Diablo 3 - Sound Off @ Gamespot

The Gamespot editors sound off on the WWI (mostly D3) and express their gut reactions to Blizzard's weekend.

Jon Miller: A new intellectual property. As much as I like discovering new loot, I find the hack-and-slash gameplay of Diablo too simple for my tastes. I'm excited for co-op play, I'm excited to see how Blizzard will improve upon Diablo II's formula, but I feel that the action RPG is evolving. Diablo was a seminal game, yes. But years later, action RPGs have a lot more diversity. For my money, I prefer Oblivion or the upcoming Fallout 3. I respect the Diablo franchise, but I was hoping that Blizzard would blow me away with something new it hasn't yet tried. Sadly, it didn't.

More information.

Can't say I don't agree with the man.

Expecting Blizzard to blow you away with something new they haven't tried, is the same as saying you have no understanding of them and their history.

Indeed.

Also, saying he prefers Fallout 3/Oblivion to Diablo 3 is pretty much the same as saying I prefer rFactor to Halo 3…

How does he know that he prefers Fallout3 when the game hasn't been released yet? Perhaps I'm just being old fashioned but I think that statement makes little sense …

Originally Posted by fatBastard()
How does he know that he prefers Fallout3 when the game hasn't been released yet?

Maybe the slap-up party and top hotel accommodation Bethesda treated the game 'journalists' to had something to do with it.

Originally Posted by fatBastard()
How does he know that he prefers Fallout3 when the game hasn't been released yet? Perhaps I'm just being old fashioned but I think that statement makes little sense …

For the same reason the guys over at NMA are sure that Fallout 3 will cause all their Fallout and Fallout 2 CDs and installs to spontaneously explode and western civilian to collapse ushering in an era of barbarism worse than that displayed in the games. Just Because.

Originally Posted by fatBastard()
How does he know that he prefers Fallout3 when the game hasn't been released yet? Perhaps I'm just being old fashioned but I think that statement makes little sense ?

He name oblivion, i guess fallout 3 is almost exactly of oblivion?
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Originally Posted by BillSeurer
For the same reason the guys over at NMA are sure that Fallout 3 will cause all their Fallout and Fallout 2 CDs and installs to spontaneously explode and western civilian to collapse ushering in an era of barbarism worse than that displayed in the games. Just Because.

Do you post at qt3, Bill?

Originally Posted by Rizzla
Maybe the slap-up party and top hotel accommodation Bethesda treated the game 'journalists' to had something to do with it.

Damn you! That's just cynical enough to ring true (sigh). Well, I can always hope for Sacred 2 to be worth playing.

Isn't Oblivion an action RPG?….edit


Now that I've read it…more diversity? Are we talking about the same Oblivion? With like 10 monsters and a whopping 3 tilesets?

Originally Posted by Rizzla
Do you post at qt3, Bill?

What's "qt3"?

I used to hang out at NMA until things turned nasty if you went against the groupthink flow.

Game media editors are like movie reviewers. They experience so many different games that they are easily bored as they're always seeing common elements. Casual gamers require less novelty as their lives aren't saturated with gaming and little else. When I saw Diablo 3, I wanted to play it. I wasn't analyzing everything so I could write up what was wrong with it but seeing if it looked fun.

If it's not your cup of tea, fine, but Gamespot's editors have such a rarefied perspective that their opinions don't really matter.

Originally Posted by Orchid
Game media editors are like movie reviewers. They experience so many different games that they are easily bored as they're always seeing common elements. Casual gamers require less novelty as their lives aren't saturated with gaming and little else. When I saw Diablo 3, I wanted to play it. I wasn't analyzing everything so I could write up what was wrong with it but seeing if it looked fun.

If it's not your cup of tea, fine, but Gamespot's editors have such a rarefied perspective that their opinions don't really matter.

I'd like to claim that I've experienced more gaming than any Gamespot editor and I do appreciate novelty greatly.

Even so, I think Diablo 3 looks great and because I have an idea about what Blizzard are about - I never expected much innovation.

So, I contest that his over-exposure to games is the problem - but rather his ignorance of Blizzard and their approach to making games.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Even so, I think Diablo 3 looks great and because I have an idea about what Blizzard are about - I never expected much innovation.

Please correct me if my knowledge of gaming history is lacking but weren't Diablo I Stacraft I and Warcraft I EXTREMELY innovative when they first came out?

Or was Blizzard already doing that "take the best from every other game already released in the same genre and put in one game and polish it to the point where nothing distracts you from the fun" like they did with WoW ripping off every idea from the other MMOs of the time (EQ, DAoC, UO, AO, AC, AC2, SWG, etc) ?

If my statement about Diablo/Stracraft/Warcraft I is correct then why should Blizzard stop innovating and why should we not expect innovation from them anymore?

Originally Posted by BillSeurer
For the same reason the guys over at NMA are sure that Fallout 3 will cause all their Fallout and Fallout 2 CDs and installs to spontaneously explode and western civilian to collapse ushering in an era of barbarism worse than that displayed in the games. Just Because.

QT3 is Quarter to three forums.

But please you've gotta admit every gamer/game editor makes judgments on games they haven't yet played. That's the very essence of this market, you are asked to buy games before you've even got a chance to play them. What's the deciding factor when you're in front of the shelves at your local store if not a feelings and impressions based on what you've read/heard about the game? People judge things without knowing all the time, and the way things are you can't blame them for it.

And you could argue there's a difference between game editors who base their pre-release impressions on demos they tried, and those, like this journalist who hasn't played anything yet. But even demos can be misleading and point you to a wrong judgement. I could make the crappiest game but have journalists play 2 minutes of the only good part in it at a conference and I'll be praised in the magazines before being burnt alive once the complete product is shipped.

In this case, that game editor is just saying he's interested more right now in Fallout 3 than in Diablo 3 because Fallout 3 will be more different than Fallout 2 than D3 is to D2, that's his right. He never said/claimed he will under no circumstances change his opinion after he'll have actually played both games.

Id truly like blizzard with all their skills make a deep enriching rpg like fallout2 or planescape: torment. They could use their clone methods into them and make a new turnbased isometric rpg that sells ten million copies during the next ten years. But somhow I dont ever see them doing that.

Originally Posted by Hedek
Please correct me if my knowledge of gaming history is lacking but [wasn't Diablo] EXTREMELY innovative when they first came out?

In the correct usage of the term "innovative" I certainly agree. That is: it took an existing design and significantly improved on, without fundamentally changing, it. Specifically Diablo took the rougelike formula and made a more immediately engaging, widely assessable and visceral (albeit at the price of depth).

I suspect all this media talk about lack of innovation is based on faulty premises. Comparisons to Oblivion, Fallout and so forth are irrelevant because neither Diablo I nor II were CRPGs in the strictest sense. Were I a Diablo fan I’d be concerned about these extra RPG elements they’re bolting onto Diablo III. There’s a danger the game could damage its core formula in effort to be something it’s not.

Originally Posted by Orchid
Game media editors are like movie reviewers. They experience so many different games that they are easily bored as they're always seeing common elements.

This fits into my theory of editors/reviewers being "oversaturated".

They may become more and more demanding, because a) they have the finest stuff at work (in terms of PCs), and b) have known sooooo many games throughout their lives …

To me, it's like living in luxury.

At one point, even Gold can become boring.

Originally Posted by Hedek
Please correct me if my knowledge of gaming history is lacking but weren't Diablo I Stacraft I and Warcraft I EXTREMELY innovative when they first came out?

Or was Blizzard already doing that "take the best from every other game already released in the same genre and put in one game and polish it to the point where nothing distracts you from the fun" like they did with WoW ripping off every idea from the other MMOs of the time (EQ, DAoC, UO, AO, AC, AC2, SWG, etc) ?

If my statement about Diablo/Stracraft/Warcraft I is correct then why should Blizzard stop innovating and why should we not expect innovation from them anymore?

It depends on what you mean by innovative.

The only game I would consider innovative of those you mention would be Diablo 1 - because it combined the roguelike gameplay with the multiplayer aspect of a game like Gauntlet. The way they handled it was novel enough that I would accept it as innovation.

However, Warcraft 1 was more or less a carbon copy of Dune 2 - except it had 2 races instead of 3, and it had local-link multiplayer.

Starcraft is just a natural evolution of Warcraft 2 and the RTS genre as a whole, nothing in that game constituted a true innovation, if you ask me. Except perhaps the idea of 3 balanced races.

But you need to look at the way Blizzard operates and how they've evolved as a company. They've been very open about their approach to innovation.

If you expected Diablo 3 to be something entirely new or fresh as the gamespot person clearly did, then you simply have no idea about their history.

I'm not saying anything else, and if you DO expect innovation then you're certainly free to do so.