New Diablo 3 Images; Design Wins Over Darkness

KingofGnG writes "The new Diablo III screenshots highlight the strong chromatic variations existing between the dungeons and the various stages ... It appears obvious, however, that all those details enriching the scenes, the crumbling parapets of the paths within the dungeons, the plants and the ragged drapes lightened by candles, would lose the best part of their raison d'etre if put in monochrome palettes inclined to black."

Comments

Screw blackness

[runlevelfour]

I am all about games having dark and brooding atmospheres, and maybe even a bit scary. But I am more about a game being a damn fun and well designed one because the developers had a vision and weren't playing appease-the-fanboys during the development process. Plus the gritty, dark, angsty look has been done to death. I like color.

Re:Screw blackness

[narcberry]

If all the levels and scenery are dark, the game doesn't feel so dark after a while. You need the bright colorful levels to appreciate the dark depths of diabolical devils and demons.

Re:Screw blackness

[nmb3000]

Plus the gritty, dark, angsty look has been done to death.

And the shiny, glowing, neon-stylized atmosphere hasn't? Besides, since when is trying to make a game feel realistic considered overrated?

I like color.

Then go play Warcraft III or World of Warcraft or Starcraft II or... Hm, anyone else notice a pattern here?

The Diablo series has always been about the stark contrast between good and evil, light and dark. The "gritty, dark" look was there for a reason: True evil and it's effects are not clean, nor are they pretty. You can have light and color in the natural and "good" sides of things, and with effects like magic and buffs, but the environments and equipment (unless possible enchanted) should reflect their likely rough and possibly sordid past. Diablo II felt very real; it was anything but stylized.

I'm not advocating such dark environments that you can't see anything, and I don't think that was really a problem with Diablo II (with the possible exception of a small light radius). I don't think they need to replicate the style of previous Diablo games directly, but I DO think they shouldn't just throw them away for the new "oooh, shiny colors!" motif of all Blizzard's newer games. My biggest concern over Diablo III isn't poor gameplay or a bad story, but rather that it's just going to become Warcraft IV and/or Starcraft With Demons.

Re:Screw blackness

[jimmux]

Sometimes I wonder if all these people complaining ever played the original Diablo. It was much more colourful than the sequel. I mean, the palette seemed to be limited to grey and red for environments, but some of the enemies were practically fluorescent!

In a way this even made certain enemies scarier. It's one thing to have dark enemies appear out of the shadows (also annoying), it's another thing to have enemies that send a clear visual signal: Don't fuck with this!

Re:Screw blackness

[ozbird]

The "gritty, dark" look was there for a reason: True evil and it's effects are not clean, nor are they pretty.

The more likely reason: CRT monitors and gamma settings. Try playing Diablo II on a modern, bright (sometimes too bright) LCD monitor and it might not seem so "gritty, dark" any more.

Re:Screw blackness

[Eskarel]

The problem with things being "dark" is that you get Doom 3 where everything is really pretty and uses lots of video resources, but you can't see any of it because it's dark, or you get Quake which was the brownest game ever.

Making truly gritty environments is rather difficult and uses a lot of system resources to do properly. A truly gritty environment for a game like this wouldn't just be gray walls and shadows. A truly gritty environment would be whatever wonderful shiny, colorful environment the place was originally, covered in dust, ash, and general damage.

That's the ideal Diablo environment, the beautiful temple of light corrupted and destroyed, not some dingy dark cave.

Unfortunately doing that is somewhat technically difficult, and personally I'm sick to death of dark dingy dungeon crawlers.

Re:Screw blackness

[Roger Wilcox]

World of Warcraft pretty much is Diablo III.

Blizz did give WOW a Warcraft theme and story, but the gameplay is identical to that of Diablo, and it was released chronologically right where you would expect Diablo III to be.

Diablo III, therefore, is actually Diablo IV. It should come as no surprise that the game will look and feel a lot like WOW, which is not only its immediate logical predecessor, but has also been a hugely successful (and profitable) game for Blizzard.

The ironic thing

[TJ_Phazerhacki]

The only people complaining about the art style are the ones who would buy anything Blizzard boxes. The style is attractive enough to bring in new players.

It's absurd such a small outcry has gotten this much press already.

Good for Blizzard

[MBCook]

I'm glad Blizzard is sticking to their guns.

I first found out about this when that video was released a week or two ago in which a fan tweaked the official video to show what the game "should" look like instead of the "colorful" look that Blizzard is going with.

I watched the video and thought only one thing: it was ugly. Look, I understand this game is supposed to take place in dungeons and such, but you are allowed to have SOME color. It really pointed out that argument I've seen a few times over the last few years about the recent consoles. They are so powerful and push so many polygons, but they only seem to work when you disable any non-yellow, brown, or grey color.

I've got to say, I really like the look of the Diablo III video and screens Blizzard has made. There are colors. You can tell what's going on. Enemies stand out, the art stands out. It all looks quite good. But at the same time, they didn't go overboard making it look too cartoony. I mean, it doesn't look happy.

I'm glad Blizzard is sticking to their guns despite what some group of hardcore fans says. I'm actually interested in Diablo III. I've never played the previous games, but I'd like to give it a try.

But if it had been that nearly black-and-white mockup a fan made, I'd avoid it. I don't have such a nice computer so I can only view dimly lit colorless environments with very little visible detail.

Re:Good for Blizzard

[esocid]

I'll admit I didn't like the idea of Diablo 3 looking how it does right now until I was informed of the time frame. It's supposed to be 20 years after the end of Diablo 2 when everything has been put to rest and all that evil has left Tristram. It only had that ambiance due to what had happened just prior to the first game. It had a gothic look and feel because that was how/when it was taking place.
My qualm was really that I felt WoW was bleeding over into Diablo's turf from the looks of the screenshots, but now that I have it in context of the story line I'm not much against the color scheme.

Darkness

[Renraku]

The game shouldn't be so dark its hard to see. It should be slightly shadowy in some areas, but otherwise alright as far as seeing goes. Torches/lights should overbright the area a little, rather than making it normally lit. If it were real, you'd be pretty used to the dark, but torches would damn ear blind you.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[im_thatoneguy]

Here Here. How about a Mod redirect the link to a functioning server that's not just reposting official materials.

This is nothing more than an extremely thinly vailed attempt at getting some ad hits.

The elephant in the room

[Pav]

The elephant in the room is that the Blizzard guys probably would have preferred staying true to the dark and brooding atmosphere, but it's no longer possible with todays technology. On panels black is really gray... often not even a dark gray, and then there's the trade-off most panels make in giving up a few bits per colour channel for speed. "Dark and brooding" looks pretty awful on your average modern rig.

Re:Just do it

[amdpox]

Far Cry's "rendering modes" were just hsv/gamma shifts, it was all a single postprocessing multiplier applied to every pixel. But, you make a good point - better to have the game in viewable colours with a slider for the deep, brooding, dark-wanting people than to make the game in brown-on-black and leave those who like to see with a washed-out palette.

Re:I don't care!

[Mhtsos]

I can see it now: Blizzard thinks the new feel is great, and will delay diablo III another 6 months in order to implement it. In other unrelated news the inspirer of said change has gone into hiding for reasons unrelated to the angry torch-and-pitchfork wielding mob outside his house.