Diablo III Preview

The editors at PC Gamer recently spent some hands-on time with Blizzard Entertainment’s highly anticipated Diablo sequel, and have since made an online version of their preview available over at CVG.

Can Diablo do more than co-op? Could it ever be a competitive multiplayer game? Jay says his team is ‘exploring it’, even if they’ve got nothing yet to show for their efforts. The original Diablo dungeon crawls had the option to duel, but, as Jay points out, “it was tacked on, a button that you’d just enable. We’d like to give it a bit more thought than that.” The irony is that the Diablo community took duelling seriously, even if Blizzard did little to support it. “We’d like to serve that community, and put real time and effort into making it much more than an afterthought,” is all Jay will say.

 

The desert level ends at a town, now infested with ‘Fallen’: cults of humans who want little more than to tear out your spine. What used to be a thriving city is now a savage free-for-all. Lining the streets are caged innocents, waiting to be sacrificed. One, after being freed, begins to vomit. And vomit. And continue to vomit. She’s a fountain of undigested gruel. Finally, she keels over, another victim. This is what passes for comedy in Diablo.

 

It’s dark. Darker than the hardcore fans spreading rumours of the ‘World of Warcraftisation’ of Diablo might expect, but not quite the grim and grown-up ultra-morose setting that the same fans want. Jay points out that those fans may be wearing rose-tinted… no, blood-tinted glasses. “Players have a memory of Diablo as very serious, very dark, and very straight. But Diablo was full of humour that took the edge off that seriousness. That’s our goal today. We’re not going to be silly as World of Warcraft. We’re not going to put any of our characters in a hand-made rocket car. Having said that, I don’t think any licence lives in one note. This is a big world that our players are going to live in, maybe for years. It’s got to have more than just a serious tone.”