going to suck huge donkey balls. D2 is just a horrible, horrible, game. Damn you Leonard for making it so i have to buy it. Hell, i might have still bought it out of respect for developers respecting what came before when no one expected it in this day and age of fan-fucking, even if I thought what came before was crap.

edit: if you don't want to read the interview, the only thing they said they were changing gameplay wise was removing potions. I think thats a move to the right direction. The only game I remotely liked with RT combat and potion use was Lionsheart (up until it turned into a super linear diablo-clone, after you leave the quest area, about 1/2 to 3/5ths through).