Diablo III Preview and Interview

Between the hands-on preview at IncGamers and the interview with lead content designer Kevin Martens and lead technical artist Julian Love on Gameplanet, there’s quite a bit of new Diablo III information to ingest before the weekend.

A snip from IncGamers’ article:

The action in this year’s BlizzCon demo took place entirely in a new, outdoor, desert-like area that was (intentionally, on the part of the devs) reminiscent of Act 2 of Diablo 2. There were narrow rocky passes, wide-open sandy areas studded with small settlements of crumbling houses, open pit desert mining operations with narrow wooden platforms, and one fairly large, entirely demon-infested city.

The enemies encountered in the desert, and a few dungeons beneath the surface, were all new too, or at least never before seen in Diablo 2. Much to the delight of most players, the Fallen were back. These famously cowardly Imps have always been fan favorites, and played prominent roles in Diablo and Diablo 2, but hadn’t previously been seen in Diablo 3 other than in some concept art. Joining the Fallen were a wide variety of new monsters, including the “Dark Cultists,” crazed human conjurers who are as weak as they are aggressive, but who have a chance to transform into ravening, mutated “Defiled Vessels.” Numerous demonic mages, animated skeletons, and others filled roster, with the huge, Whirlwind-using Dune Dervishes about the most memorable.

And a snip from Gameplanet’s Q&A:

GP: Is there an upper limit on the number of quests you guys are planning on integrating into the game? Do you have a target?

JL: Probably, but it’s undetermined at this point. I think in the demo that we have here, there’s just over 30 different things that can happen in all the spots. Whether that’s too high or too low will be partly based on what feedback we’re going to see from the people that actually got a chance to play it here, and based on what we feel like. We know how we feel about it right now but we want to compare that to what the players who have a chance to play feel, and then we’re going to try to look at that again. So this is one big area, what a smaller area or one that’s more linear has is also yet to be determined. But certainly way more things will happen in one playing area than happened in Diablo II.

GP: In terms of the size of the world, can we get some kind of comparison to Diablo II?

JL: I honestly don’t know the answer to that, whether it’s bigger or smaller. I know that we’re using the areas more effectively, and the replay value is definitely more real, it’s more authentic, because you see different quests and events every time you play it. But whether it’s bigger or not I’m not sure…

KM: It’s pretty hard to say if it’s bigger or smaller, but I think the density factor is the difference. Also, we’re not going to let certain levels go on forever so that you get tired of them. Like for example the Catacombs (in Diablo II), being a four-level dungeon is maybe a bit too much of the same, essentially repeating content – and each of those levels were gigantic on top of it. So we probably won’t do anything like the size of that. We’re paying much more attention to the tempo of things–

JL: Right, you’re going to see new art more frequently, which is going to mean more variance in the gameplay challenge within given pieces of art. So if you’re getting sick of the desert, after a little while something new, something different in the game will present itself to you, to keep it fresh, that sort of thing.