GB Feature: Diablo III Preview and Screenshots

Indulge your demonic side with our new six-page, content-laden preview of Diablo III, courtesy of the game’s ongoing closed beta test. The info contained within is based on well over 15 hours’ worth of gameplay testing with all five character classes, and is accompanied by 100 new screenshots over in our image gallery. Enjoy:

The actual details of character development have been almost entirely overhauled, and bear little resemblance to Diablo II’s. Perhaps most significantly, manual allocation of limited skill and attribute points has been cut out. Whereas entire character builds in the previous games hinged on careful selection of certain attributes to level or skill choices, now, all characters are effectively identical, save for the gear they have and the way players choose to approach them. However, these changes haven’t been made in a vacuum, and the skill and attribute systems have been altered a bit accordingly, as I’ll get to shortly.

It’s first worth highlighting the changes to the management of skills themselves. Previous Diablo games used Mana as the primary resource for special abilities, but Diablo III ditches it for class-specific resources, all of which operate in different ways. Barbarians have Fury, which increases as you cause and receive damage; Wizards have Arcane Power, which recharges faster than Mana but has a fixed quantity; Demon Hunters have Hatred and Discipline, which fuel each other in varying ways; Monks have Spirit, which builds up slowly over time and is unleashed in powerful abilities; Witch Doctors, meanwhile, retain Mana in the traditional sense, with it increasing every level but recharging slowly compared to other resources.

The end result of all this is that skills are much more fixed in their effects and costs, and are set up to be used frequently, with weaker skills having no cost whatsoever, and more powerful ones limited more by cooldowns than by the character resources; potion-quaffing is replaced with a more interesting management mechanic, especially in the case of classes like the Demon Hunter. It adds a certain level of involvement other than “spam skills until mana runs out” that I appreciate a great deal, so much so that I think it’s one of the biggest improvements to gameplay in Diablo III.