Diablo III

Here we are 16 years or so after Diablo I was released on the PC on the very last day of 1996. Game design has come a long way and PC capabilities have as well. When Blizzard sat down to make this game, the needed not only to come up with a fresh experience to something old, but also think of the changes needed to update the original gameplay of Diablo to make it a contender with the modern games of today. For the most part, Diablo III turned out to be a great game, but some of the changes that Blizzard needed to make weren't made. Other changes made to Diablo III and the universe are just plain worse from what it was. In the end, Diablo III is a great game, but for what you expect of a Diablo game, it needed to be a lot more.

Diablo and it's universe are heavily based off of Christian and Gothic beliefs. If you were raised by Christians, you were always told that there was a God who was good and cared about you, and if you were good you went to heaven. If you were bad, you went to a bad place called hell where the Devil lives. Now in our every day lives, if these things exist, they aren't very prominent in our lives. Rarely does God make me a cake or Satan show up to my door step telling me he's going to fuck me up. No, if God and the Devil do things, they do things very subtly. If they are mere concepts, they are things that lurk in the very back in your mind, always a fear that you have but never at the front of your thoughts.

Diablo I and Diablo II were well aware of this and tapped into that belief and fear in a way that you experience them in your life, very subtly. Sure, in all Diablo games you are killing demons, but the first games always gave you the feeling like these things aren't common place. They shouldn't be here, and when things that you think shouldn't be here are, that starts messing with your sanity. Diablo I did such a great job of testing that sanity by showing you how insane and brutal these demons and monsters were, like impaling naked bodies on stakes and displaying them in hell. And then there was Diablo himself. Up until the last level of the first game, Diablo was nothing more than a concept, just like the devil is in our lives. He was in the background pulling the strings, making plans, orchestrating all the trials and tribulations that you would have to go through, always indirectly interacting with you. Then you met him in the flesh. Did he have a dramatic speech prepared for you? Did he talk a bunch of smack to you? No! He immediately tried to kill you. Fuck you, let's throw down. Just like if you met a demon in real life, you would probably think that it would just kill you in the most brutal way possible, and that's what Diablo I and Diablo II (maybe not to the extent Diablo I) did. Tapping into the way a person felt and would act towards the demons of hell established such a great dark foreboding atmosphere in the first two games that you could immerse yourself in. It was just creepy.

The worst thing about Diablo III is that this atmosphere is completely dead. The way NPCs talk and react to monsters in Diablo III make if feel like it's common place, though maybe one might argue after three games that it is common place. This though makes it very hard to get sucked into the world of Diablo III because in our world demons aren't all over the place. The NPCs are all very sane as well. Again, a lot of demonic shit has gone down in the Diablo universe that would make the denizens adapt to the fact that they are around, but without that deep insight to a completely messed up mind the creepy-ness level of Diablo III is virtually none compared to the previous two games. Demons also come off as generic villains because they are constantly talking shit to you. This really makes the fact that the are lords of hell meaningless. They could have been powerful sorcerers or military leaders and you would have had the same effect. They give you the feeling that you get from an other villain from any other game, and not the devil himself. When the monsters just feel like generic monsters you have to kill and the villains just generic villains that are dicks, Diablo III feels like a generic game, and the last two games were anything but that.

The last thing that detracts from the atmosphere is Diablo III's sound and graphics. Now, I'm wasn't one of those people who was super pissed off when they changed the art style. Quite frankly, I didn't really care. But after playing the game, I can honestly say they took something away from the experience that was good. Again, Diablo I and Diablo II were dark games, and the exaggerated shading gave it a dark Gothic look and feel which added to that atmosphere. With it gone, it's very noticeable. Diablo I and Diablo II's soundtrack also added a ton of creepy-ness to the feel of the game. Diablo III's soundtrack doesn't. As a matter of fact, Diablo III's soundtrack is just flat out bad and completely forgettable. The changes in presentation takes away from the atmosphere that was established in the past two games, making Diablo III feel even more bland.

That's not to say that everything about the graphics is bad. Diablo III from a technical perspective looks quite good and well polished. The exaggerated shading from the first two games, while it added to the atmosphere, made it really damn hard to see. In Diablo III you can actually see where you're going, where items are on the ground, and where monsters are at. The days of stacking light radius are over. Diablo III's graphics might not lend anything to the atmosphere of the game but they sure do look pretty.

The story, characters, and places of Diablo III though, are very generic and forgettable. There is no character that Diablo III introduces that stands out. They all fit into a character trope of one form or the other. The characters that return from the previous games also don't really do anything spectacular either. The areas that you visit in the first 3 acts are also very uninspired and are largely remakes of previous areas in Diablo II. The last act though, while pretty, isn't anything to write home about. The previous Diablo games had moments and characters that you are going to remember forever if you played them. Diablo III has nothing memorable.

The difficulty of Diablo III has changed drastically, for better or for worse. The difficulty of Diablo III, especially as of this writing (12/30/12), is an absolute cake walk compared to the previous games. Through my first play through I died a total of 9 times, and that's considered high. The first three difficulty levels are a cake walk, and Inferno, the last, for the most part isn't that hard if you play a little bit more carefully. Diablo III has this thing called monster levels, which as it sounds, increases the level of the monsters in the game. If you crank this up, you will get closer to the difficulty of the first two games, but the default difficulty levels of Diablo III are nothing compared to the previous games. Leveling is also way faster than the previous games and the added checkpoints make death less of a big deal, though saving you a ton of walking time is very much welcomed. No longer do you have to recover your body and gear among a horde of demons whilst naked, and that won't be missed at all. Diablo I and Diablo II also had monsters that were just brick walls in your way. We you started those games, you were able to handle whatever the game threw at you up until The Butcher and Andariel, and then you got owned. While it's not the best game design to throw something at the player that they have no way in hell of being prepared for without foresight, it made a statement that Diablo isn't for the weak and it made it feel like a huge accomplishment when you completed those games. As to the debate of if it's better for a game to be hard so you get a sense of accomplishment or to avoid input device destroying frustration, I'll let you decide which is better. Just know that Diablo III won't make you smash your keyboard into oblivion.

The complexity of Diablo III is way more simplified from Diablo II. No longer are you allocating stats to your character. This takes away from the ability for you to customize your character and make them stand out from the crowd, but it also makes it so you can't screw up the way you build your character, such as having a sorceress with a ton of strength. Yes, that would be stupid, but there are stupid people in the world, so Blizzard is going to handle it for you. Stats are also drastically simplified. While you still have those non-vital stats, like magic find, movement speed, and the like, your main stats for whatever class you pick has been simplified down to just two. While you can still get more dexterity, strength, or intelligence for any class, only one of those stats is going to really matter to you as the others will add in very minor ways to your armor, dodge, or resistances. The other stat, vitality, which gives you more life, is important for all the classes of course. The madness that is charms, the Horadric Cube, and rune system from Diablo II is gone, but the gems are still here, which can add certain bonuses if placed in a weapon or helm, but anywhere else they just add to your vital stats. Gone also is the skill tree; you just get all the skills now as you level and they all increase in power as you level. No longer can you customize the power of your abilities, they are the same for everyone. Simplifying the gameplay in these ways makes it more accessible, though it's a double edged blade, and removes your ability to customize your character.

Even though you have less customization options in Diablo III than previous Diablo games, you're still going to invest a ton of time into creating a character in a specific way. Eventually you're going to want to show off this investment in your character to other people to see who did a better job by throwing down. As Blizzard has shown in the entire Diablo series, they do not understand this concept. PvP in Diablo I was horrible. While the fact that you could cheat your ass off in Diablo I was a big contribution to that, they way you had to go about it was also terribly implemented. You just turned on friendly fire and walked into the starting area. Since the maps were randomly generated, you could be in a nice wide open area or in a tiny little corner. Whoever was the first in was able to get a jump on the next person, and if things weren't going so well for you, the door was right there and in one click you were out and safe. Blizzard didn't have mad resources to devote to Diablo I and friendly fire was probably put in after the fact since no balance was applied to the classes or the spells for PvP. Blizzard though learned from Diablo I and remedied this in Diablo II by doing absolutely nothing. So now here we are at the third game, which has no PvP capabilities at all. You can't do the terrible dueling of the first two games. Blizzard announced to everyone that they would add this in later, but here we are 9 months later with no PvP. While this is pure speculation, the class abilities have no way in hell of being balanced for PvP, just like Diablo I and Diablo II. So if you want to play Diablo III for a competitive experience, it isn't here, and when it is, it's probably going to be terrible.

Diablo III at this point sounds like it's a terrible game, but it's core gameplay is fantastic, if not better than the previous Diablo games. At its heart it's still Diablo I. The click-fest that is Diablo still works, and the small action of clicking gives you a tactile sensation to your actions in the game. Randomly generated dungeons are still here to some extent, though fitting 3D environments together seamlessly isn't as easy as it was in 2D. The randomness of the environments are severely lessened because of this, and you will start to recognize land marks as you play. Where Diablo III improves upon the gameplay though is by giving you more abilities to use at a given time and building enemies in an interesting way around that. Diablo I and Diablo II only gave you immediate access to one a ability at given time, which was okay because that's all you really needed. Enemies for the most part just hit you and you just needed to hit them back, either with your weapon or with a spell. Diablo III randomly assigns a pool of abilities to certain mobs of monsters and your character is going to need to use his multiple abilities to handle them as well as the bosses. This makes Diablo III more interesting in it's combat because your doing more beyond just hitting stuff. You have way more tools at your disposal to fight with and you use them to fight in interesting ways in Diablo III, making it not only a better action game in terms of the series, but also in terms of the action RPG genre.

Diablo III in the end is saved by the great design of it's combat. The atmosphere that you know and love is gone, the story and environments are uninspired, and it trades customization options for simplicity and accessibility, and the competitive aspect of the Diablo series, while non-existent for now, will still probably be crap. While these are important to the overall experience of a Diablo game, at the heart of its gameplay is what made Diablo and action RPGs so great. Blizzard improved upon those aspects and Blizzard made a polished game. While a Diablo fan is going to have some problems with the game, anyone can play and enjoy Diablo III for what it is.