Fan reaction to Diablo III’s new look

Bill Roper, ex-vice president of Blizzard North, the studio responsible for thefirst two installments of the Diablo franchise, recently sat down with Wesley Yin-Poole of Videogamer.com to share his thoughts on Diablo 3 and its new visual style.

As most people know, the new direction taken by the art team responsible for bringing Diablo III to life has not been well received. The first screenshots were released in June of last year and by listening to fan reactions you’d have thought the apocalypse was under way. People jumped out of windows, heads were exploding left and right, 13% of South Korea’s 18-24 male demographic took their lives in ritualistic suicide–it was the worst international tragedy since Alone in the Dark’s opening weekend.

While maintaining a professional demeanor and non-confrontationally neutral stance, Bill Roper expresses his own displeasure with the look of the game:

One of the things I always enjoyed about that separation between Blizzard and Blizzard North was that the Diablo games had a very distinct art style. They had different art directors, they had different people working on it, they had a different sensibility about them. Diablo was I think grittier and darker and a little more leaning towards the photo realistic. Whereas the Craft games that were being built down in Irvine were bigger and broader in scope, brighter colours, just different pallets and different presentation. Both of those were very strong from that visual standpoint, for example.

But it makes complete sense to me where they went because they basically took the Diablo universe and then approached it from the Blizzard Ivine stance for the visuals. That’s the way they approach things. It wasn’t that I looked at it and went, oh my God that looks terrible. I was like, that looks like Blizzard. The guys in Irvine. That’s what it looks like to me. Their interpretation of it.

I think that one of the things that we always tried to get across was that Diablo was Gothic fantasy and I think there was just a need that was put in there from the visuals that I didn’t necessarily get. I got it from the architecture and to a degree from the character design but not the feeling of the world. I can’t say that I dislike it. I didn’t look at it and go, oh my God that’s horrible. But I looked at it and went, it’s not really… to me as a player it just didn’t really ring with Diablo.

- Bill Roper on Diablo III

What we want is Diablo III, but it appears as though Blizzard is more interested in serving up a steaming pile of high-speed World of Warcraft. There’s no denying that the vibrant palette is reminiscent of the company’s hugely popular MMO, and perhaps the company would be foolish not to capitalize on its success from a financial perspective. However, as a long-time D2 player, I understand how the community feels heartbroken with the changes made to the game’s defining attributes.

Take a look at some Diablo III game footage and form your own opinion.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DIABLO III ART CONTROVERSY

January 2, 1997: Diablo I is released by Blizzard North

June 29, 2000: Diablo II is released by Blizzard North

June 29, 2001: Lord of Destruction expansion is released for Diablo II

June 28, 2008: Blizzard releases the first Diablo III screenshots

A number of petitions are quickly created calling for new art direction for the game, the most popular of which has nearly 60,000 digital signatures. The Blizzard fanboy anti-petition only garners 879.

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