DIABLO III HANDS-ON Can a little bit of WoW make the best dungeon crawler better?
When I was playing Diablo III’s beta build, I wasn’t thinking about the game’s hotly debated real-money auction house. Nor was I making a silent checklist of all the alleged acts of blasphemy the game committed against its revered predecessors. Turns out, I was having...what’s the word? Oh, right: fun. I hacked, I slashed, I battled against the armies of Hell alongside a blacksmith who sounded like a bad Sean Connery impersonator. No, this isn’t some weird sequel math problem; Diablo III doesn’t equal Diablo plus Diablo II. And yes, it takes a few cues from World of Warcraft. But when it comes right down to it, this is Blizzard we’re talking about, and Diablo III’s still a hell of a good time. The beta kicks off at Act I, so my Witch Doctor strolled intoNew Tristram looking like he’d just lost a game of medieval strip poker. He was there to investigate a meteor strike that caused the dead to pop right out of their graves—which seems like a bad occasion to leave your armor in your other pants, but I digress.
Click, click, click
Before long, I was introduced to a menagerie of friendly faces, from fire and brimstone prophet Deckard Cain to a Templar NPC companion I snatched away from the wrong end of a blood sacrifice. Diablo III’s far more story-focused than earlier entries, so NPCs adore chatting about the unspeakable horrors descending on their hometown. That’s not all; key moments are introduced by full-blown cutscenes, and notes that function like BioShock’s audio tapes are scattered all about. Fortunately for the impatient among us, most of what’s skippable if you just want to get straight to the slashing.Quest structure is also unabashedly to the point, taking WoW’s familiar exclamation- point method and streamlining it brilliantly. Well, mostly. I did encounter one quest that was essentially “Turn 45 degrees and politely greet that guy who’s breathing down your neck,” but most quest-givers were conveniently centralized and sensibly placed. Better still, randomly generated side missions pop up mid-quest, and frequent teleportation pads ensure that home’s never more than a couple of clicks away. But that’s not why you’re here, is it? You want to slash things—and maybe hack them occasionally. I’m happy to report that’s the best part of all. I may have spent roughly four hours clicking until my finger was a creaky claw, but I felt like a baddie-obliterating badass. Each click sent blood, limbs, and bodies flying— powered by a physics engine that produced many moments of (literally) gutbusting hilarity.
What really drove it all home, though, was the skill system’s newfound versatility. This isn’t some glacially paced WoW-style talent tree. In Diablo III, I was unlocking new skills every level. Moreover, there are a total of six skill slots—which unlock as you level—that you can alter whenever you want, allowing you to switch builds at any given moment. In practice, it’s wonderfully liberating. One moment, my Witch Doctor was summoning zombie dogs and turning foes into defenseless chickens; the next, he was conjuring firebats (exactly what they sound like) with his bare hands. Although the beta doesn’t include Diablo III’s skillaltering Runes, Blizzard broke down how the character-customizing system allows you to spec a Witch Doctor that isn't reliant on summoned allies at all.
“I made a zombie dog-less, pet-less Witch Doctor build,” said Technical Game Designer Wyatt Cheng. “But having pets is sort of signature to the Witch Doctor. So I said, ‘What if I take a damage-over-time skill, fear, and some area-denial skills and try that out?’ And it works just fine. Thenwe added in some extra Rune effects, so now he’s got things like Spirit Barrage, which defends him. So now I’d say I play half of my games with zombie dogs and half of my games without.” Cheng added that "I'd say I play half of my games with zombie dogs and half without." there are even Runes that let you create zombie dogs without ever acquiring the zombie dog skill. In other words, the level of potential variation on these things is absolutely nuts.
It’s raining loot, hallelujah
After amassing a body count that would make a graveyard jealous, I came face-to-face with the Skeleton King. He’s Diablo III’s first real boss, and he definitely put me through my paces. For one, my co-op partner (a Wizard specializing in the reddeath beam known as Disintegrate) and I were woefully squishy, so when the glowing mountain of bones repeatedly teleported behind us, we mostly fired back with our tears. After a few deaths, though, we finished him off with a mix of kiting and aggro management. It wasn't simply a matter of beating the hit points of out a boss; the encounter reminded me of WoW’s brainier encounters, but with Diablo’s emphasis on blink-and-you’ll-miss-it speed. Really, that was the beta in a nutshell: a Frankenstein’s monster of Blizzard’s best ideas. Diablo’s lightning-quick pace, customizability, and randomization mixed with WoW’s strategic encounters and—for better or worse—the auction house. None of it felt
out of place, though. To the contrary: The beta felt like a finished product. Every skill, system, and new idea sparkled with Blizzard’s trademark polish. The jury may be out on buying items with real money, but is there any way I can buy about 400 extra hours of free time? I have a feeling I’m going to need them.
The WoW factor
No doubt about it:
DIABLO III’s taking a few cues from MMO mega-hit World of Warcraft. Should series devotees fear that Diablo III will be more WoW than Diablo? We spoke with the game’s developers to find outWyatt Cheng, technical game designer: “I’ve worked on WoW, so I can tell you it doesn’t play like that at all. My goal is to make game-design decisions that are good for the game. Does that mean that sometimes ideas are repeated? Yeah. To use an oversimplified example, both games have leveling up. If you look at the industry in general, players seem to like leveling up, so we included it. Does it mean we’re making a clone of another game? ...The point is that if something works for the game, then we want to do it, but we won’t copy something that doesn’t work for the game. For instance, WoW uses deterministic loot. That’s not appropriate for our game.”
Christian Lichtner, art director: “At first, there was a reaction. People saw [the art style] as not what they remembered from previous games. But once people had a chance to play it at a few BlizzCons, the feedback became overwhelmingly positive... The goal is to support the gameplay with the art. For example, Diablo’s very much about loot. We wanted to make sure that the weapons and armor sets looked awesome. I think, in a lot of ways, we couldn’t have done that if we’d stuck with something a little more desaturated and [realistic]. It also wouldn’t have given us the opportunity to push differences in environments or push the sinister and gothic feel. We definitely tried to give it a Diablo feel.”
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