So I played the Diablo 3 Open Beta over the weekend. A lot of people did, I’m sure. Maybe I went into this thing expecting more or something. I mean, I’m not usually the type; I expected Michael Bay’s Transformers to be meh and got what I expected, so I enjoyed it regardless. But this… I feel… Well I’m not angry. Just a little sad, and a little disappointed in you, Blizzard. I expect more of you.
Don’t get me wrong, now. This game is fun as hell, and I’ve already digitally pre-ordered it, and I’ll be playing it on Launch Day. But now, I’m abandoning all previous thoughts about taking May 15th off from work.
This is not a tirade about the “color” or setting of the game. I think, if anything, the visual ambiance is pulled off very well. Sure, it’s not quite as dark-gray as Diablo 1 and 2, but it’s damn close, and that slight difference is more than made up for by adding more of a “destroyed beauty” concept to the visual style. You’ll see more things that, while now in ruins, demonstrate a previous state of gothic splendor; it’s got just a hint of Gears of War, without all that testosterone.
It’s… well, it’s everything else.
Where’s the Skill Tree?
It’s gone. Gone is that feeling of commitment to your character, replaced with a series of skills and enhancements, earned at various levels, that are interchangeable at any time. Choosing your Stat Point distribution for Strength/Dexterity/Etc. at each level? Gone as well. Your sense of variation in character progression is utterly limited to your gear, which I am happy to say, as a system, has been improved overall. There’s an added progression of Crafting, which is a fun feature and much welcomed, but just doesn’t fill that skill-tree-shaped void. Skill trees were defining for Diablo as a series, and now they have been sacrificed on the altar of the Simplicity.
Easy Mode?
Perhaps it’s just the beta, but so far Diablo 3 is waaaay too easy. I haven’t died once. I know that only the lower levels are offered in the beta, but in previous Diablo games, death was ALWAYS a concern. Until I had played D2 a few times, I almost always died at LEAST once in Act 1. The difficulty was at a prime level; you always felt like you could push through a level, but there was always a sense of danger that went beyond just the concept of difficulty. It added to the SCARINESS. That’s all gone. You feel more like a bad-ass ripping through hordes of undead and monsters, rather than an adventurer cutting a path of survival, riding the pudding-skin of death. It’s a different dynamic, and it works well, especially when this difference is more apparent in your conversations with your companion, but… It’s just not traditional Diablo.
The Dialogue… Oh God The Dialogue
“The Fallen Star has resurrected me!”
“The Skeleton King?!”
“Guards! Bring me his bones!”
“You will never defeat me!”
Imagine each of these lines said as cheesily as possible. Yeah, it’s like that. And that’s the Boss of the beta, possibly of the first Act.
Do you remember Andariel, the boss of Act I in Diablo 2? She was fucking frightening, and do you know why? Sure it was partially because of her appearance and the strength of her poison, but it was also largely because she didn’t sound like a fucking SUPERVILLAIN. She barely had a line of dialogue; just a few taunts, without any cutscenes or dialogue exchange, served to make her seem less humanoid, more bestial, less likely to talk you to death, more likely to rip out your throat because she could.
This causal disregard for the true concepts of horror moves the game from the half-Cthonic/half-Christian-gothic mythos that makes Diablo so successful into the realm of B-movies, blood, and boobs. I’m half-expecting a school of piranhas to tear a woman to pieces in the inevitable outdoor level, starting with the chest.
There is talk online that these latest voices were only recently added to the beta, and that there were previous voices not nearly as offensive. So we may see a return to these better voices before launch. But this still does not diminish the fact that instead of Andariel, the demonic Maiden of Anguish, we now have “The Skeleton King.”
Blizzard, do us all a favor and send Jack Skellington back to Disney where he came from.
5 Comments
Andariel was also frightening because, upon first encountering her, she could murder your noob ass. The Skelly King? Not so much… he couldn’t even take out old-ass Deckard Cain. Of course normal mode’s easy… it’s there to suck in the noobs and such. The real difficulty will lie in inferno mode where the devs claim that they don’t expect people to complete it via even “legitimate gameplay” i.e. sans exploits. Does that sound like “fun”?
The voice acting totally disappointed me as well. With all of the lore and possible depth in play, the comic voice acting really takes away from the experience… though you don’t have to click on the lore dialogue box. Speaking of being distracting, the bonuses for “massacres” and “breakin’ shit” strikes me as being very, very un-Diablo.
Oh well, it was still certainly “novel” to play after the wait and hype regardless if the beta experience reflected either. I’m not even getting into skill points being non-existant. The Real $ Bobby Kotick yacht fund auction house is what’s gonna drive this game considering you have about 300 item slots and it’s hard to see much further past that at this point. I may play for fun after release, for a price far far below retail… but there’s a snowball’s chance.
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The real difficulty will lie in inferno mode where the devs claim that they don’t expect people to complete it via even “legitimate gameplay” i.e. sans exploits. Does that sound like “fun”?
Please show your work. From what I remember of the Inferno video, the Devs said you would probably need to play co-op to finish it which both makes sense and sounds fun to me. I had a ball with co-op in DII. Considering how much pain and effort Blizzard went through fixing and controlling exploits in Battlenet do you really think they’d encourage that sort of behavious in their brand new game?
>the comic voice acting really takes away from the experience.
“Stay a while, and listen!”
The voice acting is the same caliber as DII, IMO. Deckard may sound a little older and creakier, but that makes sense since it’s been a while (both IRL and in game) since DII.
> Speaking of being distracting, the bonuses for “massacres” and “breakin’ shit” strikes me as being very, very un-Diablo.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Since when has the Diablo series been about killing hordes of monsters and breaking shit to look for lewt?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?! DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING!!!!!!11!11!1oneelevan!
Whatever, I’m glad you aren’t going to play.
Here’s a blue quote from Bashiok, you can research it yourself if you’re overly worried about the source. Pay note to “but it’s feasible that the first Inferno clear will be through use of unintended means”
“Ok, not totally, but I think there’s some distinction to be made for ‘legitimate’ ability to beat Inferno, in that, we expect there could be ways, potentially exploits, potentially clever but cheesy mechanics, that could maybe allow a player to complete Inferno fairly quickly. The bet stands as-is, but I think if it could be revised it would be “X time before it becomes farmable”, meaning someone can legitimately kill the end boss over and over and over without needing to take advantage of an exploit, or loophole, or some other thing we don’t intend to be possible.
Of course we’ll try to address any such issue as quickly as possible, but it’s feasible that the first Inferno clear will be through use of unintended means. Technically still valid per the wording of the bet, but I think most can agree would go against the spirit of it.”
I never said the voice acting from Diablo II was good (but it is, although in comparison to Diablo 3’s we’ll just have to agree to disagree), but if you’d care to remember, there wasn’t a whole lot of it outside of town in the middle of the action to goofily tell you about some monster, the lore of which now cheapened by its splattered contents all over the floor, and such would have been more mysteriously explained by reading a tome or getting hinted at ominously rather than a jarring or over-embellished pop-up delivery from a disembodied voice. That honestly doesn’t build any worthwhile atmosphere.
Anyhow, I kill things and smash shit because the gameplay makes me want to, not because of some metagaming element that encourages me with a paltry EXP bonus. Finding loot from either was reward enough and it just seems to me like more tacked on arcade-style nonsense.
I’m glad I’m not gonna play either.
Diablo1 and 2 were years ago. Time has blurred our memories as it always does. for example I have only good memories of my first wife. Something must have happened because she’s number 1 first of several}, but I choose not to remember. Any way, now AAA games are controlled by the publisher ,or developer, apoligies, most games anyway.Due to new games distribution always on internet is around, caps on usage, SP players who used to cheat to play, some had to, are out the door. We’ve come along way since the elevator glitch in Half Life. Game companies are not interested in whether or not I have fun. If all this drm is needed why did the pre drm and no drm Witcher games make a profit? Now after buying a game I must dive into it’s folders to change the fov, resolution and any other console leftover.There are exeptions, of course, but there is no fun left to sell in today’s games.
Where’s the skill tree? It’s been replaced by runes. I don’t see what’s so bad about being able to change your character about, especially with the drop-in drop-out co-op. You wouldn’t use the same skill set with one character as you would when playing with another character. Personally, I’d rather spend my time levelling up one character to make them more adaptable than re-starting from level 1 because you sank all your skill points into a group of skills which turn out to be shitty. If anything, I prefer the rune system to the old school skill tree. For once, we might have a game where there are more than one or two optimal builds per class. Did you ever see good Amazons that weren’t Javazons or Bowazons? Did you ever see decent hammerdins? How about sword and board barbarians?
Easy mode? This has been addressed by Blizzard directly. Not only is there still Nightmare difficulty, but a new difficulty level called Inferno which Blizz have promised will be as hard as my arteries.
The dialogue? Frankly this has always been a bit over the top in all Blizzard games. And the dude was bitching out because The Skeleton King didn’t have a full unique title? It’s like the guy writing this article didn’t even play the beta. In my six hours of playing, I killed 50 elites, and they all had the cool DII style elite titles. Does he not remember The Butcher?
http://egamer.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/PennJillette.jpg <– Relevant image is relevant. Judging a whole game based on the easiest difficulty of the first act OF THE BETA is like listening to the overture of a piece of classical music and calling it crap. I've seen a couple of different LP's of the Diablo III beta and it has changed a lot. During the BETA. I would not be surprised if we get different stuff in Act 1 of the proper game.
IMO this guy went into the beta expecting to hate it, rushed through it, and was only looking at stuff to back up his rather weak points. To me, this article has about as much weight as the GameSpy editor who wanted DIII to be an FPS.