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."

Screw blackness

[runlevelfour (1329235)]

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 (1328009)]

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

[jimmux (1096839)]

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

[e2d2 (115622)]

I actually went and played Diablo II in the past month, picking it up after hearing great things and seeing the new screen shots. In most dungeons it's not dark at all, but darkness did play a part in some places, with specific gear created for adding "light radius" to your character. I have assumed this was to create a sense of surprise in some places, but not too many. That same surprise can be maintained in other ways in a new 3D environment. I think people concentrate too much on it when the first two were more about story line and fighting large groups of mobs in an RPG setting, gearing your character up, and truly unique environments, especially when you include the expansion.

Since Diablo II is fresh in my mind and an overall great game even today (I play it maxed out at 800x600!) I welcome the new one regardless.

Re:Screw blackness

[by Anonymous Coward]

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.

Agreed. If you're outdoors, during the day, it should be relatively bright. If you're in a cave underground with no lights, it should be dark. If the two look the same it blurs the distinction between them, and you don't have a good feeling for where you are.

Re:Screw blackness

[Jesus_666 (702802)]

Depends on whether the color is used right, though. Some of the original screenshots did look a bit weird - one dungeon appears to have blue ambient light, even though there are no blue light sources. For some reason it really did look like World of Warcraft. In those cases it might be a good idea to tone down the ambient light's chroma a bit. Of course if they put blue torches everywhere things look a bit different.

What I don't get is the outcry over the magic effects being too cartoonish. Diablo always had magic effects in all the colors (and with the gravitas) of a well-stocked candy store and a poison attack wouldn't be a proper poison attack if it didn't have a bright green glow and preferably an inexplicable skull somewhere.


Of course, Blizzard could easily appease the color-hostile fans by adding a graphics option that reduces chroma by 90% and brightness by 50% everywhere but the HUD. And maybe changes all spoken text to goth poetry.

Re:Screw blackness

[RichardJenkins (1362463)]

Looks good to me, the foreboding blackness of the text ('Error establishing a database connection') contrasting relentlessly with the bleak and brilliant white background.

Magic.

Re:Screw blackness

[Jesus_666 (702802)]

Actually, my last paragraph was firmly tongue in cheek; I thought the bit with the goth poetry made that clear. It's their game and they get to decide how it looks. Even if they decided to turn hell into a giant 70s disco and put Diablo into a leisure suit and platform shoes - it's their game. It'd also be kind of awesome, but that's beside the point.


Also, I think an "ugly mode" would actually serve to piss off the yammering fans rather than make them happy. I can really see it - the option would have the name "Ugly Mode" and the tooltip "How the game should have looked. Not WoW gay at all." And the game would have a TTS engine just for this mode so every goth poetry line (why, of course they'd implement that idea, too) could be randomly generated and they wouldn't actually have to record all that stuff.

Yup, that would be one of the most awesome insults in video game history.

Re:Screw blackness

[nmb3000 (741169)]

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

[LearnToSpell (694184)]

Besides, since when is trying to make a game feel realistic considered overrated?

Yeah, I hate when a game feels unrealistic as I cast chain lightning on a bunch of frog demons.

Oh really?

[Moraelin (679338)]

The point is that if things are realistic it makes the game that much more fun and immersive. So as you cast chain lightening at the frogs you might actually feel like it's a real world and you are really the hero and provides the same type of escapism of a movie. That immersion makes the game that much funner and enjoyable.

Oh really? Please do enlighten me exactly what do frog demons look like IRL (since we're talking _realism_), or what is the real incantation for casting chain lightning IRL, or exactly how much mana does a level 5 wizard have IRL, how much of it is used by a chain lightning, and how fast it would regen for you. IRL.

Also, hey, let's make the game realistic. Let's see:

It's the middle ages. Chances are you're a peasant. (Some 80% of the population was, after all, so sheer probabilities point that way.) work dawn to dusk just to feed your family, but you're still badly malnourished since last year's war saw most of your crop looted. Half the village just died of plague, and the survivors are screaming in agony all night. Some of them are throwing themselves off houses and bridges just to end the excruciating pain already. You sneezed this morning. You're still scared shitless, because that's the first symptom of the plague. Please God let it be hayfever or a cold, is what goes through your head as you mindlessly walk behing the plough like a zombie. You'll likely always be a peasant. You'd have to buy yourself off serfdom before you can go do anything else, at all. Three of your five kids so far died before even reaching their first birthday. Which is just as well, since you wouldn't have enough food to feed all 5. And if demons attacked your church, you'd get drafted by your lord into hauling rocks to repair it.

Oh, sorry, that's not much fun... let's try again:

You're a grizzled mercenary. You've seen half your unit die of dysentery in the last war. In fact, in the last battle, you fought without pants so you can shit yourself on the move. The peasants in this village hate your fucking guts, because it was your unit that looted them in between employment as mercenaries. Your old commander got himself a promotion for volunteering your unit to Forlorn Hope. Actually meaning "lost troop", as that's the first wave to assault the walls. If he survives, the commander gets an automatic promotion, but you just got to burry your horribly mutilated mates and got kicked out of the army as soon as peace was signed. That old scar didn't make you tougher, it just got infected and that was a fun year of suffering. All the wounds and bad food and shitting your guts out on campaigns, have shortened your life expectancy a lot, and make you feel like you're 20 years older already.

In all probability, a single hit by any demon under the church will likely kill or disable you. It doesn't take much destroyed tissue to make anybody collapse in shock. You don't get -5 hp from the hit and to wait 10 seconds for it to regen. You'll probably just get killed, or disabled long enough for the rest of the demons to eat you alive. If you survived at half health, you'll just bleed to death. Or maybe the infection will kill you. Even if you're so elite as to dodge or parry 99% of the attacks (which is unrealistic already), in all probability, by the 20'th demon one will land that disabling blow right through your defenses.

And if you don't die there, chances are you'll end up crippled. And get to beg from those same villagers, who'll roll their eyes and pretend to not even see you.

Won't that realism be fun?

Re:Screw blackness

[ozbird (127571)]

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 (565631)]

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 (776904)]

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.

Re:Screw blackness

[torchdragon (816357)]

Simple gameplay requirements wrapped around plot used as quests to further a "story"?
D2 Check, WoW Check

No actual change to world within persistence of software?
D2 Check, WoW Check

Carrot and Stick Item Collection with non-guaranteed psychology reward system?
D2 Check, WoW Check

"Lots of options" that enable you kill everything in the game in the same end result (0 hp)?
D2 Check, WoW Check

Repeating content for lack of anything better to do?
D2 Check, WoW Check

Increased difficulty of game in "epic" areas accomplished by giving the bad guys more hit points and making them do more damage (or letting them just kill players outright)?
D2 Check, WoW Check

Expansion packs claiming new awesome features that don't actually add new awesome features and really is just a rehashing of the same game with different graphics?
D2 Check, WoW Check

And the last, but you get the point...

No way for the players to ACTUALLY influence the progress and development of the world?
D2 Check, WoW Check

Re:Screw blackness

[houghi (78078)]

I like color.

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

Yes, that apparently looks is more important then gameplay.

Re:Screw blackness

[Sj0 (472011)]

You're attacked by nine skeletons with swords!

You fall to the ground in agony after the first skeleton slices your skin open, and don't get back up as the other eight rip hole after gaping hole into your flesh. There's no such thing as reincarnation. The fact that you've defeated 100 skeletons does NOT make your skin immune to swords.

Sounds like fun.

Penny-Arcade...

[semiotec (948062)]

This came up weeks ago.

The article on the comparison between Diablo III design and fan "improved" colours:

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/08/04/diablo-iii-designer-turns-tables [mtv.com]

and Penny-Arcade's take on the "protest":

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/8/6/ [penny-arcade.com]

Re:Screw blackness

[semiotec (948062)]

maybe these people who want "darker" designs should just play with blindfolds, or if that's too much, try using pantyhose, stocking or a pair of crappy sunglasses instead.

Re:Screw blackness

[tdelaney (458893)]

Fall^H^H^H^HOblivion with Guns. Sometimes it's a good idea to appease the fanboys, because the previous games are already damn fun and well designed.

In the case of Diablo III though, I've looked at Blizzard's reasoning, and compared the images, and overall I think Blizzard has made the right choice. The basic gameplay doesn't appear to have greatly changed - this is nitpicking over a small change in look.

Plus I trust Leonard Boyarsky. He says the colour palette changes in later parts of the game. Kinda like going from pre-Searing Ascalon to post-Searing to Kryta in Guild Wars.

Screw Diablo 3, too

[Amazing Quantum Man (458715)]

I want my Duke Nukem Forever!

Re:Screw blackness

[BountyX (1227176)]

For everyone complaining about d3 not being dark enough, just lower your gamma.

Re:Screw blackness

[fiendie (934679)]

I played Gears of War some time ago where you could actually fiddle with the post processing. On "muted" it was nearly unplayable even if the game isn't as fast-pased as a first person shooter. The color makes the opponents stand out from the background.

The ironic thing

[TJ_Phazerhacki (520002)]

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.

I don't care!

[thermian (1267986)]

Just release the damn game so I can play it!

Artsy discussions about screenshots aren't something I care about.

There are, as I see it, two possibilities, either the game sucks, or it doesn't.

Re:I don't care!

[Mhtsos (586325)]

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.

Good for Blizzard

[MBCook (132727)]

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 (946821)]

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.

Re:Good for Blizzard

[Myrcutio (1006333)]

To be fair, Diablo bled into WoW long before diablo 3 was even in development. The whole idea of soulbound items didn't exist prior to wow, and was a direct response to all the item trading that was going on in Diablo 2.

For that matter, WoW's item system is noticeably decedent from that in Diablo 2. The random drops, sockets, the uncommon, rare, unique classifications that has become ubiquitous now. Even the bag/bank space is am obvious evolution from diablo 2 days.

Re:Good for Blizzard

[phantomlord (38815)]

The whole idea of soulbound items didn't exist prior to wow, and was a direct response to all the item trading that was going on in Diablo 2.

No Drop items existed in EQ before WoW came out... to help prevent a combination of item trading, farming for twinks, to make items more rare, etc.

Re:Good for Blizzard

[markov_chain (202465)]

Bah, we had all this stuff on MUDs forever. All Diablo did was put a GUI on the mudlib.

Not that I am complaining, they are beautiful and well done games.

Hasn't this already been covered in Slashdot

[milkasing (857326)]

Diablo III Designer Defends New Look and Feel http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/04/1858250 [slashdot.org] Personally, after spending way too much time on Diablo 2, I must say I now prefer darkness --accompanied with sleeping

Darkness

[Renraku (518261)]

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.

Straight from the official site

[FornaxChemica (968594)]

Crafty little site... who went to take some pictures [blizzard.com] and artworks [blizzard.com] from the official site, added his watermark on it, submitted a news item and got slashdotted. Bravissimo! It's grand to see Arthur from Ghouls'N Ghosts announcing Diablo III.

Best dept name ever

[incripshin (580256)]

'It's like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black.' -This is Spinal Tap

I liked the shadows

[meist3r (1061628)]

The current art style give it that weird World of Warcraft cartoonish look. Doesn't quite suit what I am used to from the other Diablo games and not really what I expected. But overall I don't care as long as it comes out soon.

Hey!

[sw155kn1f3 (600118)]

I don't need no more diablo images in my head, if you insist, I'll just wear tinfoil and the cross. Now go away, let me ponder that female elf. Thank you, thank you, don't let your horns damage my door. Thank you, bye.

Just do it

[billcopc (196330)]

I fail to see why they couldn't add a toggle to activate a desaturating filter. That would shut up the art-school dropouts, and frankly I think it would be interesting to switch between the bright/colorful and dark modes.

Is it that difficult to implement brightness/contrast/gamma ? I'm thinking of Far Cry, which offered different rendering modes, some of them cold and bluish, others hyper-saturated and cartoony. It was a unique feature at the time, so why can't Blizzard just copy that ?

Re:Just do it

[amdpox (1308283)]

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.

The elephant in the room

[Pav (4298)]

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.

Was diablo 2 actually dark?

[Vexorian (959249)]

You know, I've been playing doom lately, and that's quite a colorful game... Then I saw some people playing diablo 2 it is actually very colorful as well, I am glad blizz didn't waste their time pleasing a bunch of people that just remember diablo being darker than it really was...

Lightened?

[pushing-robot (1037830)]

the plants and the ragged drapes lightened by candles

Lightened by candles? Lightened by candles? That's it, KingofGnG will never be my Dungeon Master.

Art over Atmosphere

[fullymodo (985789)]

Is it just me, or has there been too much argument over the brightness of Diablo III? I would think everyone's individual monitor setting preferences account for more difference to the levels in the game than the fine tuning done on the development end.

I browsed the screenshots and was happy to see, not the brightness -- or the contrast or the bleed or gamut or the bloody candle-power, but the artistic design of the creatures and the scenery. I'd much rather have attention to detail in the area of creativity and originality of visual style, than attention to the brightness of colours I can simply adjust on my screen. Take Heroes IV and Disciples II (click here [disciples2.com] if you're not familiar with Disciples), as examples; I found Heroes IV really uninspired and boring, whereas Disciples II, although very similar had such incredible artistic design that it was much more enjoyable to play.

Dark vs light/color...

[blahplusplus (757119)]

... is really about atmosphere. I admit that I never personally had any interest and didn't care either way for such things. But I know that lighting really does have an effect on atmosphere. Doom 3 had great atmosphere because of how the lighting was, even the original Diablo was dark and grey, it had some levels that were really bright, but it also compensated by levels that were really dark (as you go into the last dungeon to fight diablo in teh first one).

One of the cool things about the original diablo (for it's time) was lighting effects from spells/arrows, etc across floors and whatnot and going 'oh shit oh shit oh shit' when monsters were coming or were firing your way and you were trying to make an escape.

It's not about the palette

[neostorm (462848)]

It's about the art direction overall. Diablo was gritty and realistic. They could make the whole game black and white, but you've still got characters running around in cutscenes and combat that look like they came from Warcraft.

This http://www.diii.net/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=871&size=big&cat=563 [diii.net] and this http://www.diii.net/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=703&cat=565 [diii.net] are much more in the style of Warcraft, which aside from the bright and happy palette is the primary reason a lot of folks were surprised when D3 was unveiled.

I know I personally also wanted contrast to Blizzards other work, because that existed before now. Blizzard has amazing artists and they're going to make an amazing looking game, but when all your franchises start looking the same, they become kind of redundant from one another. I think most Diablo fans wanted something hellish, and dark, and corrupt. Gritty and realistic. While the game will look, and most likely play, just fine, the atmosphere is what will be different due to the changes in the look.
I dunno... Something like this http://www.worldart.com.au/images/kris-kuksi-sculpture-surreal-deadly-sins1.jpg [worldart.com.au]

Right now the game looks like it was Disney's take on Diablo, rather than Geiger's.

Re:Slashdotted

[dnwq (910646)]

Coral cache [nyud.net]. But it's insanely slow for me there, too.

Images are on Blizzard's Site

[im_thatoneguy (819432)]

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/media/screenshots.xml [blizzard.com]

Skip the middleman. The first four are the "new" screenshots... which look exactly like the old screenshots. Which is to say... nothing has changed

Really... a slashdot story on Blizzard releasing another 4 screenshots? Will we get a story for every new screenshot they release or only in intervals of 4 or greater?

Re:Anonymous Coward

[im_thatoneguy (819432)]

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.

Re:I like Isometric.

[syousef (465911)]

I was tired of pour my life energy into the bottomless pit of interactive illusions

So why are you posting on slashdot? ;-)

Re:inappropriate use of color

[CronoCloud (590650)]

Go outdoors, on a moonlight night. Look to see what color cast the moonlight gives everything. It's bluish, just like that dungeon shot. And if you look at that shot, you'll see there's a HUGE window. That's why it's blue.

These screenshots look nothing like a Mario style color scheme. They're quite in keeping with traditional fantasy artwork, probably moreso than the original Diablo was. Elmore, Easley, Caldwell, Wood. go take a look at them.