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Diablo III Designer Defends New Look and Feel
In response to a fair amount of angry outcry at the new look and feel for Diablo III, designer Jay Wilson has critiqued some fan-altered screenshots and defended the new style. "The key thing to remember here is that this has been Photoshopped. This isn't created by the engine. Though it looks really cool, it's almost impossible to do in a 3D engine because you can't have lighting that smart and run on systems that are reasonable. If we could do that, we probably would in a few of the dungeons."
At first glance I prefer Blizzard's version.
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I have always failed to understand what people's problem with Diablo III's graphics. The important thing is the gothic feel here. You don't need a color palette made up of shades of brown, grey, and black to achieve that... there's nothing wrong with having a colorful world, since it doesn't necessarily change the look & feel of the world at all. Hell, I by far prefer the screen shots Blizzard has produced to the "improved" stuff the fans have put out. The people doing that work may be happy with a world full of dreary colors which is hard to see any detail in, but I for one am not.
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What I don't like is the excessive amount of blue, green, and yellow on what should be plain stone tiles.
mostly what he refers to as impossible are some of the more elaborate shadows (e.g. dynamic ones from the enemies off of the spells being cast) and things like that.
I would buy this in a second, if only I could decide whether I'd rather play as Diablo tormenting Hello Kitty, or as Hello Kitty tormenting Diablo.
This has to do with Blizzard. Ever since Warcraft 3 they have shifted their graphic design to a more cartoonish or anime style.
I think the cartoonish style is more about a means to an end, rather than an end in and of itself. Blizzard prides itself on producing games that will run well on average hardware, and that means reduced scene complexity, especially in cases where you've got arbitrary amounts of geometry on the screen. Because of this, they're limited to broader artistic strokes to convey meaning.
I look at this a lot like stage theater - actors make exaggerated gestures and wear dramatic makeup on stage because they need to transcend the limitations of the medium. Blizzard uses simple polygons and textures because that's the best way to get a whole bunch of em on the screen at any given time. As long as it doesn't break immersion (and I understand for some people it does, but not for me), then I'm fine with it.
Personally, watching the gameplay video I wasn't thinking "these colors look off" or "this seems too cartoon-like". I was thinking more along the lines of "whoa, wall of zombies" and "that thing just bit that guy in half!"
Here's what you can do:
Problem solved. Diablo zealots are happy, blizzard is happy. Emo kids can use this approach for a host of other games too. As for me, I won't do any of that sillyness. My monitor is rectangular for a reason.
A Diablo III representative defended design choices against 'dark & desaturated' versus 'brighter & colored'. While admiting that a single screen shot could look cooler when 'dark & destaurated', they concluded, after much playtesting, that 'brighter & colored' 1) offered greater visual playability when many creatures and players are on the screen, and 2) made the game more intersting because different game areas actually looked different.
Oh, come on, now. The point is that, two days after launch, those same fans who mostly just altered contrast in the pictures, will release a mod that alters your monitor's contrast whenever you launch Diablo 3. It's not rocket science here people.
For the record, I'm not so much concerned about the contrast changes (see previous sentence), it's the cartoonish, WoW-like graphics that may kill this game's lasting appeal for me (see the Barbarian's armor in the 30min gameplay preview. It looks just like Warcraft 3.
I may be in minority here, but one of the best parts of Diablo 2 was the ridiculous, over-the-top violence and the cold, realistic graphics.
Disclaimer: I put 3000+ hours into Diablo 2, and I consider it the greatest game of all time. Diablo 3 will not live up to my expectations no matter what the Dev team does.
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So, graphics are more important to you than gameplay? That's a rather shallow attitude.
I suggest you take a little trip to South Korea, where their national sport is a 10 year old 2D Blizzard game that runs at 640x480.
To be fair, graphics build atmosphere and 'feel'. His criticism felt like he found find the new atmosphere and feel disappointing compared to D2. I think that's a fair point. Really, its going to be the same with SC2. Some people are going to be turned off by the new 'feel' to it. Part of that will be gameplay changes, others will be the result of new graphics.
Graphics do more than 'look pretty'. They can effect gameplay, immersion, and feel. All this stuff about 'put gameplay/AI/story/characters before graphics' may be legit, but that doesn't mean that graphics are no longer a fair point of contention.
Absolutely not! I play the "national sport of South Korea" several times a week, and love it.
What I'm trying to say is that the style of the graphics is what sells the game (to me). It's not about pixel shaders or polygon counts, it's about showing me a monster that just jumped out of Disney, vs. one that came from Alien. The fun is in what you're doing in the game, and if you're trying to be humanity's last hope in a world of chaos and demonic monsters, fighting off hordes of Pixar baddies tends to kill the suspension of disbelief. Simple as that.
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You should RTFA. Most of the designers comments were that the fan-a;tered screenshots missed the point of why D2 was fun after so much time. The spell effects in D2, for example, were *very* coloful. Also, either the background or the monsters needs to have vibrant colors: if you used desaturaed colors for both, the monsters don't "pop" out of the background, and the game becomes fatiguing to play (even if it looks better in a screenshot). They changed to what they have now because they discovered this during playtesting.
This is why Blizzard makes good games - they actually make improvements based on playtest feedback.
Also worth remembering: the reason that WoW is more successful than every other MMO put together is precisely because Blizzard ignored the conventional wisdom, and catered to casual players over the loudly-voiced requests of the hardcore fans.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Well.. This is /. after all. It's certainly mean, but from a geek's perspective it's an obvious fake. Now if it were a brilliant link like this that would be fun and cool.
Look on the bright side. He's never gonna give you up.
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