The Mystery Ends - 6.29.2008


So, the mystery of the splash screen has ended. The new game is Diablo III. Thanks to my awesome ISP, I have been unable to post for the past few days - perfect timing, eh? So, I was wrong. I disagreed with the community, and was proven wrong. I should have learned this long ago with Blizzard, but you always have to believe what the community says. They are always right when it comes to saying what Blizzard will be announcing: Draenei, WotLK, Diablo III, etc.

Now, let me throw out my opinion on Diablo III. I could get flamed for this, but it's my blog so I don't care. :p In my eyes, the day of the "helicopter-view" RPG is dead. It's just plain dead. I don't want to see it anymore. It's slightly understandable with Diablo III because that's the "style", but sometimes gameplay must change to stay with the times. Let me just say that I CAN handle this type of gameplay on one condition. If this game shows up on the Xbox 360 with character movement via joystick, I WILL play it, but if it doesn't, I won't go near this game. I don't wanna sit at my computer, staring at at the top of my character's head, while spamming (and possibly breaking) my mouse button.

There you have it. Besides this post, I probably won't be covering Diablo III very much.

-Matt Graham

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I believe that no style of RPG can necessarily be dead. Helicopter-view has produced many great games before and I don't see why it cannot continue. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance was an amazing game on PS2 and was a helicopter-view game, and Diablo 2 was phenomenal as well.

As for the statement that you would not play if they did not allow joystick movement on a console system. Well I can tell you right now that Blizzard will not release Diablo 3 on a console, since the only game they have ever released for consoles was Starcraft for N64 which was not near as successful as its PC counterpart. The console is not Blizzard's demographic, now that doesn't mean they will never release a console game, but Diablo 3 is not it.

Although Baldur's Gate had joystick movement, the original Diablo and Diablo 2 did not. These games were very popular and were huge successes for Blizzard's first large foray into the RPG realm. Many players excited about Diablo 3 have been anticipating it almost since the release of Diablo 2, and they main thoughts were not on a radical change of the game, but a continuation. People who like Diablo don't want a new game, they want Diablo, and that requires the high level of mouse function. This provides a more immersive style of gameplay and also makes the game far easier to jump into for newcomers.

Now obviously you particularly many not be a huge fan of these mechanics, but it doesn't mean they are dead, and it doesn't mean Blizzard needs to port a new game to a console. And regarding the mouse button, sometimes it takes a little getting used to aiming and planning attacks, as opposed to just sitting there and letting your orc auto-attack.

Sometimes I think people should just think to the virtue of, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all," as it would save me the time posting comments like this.

Aticus said...

"only game they have ever released for consoles was Starcraft for N64"

They ported D1 to the Playstation long ago. Actually, you can still find them on eBay. Where it wasn't a success, it still was OK.