Diablo 3

[Zero]

And WoW is pretty good (aside from the massive time investment imo) ...so not bad at all..

[Darque]

Maybe a different team will be a good thing.

[Tale]

All the project and design leads for Diablo and Diablo 2 went to Flagship Studios, I believe.

 

edit: the leader programmer for both games , and also the story people seem to have gone on to work on Hellgate also.

 

one of the art directors from both games is still around

They had story people? I mean, people actually got paid for that?

 

I'm in the wrong business.

[kirottu]

All the project and design leads for Diablo and Diablo 2 went to Flagship Studios, I believe.

 

edit: the leader programmer for both games , and also the story people seem to have gone on to work on Hellgate also.

 

one of the art directors from both games is still around

They had story people? I mean, people actually got paid for that?

 

I'm in the wrong business.

 

I always found Diablo and Diablo 2

[Tale]

I always found Diablo and Diablo 2

[Zero]

They had story people? I mean, people actually got paid for that?

 

They got credited for it at least

 

Looking more carefully at mobygames. The art director (that is still around) worked on the story for Diablo 1, and some of the Diablo 2 story people also did additional design.

 

So it seems like they did other stuff as well, though a few of them I can't find anything else.. But I'm not doing an intensive search.

Edited June 26, 2008 by Zero

[Slowtrain]

Is D3 actually confirmed yet?

[Musopticon?]

There's no announcement yet, no, but going by the speculation here and everywhere, it's pretty much guaranteed to be soon.

 

I never understood why people who obviously are not into dungeon hacks even enter Diablo threads. You don't like it, it's mindless grind, there's no roleplaying or story, derpity da. We get it already. Please go kill the nth xvart in BG or something.

 

As for the others, I always found Sanctuary fascinating and Blizzard's attempts to craft their own niche of a fantasy lore a fresh breath. Much like the Halo universe, the games don't delve too deep into it at surface level, but there's plenty to read and listen if you look for it and the series sports some of the most in-depth manuals in gaming history. There's been a couple of hacks that have just about outdid Diablo 2 with their gameplay, notably Titan Quest and Sacred Gold, but no one has even scratched the surface that was laid out over a decade ago with Tristram and the Sin War.

 

The games also feature some of the best game

ever.

 

I'll be there on the release day. Almost a decade with these games is a bit too much to not be excited, despite Roper and guys taking a hike.

Edited June 26, 2008 by Musopticon?

[Tale]

I never understood why people who obviously are not into dungeon hacks even enter Diablo threads. You don't like it, it's mindless grind, there's no roleplaying or story, derpity da. We get it already. Please go kill the nth xvart in BG or something.

I respect the differing opinion. And hopefully have been respectful of the game itself. But, seriously, if that was a standalone job, I would...want...that. No doubt. You would, too!

 

But it's apparently not.

 

I hardly consider it much of a criticism to acknowledge the plot is a cheap vehicle for travelling between a few locations and bashing things over the head with sharp and/or blunt objects. It's like pointing out MGS4 cutscenes can be too long and the story has some weaknesses in coherency. It does. But that's okay, because we love it.

 

 

Diablo SUX

 

Edited June 26, 2008 by Tale

[Musopticon?]

Sorry Tale, I wasn't taking a shot at you or anything. BUT YOU HURT MY SENSITIVE SENSIBILITIES

 

Anyways, Sanctuary isn't the end of all fantasy worlds, it's just a very fair attempt in genre that doesn't exactly boast with its great storytelling and I respect that.

 

Ironically, much like that other game series I mentioned, Diablo devs always had a problem with story presentation, despite there being depth in the lore.

 

 

 

And I so would like to have that job.

 

 

RAIDEN LOL

 

Edited June 26, 2008 by Musopticon?

[Tale]

If they have a knockoff the D&D 2e Wild Mage, I'll be there. But I say that about every game.

Edited June 26, 2008 by Tale

[Slowtrain]

If I remember correctly, the extensive and lengthy cutscenes for Diablo 2 recieved quite a lot of praise at the time.

[Moatilliatta]

If I remember correctly, the extensive and lengthy cutscenes for Diablo 2 recieved quite a lot of praise at the time.

Every cutscene Blizzard does recieves lots of praise since Blizzard is very good at crafting cutscenes.

 

But yes, D2 was especially good at that.

[Slowtrain]

Did Diablo have any cutscenes? Other than the opening and ending? I don't recall any.

[Tale]

If they put the effort and talent they put into Warcraft 3 into it, I'd probably be turned into a fan.

 

Grom: I have freed myself.

Thrall: No, old friend. You have freed us all. RAWR

 

 

Cheesy in reflection, but I loved it. Made me cry.

 

[Shryke]

i gotta say, i loved the music in diablo

 

sometimes i used to start a new game i D1 and just sit in tristram listening to that song

[mkreku]

I never understood why people were praising Diablo 2 and ridiculing Sacred in the same breath.. I thought they were carbon copies of each other.

 

Of course, I couldn't play either one of them for any prolonged periods of time.

[Shryke]

i got sick of sacred very very quickly

 

the neverending fedex quests were just too much to tolerate

 

i played up until i had to kill some dragon in the desert, then got told i had to escort someone halfway across the map again so i just quit and uninstalled

[Humodour]

All the project and design leads for Diablo and Diablo 2 went to Flagship Studios, I believe.

 

edit: the leader programmer for both games , and also the story people seem to have gone on to work on Hellgate also.

 

one of the art directors from both games is still around

 

I heard that one of the reasons Blizzard North split and made Flagship was that Blizzard was not happy with their design concepts for Diablo 3.

 

So it may in fact be quite a good thing that fresh minds are working on Diablo 3.

[Dark_Raven]

Did Diablo have any cutscenes? Other than the opening and ending? I don't recall any.

Only when they entered a new act in the game.

[Shryke]

diablo 1 had a couple of cutscenes (ie the one with Lazarus)

[Dark_Raven]

What really hurt Diablo 2 for me was the death system (respawning instead of dead = dead) and the all the enemies reset after quitting the game unlike Diablo 1. I'm hoping if/when Diablo 3 is made, they go back to the original Diablo for enemy spawns & dying.

Respawning enemies is ok. Every kill counts in experience in one's goal of Level 99.

 

Their save system sucked. I like to save constantly, can't do it with D2. You save and quit.

[Magnum Opus]

Bought D2 a while back -- last year or so -- and found it relatively interesting, although with certain annoying tendencies.

 

1. The respawning thing. Yeah, permadeath is one thing, but in the absence of a halfway decent save-load mechanism I find permadeath more irritating than anything else. I make a clear distinction between in-game death and reloading a game, but respawning and the lack of a useful save feature... bleh.

 

2. The waypoint thing. Bloody hell, I found that annoying. Not being the sort who likes leaving enemies alive and well behind me, this was particularly frustrating, and dictated to a much larger extent than I like how long I played the game. A quick little session of monster slaying, a la D1, was pointless in D2, since unless you reached the next waypoint, whatever progress you'd made would be lost anyway. I died far more frequently in that game, simply because I was pushing for that next waypoint beyond the length of time I'd actually wanted to be playing the game, and that was especially frustrating. Fighting the monsters is one thing, but fighting the software design is something else again.

 

3. The inventory thing. For a game whose central features included killing things and gathering loot to the exclusion of anything else, you'd think they'd have given me more room to store things than that weeny little chest in whichever hub I happened to be working at the time. That lack of space made those really neat ideas of set armour and socketed items pretty much useless to me...

 

... or at least, it would have been useless if not for a neat little trainer that I used to save any and all interesting items. As soon as I saw how limited my storage space really was -- about 10 minutes after firing up my very first character -- I started poking around online for something to fix the problem. Cardinal sin, that, not providing enough storage space in a game where loot is such a huge part of the overall experience.

 

But despite all of those continual annoyances, I still played the game a fair bit; long enough to take a pair of Necromancers through Hell, a Sorceress and a Barbarian through Nightmare, and the remaining classes (save the Amazon) about half way through Normal. Long enough to save up a couple sets of equipment, and a couple more partial sets. I'd have to say I'm relatively interested in seeing a Diablo 3, albeit more for the lore than the actual game play. Where the heck are they going to take that story?

 

I just hope they're not going to go all Prequel with it.

[tripleRRR]

I actually liked diablo 2. It wasn't a great roleplaying experience of any sort, but I did enjoy it just for a little relaxing hack and slash. The story wasn't all that great, the cutscenes were damn awesome for the time though.

[Humodour]

Magnum Opus: You should play it MP a friend or two some time. Quite a different game and many of the things you list as disadvantages you'll likely find turn into advantages.