Diablo 3 - Beta Tidbits

Diablo III is still the biggest news around the 'net and here are a few more items.

Gaming Illustrated has some very early impressions of the beta, though there isn't much detail:

The graphics of the game so far are pretty impressive. While we haven’t been super impressed with the actual character and monster graphics, the environment and spell effects look absolutely amazing. It’s a lot of fun to tactically kill something like a “Grotesque” creature that explodes and causes an AoE damage for enemies once he’s killed. One of the big things we noticed is how amazing the sound effects are. The music is good but the spell sound effects are amazing. Also, all dialog in the game is done via voice, even the lore that you find that gives you a background into characters and areas you visit.

From the where-do-they-get-these-people department comes a GameSpy article that asks, should Diablo III be first-person?

I'll admit it. My first ever hands-on time with any Diablo game occurred just 24 hours ago, when my inexperienced Demon Hunter took his first fumbling steps into the Diablo III beta's dark and ominous dungeons. It took just three hours before I'd hacked and slashed my way to the main storyline's satisfying conclusion, but in that short period of time my eyes were opened to an entirely new perspective on a gaming world. As a lover of first person games, the isometric camera system in Diablo III felt very unfamiliar, and I inevitably wondered why Blizzard didn't make the leap to first person like so many other developers. This led me to wonder - should Diablo III have been a first person game, and what are the pros and cons of this approach?

For my money, he misses the whole point, by the way.

Joystiq reports that Blizzard's Jay Wilson is posturing for the inevitable console release, saying it feels better with a controller:

Blizzard has been conducting said experiments, Wilson said, because "we feel that the controls and the style of the game lend itself to a console." And the tests have been successful. "With some of our early experiments in putting a direct control scheme into the game via a 360-like analogue controller, I've been 'Oh this feels even better, with direct control...'"

Lastly, IGN has a series of videos that show the entire Beta act from beginning to end.