Teaser at Blizzard.com

Originally Posted by Remus
Diablo is different game, why compared to DD or approach the game with wholely different rpg preferences or your own bias? However i liked DD, also the awesome Planescape:torment, Fallout, BG, etc and yet i like Diablo too.

None of those other games have combat like DD and Diablo. Id rather have a new DD (combat is fun but I want more than that) but that doesnt seem possible now. All the new rpgs must be first person 3D. Perhaps the (possible) success of D3 will give more guts to other developers to make isometric games.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
OK, fill me in. What's so great about Diablo 3?

I played Diablo (or was it Diablo 2?) and thought it was an OK game, sort of like NetHack with better graphics but without the insane amount of detail and the punishing difficulty, but nothing really that special. What did I miss?

I think zakhal hit on the basic problem which most of the people who are indifferent to it have with Diablo. It's a combat grind game at its purest form. It's all combat and items, and min-maxing your character build. It has a plot, sort of, conveyed through excellent cinematic interludes as much as anything in the gameplay, but the plot is really peripheral to the strategy of constructing different character templates and implementing their skills.

So it isn't an rpg in my limited understanding of the word, and shouldn't really be compared to that standard. It's a game about finding ways to survive at the higher difficulties, and they are intricate, complicated and painstaking ways that take oceans of repetitive killing and leveling and item specialization. Without the right item enhancements your perfect build is still not perfect.

In short, its a game about process, and if you are bored by the process, you'll be bored by the game. Diablo 3's greatness or lack of it will be in upgrading the game to 21st century standards and continuing that process with some new options( character classes) and a better interface and so forth--basically more of the same, which when you love something, is not a bad thing.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
OK, fill me in. What's so great about Diablo 3?

I played Diablo (or was it Diablo 2?) and thought it was an OK game, sort of like NetHack with better graphics but without the insane amount of detail and the punishing difficulty, but nothing really that special. What did I miss?

One of the possibility is that you didn't miss anything. Just that you don't have certain liking to particular gameplay mechanics, among other things. And why the Sim games always in the Top Ten best selling games! What's wrong with peoples who buying those games

Originally Posted by magerette
In short, its a game about process, and if you are bored by the process, you'll be bored by the game. Diablo 3's greatness or lack of it will be in upgrading the game to 21st century standards and continuing that process with some new options( character classes) and a better interface and so forth--basically more of the same, which when you love something, is not a bad thing.

OK, fair enough. I guess I was somewhat unimpressed by it because I thought NetHack does the process way better -- the interaction with the generated world and the items therein felt way richer and deeper. That game has everything in it, including the kitchen sink.

(You can drop rings into it to get a stab at guessing what they do, levitate over it to, well, sink, kick it to make it cough up oozes and puddings you can fight, and eventually break it to turn it into a fountain you can drink from for various effects, dip items into to un-curse them, or attract nymphs that'll steal the (possibly cursed) clothes off your back, or attract water demons that just might give you a wish, unless of course you produce water moccasins instead that pack a powerful venom. Not to mention dipping a longsword into it when Lawful Good, which has a chance of a hand materializing to bless it, turning it into Excalibur. And that's just the sink.)

I was wondering why I hadn't played NetHack--then I looked it up and saw a visual. I agree it sounds way more imaginative and interactive than Diablo, but my eyeballs aren't able to work with that graphic system, unfortunately. My loss.

Originally Posted by magerette
I was wondering why I hadn't played NetHack--then I looked it up and saw a visual. I agree it sounds way more imaginative and interactive than Diablo, but my eyeballs aren't able to work with that graphic system, unfortunately. My loss.

There are "graphical tilesets" available for Nethack nowadays. You don't need to play the game entirely with ASCII graphics anymore.

Leonard Boyarsky working as lead world designer on Diablo III. Wonder what his influences on the game specifically.

Nice Blizzard panel with Boyarsky up at Gamespot.

I'm sorry, but usually names don't say much to me.
What did he do in the past ?

If you played Fallout you should see his name in the opening scenes. Here's cut & paste from his online resume:

1998 – 2005 Troika Games LLC. – CEO, Project Leader, Art Director, Designer/Writer
Games:
Vampire Bloodlines
Duties: Project lead, Art Direction, Dialog writing/editing, Story/Quest Design, Texture mapping, Concept Art

Arcanum
Duties: Art Direction, Dialog writing/editing, Story/Quest Design, Scripting, Concept Art, Modeling, Animating

1992 – 1998 Interplay Productions – Art Director, Lead Artist, Designer/Writer
Games:
Fallout 2
Duties: Designed overall gameplay refinements and main story arc/quests/areas/characters with Tim Cain and Jason Anderson before leaving Interplay to form Troika Games.

Fallout
Duties: Art Direction, Lead Artist, Dialog writing/editing, Quest Design, Concept Art, Modeling, Animating, Cinematics

From the video, sound like L. Boyarsky has something to do with story, narrative, game world lore of Diablo 3. He believes a good story even in an action game will gives a lot of emphasis to the action that you're doing.

I bet not many people remember that Diablo games have story. I liked the dark and gritty story of vengeful demons against the High Heavens.

Thanks for the Gamespot link woges-- nice discussion w/Boyarsky. He's really off into the background story in this presentation-- Story "gives context to players' actions"--giving specific personalities through voicing, scripted events that lead to story involvement, using environment to tell a story..all sounds very promising and it will be interesting to see how it will work out--taking a two-dimensional character like Deckard Cain and making him seem 'real' is one hell of a challenge.

And the graphics and visuals look quite cool. I really like the spell effects and colors…a bit lurid but the background remains very dark and gloomy, and I think it works from what I can see so far.

Thanks, Remus. So he's one of the "Troika" people ? That's something to me.

More insight on how the story elements to be integrated into the game:

The idea is to use some simple cinematic techniques such as dialogue rather than monologue to convey quest information and crafting richer backstories for the main characters that will be reflected in their artwork and the way they view the central action of the story…

One of the examples of this Boyarsky likes to use is the new Witch Doctor class. Unlike the previous games in which the player's avatar was more archetype than actual character, the classes in Diablo III are designed with complete backstories including who they were before the story began, why they're interested in the events of Diablo III, and who they are as people. The Witch Doctor is angry, someone who's been broken by a life that's dealt a few too many hard knocks and not enough joy. This is someone tired of being smacked in the head, so he uses his mystical powers to get into the heads of others (and if that doesn't work, a swarm of locusts will get under their skin). Boyarsky also cites the new city of Caldeum that became the seat of government when Karast fell in Diablo II. How an open-trade city changes when its freewheeling style is co-opted by colorless government bureaucrats is something that informs everything from character development to artwork to the nature of quests.

"Working all of this stuff out is a day-to-day challenge," Boyarsky says of the continual iterative process. As he describes it, it "…bounces back-and-forth between story and art and gameplay design." While Boyarsky is responsible for the creative integrity of the storyline, the details of the world often change based on what comes out of other areas. An artist will create a really cool piece of artwork that has to be fit into the history of the world somewhere and gameplay mechanics must be invented for. A new monster is built around a really interesting combat encounter and Boyarsky's the one who must rip pieces of the world away, juggle them around and put them back together in a way that makes sense within the rules of Diablo's fictional universe.

Link

Diablo 3 won't end up as story-heavy game but those efforts surely sound nice.

Originally Posted by Remus
Diablo 3 won't end up as story-heavy game

[cynism]If it would, no-one would buy it.[/cynism]

One way or the other i'll still buying the game. Both ways work for me.

I find it interesting and a good thing that they are putting emphasis on story and background and fleshing out the avatars a bit more. It indicates to me that single-player is getting the lion's share, or at least a very significant amount of attention, as well as following in the narrative footsteps of the other games and surpassing them with stuff like this:

How an open-trade city changes when its freewheeling style is co-opted by colorless government bureaucrats is something that informs everything from character development to artwork to the nature of quests.

(Thanks for posting, Remus.)

Also changing from monologue to dialogue is another step toward what works in more traditional role-playing games. I can remember being bored as hell standing there listening to Cain or one of the other NPC's recite a dry as bones laundry list of events to point up the next quest goal in the level.

I have to say I really didn't expect this good-sounding a game from Diablo 3. I'm very pleasantly surprised.