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."

Hasn't this already been covered in Slashdot

[milkasing]

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

UNACCEPTABLE!111

[Anonymous Coward]

It needs to be darker! i won't be happy until everything is either #800000 or #000000 or something in between!

Straight from the official site

[FornaxChemica]

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]

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

Re:Screw blackness

[Jesus_666]

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:UNACCEPTABLE!111

[Tangent128]

Now that's gory.

Hey!

[sw155kn1f3]

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.

Re:Screw blackness

[semiotec]

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

[LearnToSpell]

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.

Lightened?

[pushing-robot]

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Graciious Honor!

[CorporateSuit]

Actually, they said that players who have forced themselves through a difficult dungeon to reach a new area deserve the greatest sense of accomplishment a game designer can possibly bestow: A palette swap.

I wish I was dumb enough to make up something like this.

Screw Diablo 3, too

[Amazing Quantum Man]

I want my Duke Nukem Forever!

Re:Screw blackness

[RichardJenkins]

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:I like Isometric.

[syousef]

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

So why are you posting on slashdot? ;-)

Re:Screw blackness

[Jesus_666]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Know what happens to a frog demon when it gets hit by chain lightning?

Oh god, I'm so sorry!

Re:Screw blackness

[Purity Of Essence]

My biggest concern over Diablo III isn't poor gameplay

Well there's your problem.

Why argue at all?

[soldoutactivist]

You will buy the game, and pray they make another. End of story. Whether or not Diablo 3 is "pretty" will not cross your mind as you hand over the cash unless you were simply not going to buy the game anyway. This has nothing to do with your opinions, you just want to bitch, bitch, bitch. This is aimed at the bitch in all of you.

Re:Screw blackness

[Fred_A]

I've always thought that those games were kind of lame but suggesting that they be played in pantyhose or stockings certainly is over the top as far as I'm concerned. You should probably take your strange fetishes elsewhere.

*Hmpf*

Re:Screw blackness

[KDR_11k]

The French sell it in a restaurant?

Re:Screw blackness

[Sj0]

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.

Oh really?

[Moraelin]

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

[Chyeld]

If you really want to talk about reality, then evil things are often pretty, seductive, and seem harmless if you don't know any better. If evil always came after you with a pitchfork, horns, and glowing eyes, then it wouldn't be so dangerous. We would just identify it, kill it, and be done with it.

Never been married have you?