Diablo III: Art and Narrative Design Overview

IGN is offering up an overview of the art and narrative direction Blizzard is taking with Diablo III, courtesy of some commentary made by lead world designer Leonard Boyarsky (of Fallout and Troika fame) and art director Brian Morrisroe at the company’s Worldwide Invitational event.

Morrisroe went into depth on the importance of art design as it relates to narrative and gameplay. First off, he said the design team needed to identify the design strengths of the previous games. He identified the Diablo style was very much rooted in a horror genre, and went on to identify a disconnect between his team’s memory of what Diablo and Diablo II’s art style were like compared to the reality of how those games were presented. “We were remembering it as a much more dark grey, colorless game. But when we played through the two previous franchises were discovering a lot of vibrancy of the creatures and the environments and that’s something we wanted to expand upon in Diablo III.”

Going about updating everything for the new game proved to be quite a task, said Morrisroe. “We have a new updated engine, we’re in 3D but we decided not to do a full 3D roaming camera. It’s still an isometric game, it’s still very true to the Diablo universe. And when we started looking at that camera, what we could use a fixed isometric camera for as an art staff was probably the best decision we could made. It really makes our job easier to make the art and environments really come alive and just much more vibrant.”

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Blizzard believes fusing this kind of art style into the game world will make for a more powerful narrative, something Boyarsky believes is a vital factor in an action game. “I really think that the main emphasis or the main reason you need to have a good story even in an action game is it gives a lot of emphasis to the action that you’re doing as a character. It really gives a meaning to what you’re doing. If we can, as developers, make you want to find out what’s going to happen next in the story as much as you want to get your next level or get your next piece of armor, then that’s just another reason to drive you forward and keep you engaged in the game.”

A change for the Diablo franchise is the inclusion of player voices. NPCs will no longer just talk at your character class, you’ll talk back, something Boyarsky believes will have several effects. “This will make the storytelling more engaging, it’ll make it more lively, it’ll move faster. It’ll also allow your character to feel more like he’s driving the action, more of a heroic entity in the story and less like an errand boy that tends to happen somewhat in RPGs.”