Lead Diablo 3 designer Jay Wilson addressed the concerns of some fans that the art style of Blizzard’s newest game deviates from its forebears, but refused to give into their demands.
“We’re very happy with how the art style is,” said Wilson in an interview with MTV Multiplayer’s Tracey John. “The art team’s happy. The company’s happy. We really like this art style, and we’re not changing it.”
Outspoken critics struck immediately after the Diablo 3 screenshots and trailer were revealed last month, complaining that the brighter colors made the game cartoony and violated the dark spirit of the franchise. Protests have not died down since and led to an online petition with over 54,000 signatures.
Some critics used Photoshop to edit Diablo 3 art into what they thought it should look like.
Looking at the Photoshopped screenshot above, Wilson commented, “This texturing, where they grayed out everything and it’s very flat and the monsters are all kind of a similar tone — that does not play well. It’s very boring to run through more than a couple of times, and it’s very difficult to tell creatures apart and pop them out of the environment.
That’s the key: Darkened textures and lighting are more fitting with the plot, but also more boring to play. Wilson said in the MTV interview that the art design was originally much more similar to that of Diablo and Diablo 2, but that the results were unsatisfying.
“It’s a very simple game, and [you need to ] constantly vary what you throw at the player — big look changes in the environment, creature changes with different behavior,” Wilson continued. “We had to move to an art style that had a lot more variety in it and was capable of a lot more.”
Many problems factored into Blizzard’s decision to brighten the hues, said Wilson. In the dark, enemies were harder to distinguish and labyrinths harder to navigate. The light circle that made Diablo 3’s darker predecessors playable looked stupid in a 3D environment (although Wilson suggested it will return for some dungeons).
This is a case where gameplay and story conflict. A brighter pallette conflicts with Diablo’s dark themes and content, but I would argue that it is superior when gameplay is concerned. If I’m going to spend days with a game, I don’t want to do it in monotonous grey and red rooms, fighting monsters that all look the same. I could never find myself immersed in that bleak world or in its story.
totalna katastrofa Ovo nije jebeni WOW !!!!!
“In the dark, enemies were harder to distinguish and labyrinths harder to navigate.” Whats next?, no more randomly generated dungeons? This all seems like a shameless attempt to cash in on the installed player base World of Warcraft has. Having the “Light Radius” gave you a sense of unpredictability and kept you on your toes for when those enemies finally came into view.
Diablo 3 looks like world of warcraft. It has that same loony toony look. What happened to the Light Radius, the dark, evil theme and the horror. No game does this better than D1, but who cares. Blizzard is clearly recycling the same formula for success that they found with WOW. RIP Diablo. At least I lived and played in the time of Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 Classic.
yeah, unfortunately blizzard has doomed this franchise. They spent too long getting fat and lazy off of wow and now they (and their corporate owners) can do nothing else but cartoony wow stuff. At least I can still play the originals and enjoy that dark gothic dungeoun crawl. What are they thinking?
blizzard is making a biiiig mistake. fans of diablo and fans of WOW have very different perspectives. Making the game look like WOW will destroy the whole success of the diablo serie. Designers must care about the players position. As a game designer I can say that the most important rule of designing a game is considering the player’s point of view. the game is for players not for designers. their ego shouldn’t be more important than the success of the game.. that kind of change in asthetics, even if the change improves the game play, will be the end of all taste of the game.. Environment of Diablo is gothic style while current use of pallette is completely irrevelant with the style. I am not as experienced as them but I can easily say that, taking this risk is a huge responsibility.. we will all see the consequences..