In a day and age where every game designer and their mother seem to favor a gritty, realistic quality to their games, Blizzard is doing just the opposite: turning the dark and dingy into bright and colorful. In a move that has many hardcore Diablo fans angry enough to start a petition to Blizzard, the World of Warcraft creator juggernaut has made the world of Diablo look strikingly similar to that of Azeroth.
Click to read more.
Diablo 1 and 2 featured mostly dark dungeon after dark dungeon, in which you could only see as far as your small radius of light would allow you to. Fans of Diablo had come to appreciate the dark, gritty realism to the dungeon crawling experience. However, the released screenshots of Diablo 3 boast a considerably lighter, cheerful world, rich in colors and textures, and perhaps most significantly: very very WOW-stylized. Lead producer for Diablo 3, Keith Lee, had this to say about the new art direction:
One of the things that we considered when we were working on the visuals for diablo III is the fact that color is your friend. We feel that color actually helps to create a lot of highlights in the game so that there is contrast. A great analogy is like in Lord of the Rings not everything is dark. It allows you to see what a creepy dungeon can be like but if everything is dark it doesnt allow you to have a lot of contrast.
Diablo I and Diablo II are darker, and I think that the one of the main reasons why is the fact that in Diablo I, youre basically in a dungeon the whole time. And in contrast to Diablo III, youll be exploring outdoors, youll be in dungeons, youll be experiencing so many different areas. We want to bring as much variety as we can when youre playing the game so that youre excited to check out new environments. We dont want everything to look the same and thats really what were trying to aim for.
In my opinion, while I have always been a big fan of color and vibrancy especially in outdoor areas in MMORPGs, I think it's a bit late in the game to be changing the familiar on your fans. While I was never a die-hard Diablo player, I have experienced firsthand what it feels like when developers take your beloved game and start changing the direction. For me, it was Everquest. It was all puppies and sunshine in the high fantasy world of Norrath... until they started sticking cat people and dinosaurs on the freaking moon. It really has an effect on players to change the game world they have come to know and love, especially if they grew up with a long running title such as the matter at hand: Diablo.
Thus far, the petition to get Blizzard to change the art of Diablo 3 has a staggering 47,000 signatures!!! Although, I'll play the game regardless of the art. Alternatively, another petition arose to tell Blizzard to NOT change the Diablo 3 art , but only has 1500 signatures.
Have the people spoken? Are you a Diablo fan, and if so, how do you feel about the new art?
