Diablo III: What We Know
June 30, 2008 13:13
At the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Paris on Saturday, PC game powerhouse Blizzard Entertainment announced Diablo III. It's been eight years since Diablo II and Blizzard has been plenty busy during that time releasing Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, World of Warcraft and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. We've seen the announcement of Starcraft II, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King and the subsequent cancellation of Starcraft: Ghost. With the announcement of Diablo III Blizzard now has a title from each of their major franchises in development and PC gamers couldn't be happier.
Now that Diablo III is official what do we know about it? Let's run down the list.
Release Date: Don't even think about this yet. As a matter of fact it's probably best to just put Diablo III out of your mind for a while. It won't be this year. It probably won't be next year.
Story: This comes from the website.
"It has been twenty years since the events of Diablo II. Of those who faced the Lords of Hatred, Terror, and Destruction in the battle over the fate of Sanctuary, there are few still living who can bear to remember the horrors that the Prime Evils wrought upon the world. And of those who did not witness the terrible events firsthand, most believe the stories to be little more than myth. But something evil is stirring once again in Tristram, and it may already have claimed its first victim: Deckard Cain."
We know that Deckard Cain and the Angel Tyrael will play some part in it, and we can assume that Diablo himself is in there somewhere since his name is on the box.
Graphics: Diablo III will be played from the same isometric perspective as previous games and will also allow you to zoom in on the action. The 3D graphics engine looks to follow Blizzard's track record of art and style over hi-res textures and polygon counts. The backgrounds and environments of Diablo III have a painted look that gives the game a surreal, fantasy feeling. Special effects like water and fire are evident in the gameplay footage and the characters cast real-time shadows. The environment shadows look to be built in to the textures at the moment (meaning they don't move as a light source passes by them) but the shadows will darken characters as they pass through them.
View the Diablo III slide show (29 images)
Gameplay: From the gameplay footage it looks like classic Diablo action. Movement using the mouse cursor and click-to-attack are preserved with the addition of ability hotbars at the bottom of the screen. The use of the Havok physics engine allows some interaction with the environment including using it as a weapon. A boss battle with the Siegebreaker Assault Beast further described as a "living siege engine of hell" showed how big the bosses can get but the highlight of the demo was the Wall of Zombies spell. The pure action gameplay of Gauntlet-on-steroids is intact for Diablo III including both single-player and multiplayer modes.
Classes: There will be five classes total but only two were revealed so far: the Barbarian and the Witch Doctor. The Barbarian you may remember from previous games as the dual-wielding melee class and the Witch Doctor is a spell-caster with some pet abilities. Both male and female versions of all classes will be available.
Requirements: It's too early to tell what the requirements will be but considering Blizzard's track record you can expect a mid-range system to run the game nicely. What "mid-range" is when Diablo III actually comes out is anyone's guess.
Stay tuned for more news on Diablo III.
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