The European Gaming Convention took place in Leipzig, Germany this year and there has been alot of goodies that came from this convention as far as Diablo 3 goes. No less than 6 different interviews with Jay Wilson has been uncovered with lots of juicy stuff and a whole lot of new graphics, so it was a really action packed event indeed it seems.

The first D3 team interview from the GC is up on IGN and it’s a good read. They spoke to D3 Lead Jay Wilson, and after getting the obligatory art direction question out of the way, they dug into some interesting game functions: inventory, skill use, monster design, health sytems, and more. A quote:

“A lot of people, I think, would say that’s a hallmark of the Diablo series, the potion system. We looked at it and said, ‘No, that just makes the game worse,’” said Wilson. “It doesn’t make it play like a better action game, it just kind of gives the player infinite health. It’s actually a fairly poor recovery mechanic because it forces the designers to design monsters that have to deal with a player that has infinite health. The only thing you can do is have monsters that can overcome that health and essentially one-shot you. That’s not a very interesting monster. It’s actually a horrible monster. But that’s the only option. The design shoehorned the designers into that kind of monster design. So we focused on a health system that actually forces the player to think tactically to recover health from monsters and to put them in some situations where they are low on health but have to walk into an enemy encounter anyway. That makes for a much more challenging encounter but it also makes for a situation where we can design the monsters to be a lot more interesting. We actually can lower damage on monsters. We want monsters to do less damage because we want them to wear you down over time and do things that are challenging in different ways.”

Gamespy has posted their own interview with Jay Wilson. This one is less a conversation about game mechanics and more a standard Q&A, with quotes from Jay about the features we’ll see in Battle.net 2.0, the state of the RPG genre, randomizing level design, D3’s planned financial model, and how D3 might handle PvP. Here are the highlights of the interview, and a quote for good measure:

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The somewhat ridiculous outcry regarding the art direction of Daiblo 3 that has resulted in 52.000 names on a petition to change the direction of the artwork in Diablo 3 was adressed by lead designer Jay Wilson when doing an interview with MTV Games.

Don’t like “Diablo III“’s colorful art direction? Too bad. We were told today that it’s not going anywhere.

Lead “Diablo III” designer Jay Wilson told me that even though 52,000 “Diablo” fans have signed a petition asking Blizzard to return to the darker, more gothic look of the old “Diablo” games, the new, vibrant art style is here to stay.
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Solivagant has written another great post about the comparison between Diablo 3 and Fallout 3 which I find to be a very nice post well worth reading and pondering upon. What do you think?

I’ve received a lot of feedback regarding a post I made on my Destructoid blog, more positive than negative so I decided to continue that line of thought and further compare Diablo 3 and Fallout 3.

I started my post by stating that everything that I’d seen on June 28 got me interested in Diablo 3. Everything that I’ve seen since then has only gotten me even more interested.

Specifically, Leonard Boyarsky’s involvement as Lead World Designer. His title means that he’s the guy in charge of making sure the storyline holds up, in charge of all the details and tales that, as I mentioned in my previous post, kept running backstage while chaos erupted in the forefront in the previous games.

While you were mass clicking some miniboss, somewhere in the gameworld an NPC kept waiting for you to come back, ready to present you with your next quest. This NPC had a name, a personality, a backstory, a personal agenda.

But you barely got to know any of it.

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IGN managed to get an interview with Leonard Boyarsky, the game’s lead world designer, on the importance of lore in the game and the decision to give the character classes voices, among other things.

Australia,  July 24, 2008 - BlizzCon is likely to be the gaming world’s next chance to see some more on the highly anticipated Diablo III, but to tide you over just a little, we had a quick chat with Leonard Boyarsky, the game’s lead world designer, on the importance of lore in the game and the decision to give the character classes voices, among other things.
IGN: What do you do as the lead world designer, and what have you worked on in the past in that respect?
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My HKW friend Luzbel raises a interesting question regarding a possible change in Diablo 3 and its art…

Just read an article in yahoo! about the uproar several fans are causing due to the “colorful” and “rainbow brite” aspect Diablo 3 was presented with. Seems there’s even a petition page complaining about the game graphics being too colorful that has already gathered OVER 50 THOUSAND signatures! (And those are only the 50 thousand that know they can sign a petition online, or that take the precious time to fill it).

Blizzard is currently looking for a graphic designer… and the stuff in the parenthesis seems exactly what they would need to do to modify the current aspect of Diablo III. Who knows? Maybe the Diablo community was indeed displeased with the game presentation. For what I’ve seen on the forums at Battle.net, the longest debates don’t revolve around excitement, but concern about the graphic quality of D III being “too WoWish”. I’ve read some people even worried there’s such a “stupid class like the witchdoctor”, and on top of that they didn’t even like the clothing of the character…