Krawall.de got ahold of new Diablo 3 Media at the Leipzig 2008 Games Convention held in Germany. The new screenshots show both concept art and gameplay. Some of the gameplay screenshots show the Witch Doctor unit in action within a dungeon using his pets and spells to obliterate its enemies from a safe distance.
Check the images at Krawall.de. Share your comments here.
IGN cornered Jay Wilson at the 2008 Leipzig GC today to continue discussion on the Art direction, and Health Potions system. What everyone saw at the Invitationals gameplay video is merely the first levels of the game, which are meant to be colorful. We will see darker and grittier scenes as we delve deeper into the world of Sanctuary… giving a psychological sense that things will get worse and worse as we advance through the game.
Read the interview at IGN. Share your comments here.
A crafting system is also in the works, though it won’t be anything like Diablo II’s Horadric Cube combinations. “I don’t know if I can think of a comparison,” said Wilson. “I think that system is a pretty cool and different kind of system from anything that we’ve had before.”
Jay Wilson was interviewed by Eurogamer at the 2008 Leipzig GC today, where he explains his background before joining the Diablo 3 team. He was an avid Blizzard player just like you back in the days. He remembers seeing the Diablo 1 advertisements on the back of the Warcraft II manual. He played Diablo 1, and 2 and Lord of Destruction expansion.
Other games he has played are Zelda and God of War, and from them he has learned that a boss shouldn’t be all this all powerful big health, one-shot hit type of monster that deals tons of damage and requires you to spam healing pots.
Fans have been wondering for the past weeks how in hell – no pun intended – people is gonna heal during a boss encounter with no health potions or health orbs around …
Jay Wilson reveals his vision for the future of the next action-dripping Diablo 3 game’s boss mechanics … you won’t be fighting a lonely boss. You will fight a boss and a horde of mobs. The boss and the mobs won’t do crazy damage, but lower your health at different paces. They are designed to do that with different abilities—however, these mobs that help the boss engage you are there to supply you with health orbs to continue battling the boss.
Now people … that’s what I call genious. It is gonna be challenging, yes, hard. Yet entertaining and possible by using skills and tactics. And the best reward is you won’t get carpal tunnel or have to port back to town to replenish health pots. Read the full interview. Post your comments here.
Eurogamer: I guess this is where the influences you’ve mentioned from enemy design in Zelda and World of Warcraft come into play…
Jay Wilson: Or God of War. Games like that are some of my favourite games. It would be far more interesting if we could have a boss monster that wasn’t just a giant sack of health that deals out ridiculous damage. We’ve got monsters that drop health at percentages of their damage, we also sometimes spawn monsters that are just there basically to drop health. Even there: if you have a boss that just walks around and hits you, and a bunch of smaller monsters that continually spawn and generate health, that’s already a far more interesting fight than you ever got in Diablo. And that’s just the bear minimum of what we can do.
Gamespy asked Jay Wilson from Leipzig GC how random generation dungeons is so hard and unsuccessful sometimes in other companies and not for Blizzard. PvP gameplay is another topic discussed in this interview. At this point, PvP is merely in brainstorm-ideas mode, and not fully worked on. From what Wilson answered, it is obvious they wish to change how PvP worked in Diablo II, and make it more suitable for every player without the exploits associated with it that usually discourages players from playing again. Can you say, Gankers no more?
Other topic discussed was Diablo 3’s financial model, whether it would be free-gameplay, subscription model or micro-transactions model. Read the three-pages interview. Post your comments here.
