I intend to cover as many dialogues and such and give a bit of history on me as a Diablo player first of all, then I'll jump into playing in the following videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROX14HD1b_g
(Videos I post may not be immediately available due to utub processing).
Barbarian playthrough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb_DNK9lbPk
My Extended Review - Text - Post-Barbarian play
Spoiler
1 - They destroyed Diablo 2.
2 - They destroyed WoW.
3 - They made a mockery of Starcraft.
You know my reasons and why I don't like the above games - I've gone through them a million times.
So you know that when I approach d3, I approach d3 from the perspective of a supreme cynic. Most of my modding time has been with Blizzard, and I've learned how they work internally. I try to approach games from a neutral standpoint when I start them, because I want to make unbiased decisions in regards to reviewing them. I believe I am fair in my reviews - I am willing to say a bad company did something right if I like it, and I am more than willing to point out as much laziness as possible. I believe that making games is an art, not a business practice. Companies think otherwise, of course. They have to cut corners to make a profit, they have to account for every possible stupid casual player that will rip his dick off when he sees a drop of blood, and they don't give a shit about people who criticize their work.
I am a critic. From modding to gaming to writing and audio engineering, I am commonly called upon for my no bullshit opinion in many fields. I am not afraid to tell people they fucked up.
So when it comes to d3, I am more than willing to point out as much of the blatantly half-assed or broken shit I could find. When I began d3, though, I found many decisions that did make sense.
Graphics
I play Dwarf Fortress, Brood War, and other ancient games. It probably sounds hypocritical when I say D3's graphics aren't up to modern standards. Plainly said, they aren't. There's no normal mapping to speak of, and upon detailed inspection, I doubt there ever will be. I tried to formulate an internal reasoning as to why the decision to not include normal mapping was made. I concluded the following reasons at least attributed to such a decision,
- Bluzzlard felt the success of WoW without modern graphics was enough to build D3 on.
- Bluzzlard felt that their new art style could stand without normal mapping.
- Bluzzlard felt they couldn't make the engine efficient enough to handle the additional texture loading without causing even more severe hitches than what I experienced.
- Bluzzlard was against the clock and had no time to make so many textures correctly without turning them into glossy vomit e.g. Starcraft 2.
On top of this is the lack or subdued amount of bloom, another part of their decision-making in regards to the rendering. I think this factors into the decision to have no normals - Bloom wouldn't look as good, as Blizzard knows they can't do lighting or normal mapping very well, and it would turn their terrain into vomit.
I don't agree with the decision to dumb down the graphics, but I understand the reasoning behind it. I think that, standing on its own, Diablo 3 looks very outdated. But I play outdated games, so that doesn't bother me as much as it should. I find that they at least made an effort to model a lot of detail into places like the Cathedral, so they don't look like total shit like comparable areas in Mythos. Again, I don't like the decisions they made in regards to the detail. I don't think the game looks like Warcraft. The palette is fine. It's the lighting (lack thereof) and terrain textures that bother me the most.
Perhaps my biggest complaint with the graphics is not necessarily the graphics themselves, but the fullbright lighting only your character is effected by. It looks out of place and is very distracting.
I played Diablo 1/2 because of their immersion and appeal. But virtually no game of any genre can give me that kind of feeling these days. I am desensitized to Western art styles of all types.
Gameplay
Gameplay I felt is an improvement over diablo 2 in many respects.
The new combat mechanics play more like I would want them to. No missing, no annoying attack rating or defense rating. My major quibbles about d2 are gone. I play God of War and other third person action RPG's. D3 plays more like these now. I feel this is a positive change.
D3 has one very severe weakness in the gameplay, however. It's way too easy. This is almost solely because the AI is fucking terrible. I can only hope it is fixed when the game comes out. I literally have to try to get myself killed to simply be in danger.
It is clear that Blizzard struggled on two major fronts as far as Gameplay is concerned - Speed vs accessibility. They wanted to retain the depth of D2 but wanted to avoid stopping the player too long. The presence of health orbs (referred to as Orabs or Arabs in my playthroughs, beating a dead horse murdered by my God of War LP's) are just one thing they've copied from other games in an effort to mimic their playstyle. The gold auto-looting, taken from Mythos, is another such thing introduced to avoid stopping the player. In a way, this is also something that is attributed to by the graphics department - simplicity. Playing as a Barbarian, the gameplay has not changed overall since Diablo 1/2. You stand and smash enemies. That's it. But that's all there ever has been.
The real question of advanced mechanics will come into play in end-game, something I really can't make any opinions of or even foresee much about. Blizzard intentionally disabled some environmental shit in the beta, so we aren't even seeing the full product of what we have currently.
Gameplay is the most limited part of the beta. I'd rather not got too in-depth into the gameplay review until I play the full game. But, so far, at the very least it's d2 but a bit more refined. Whether they fuck up the itemization as much as d2 remains to be seen. I hope not.
Audio
Audio and writing are my worlds. My realms of play. This is where my entire life has gone into. When people fuck up here, I am sure to bite into them. I was pleasantly surprised by the audio quality ingame, after being offended by the internal files I was going through during my extraction process.
I don't like Cain. I've never liked Cain. I feel he overacts. His diction always sounds off because it sounds like he's forcing his voice. This is true in D3 as well.
The other voice actors vary, but I feel the overall quality of acting is higher than sc2. I played a female barbarian and I actually think they managed to pull off her voice quite well. That is not small feat. Leah's voice actor is decent, though many others seem to be just reading a script with little to no context.
King Leoric, though, is the first decently edited voice Blizzard has done since diablo 2. Some of WoW's were passable, notably the ones they hired actual actors to do (minor bosses you never saw, lol), but Leoric's was good. Actually good. I was genuinely caught off guard by the quality of his voice. Is is true, D3's team has actual audio engineers still alive in their basement? Only time will tell if the rest of the game holds up to the bar set by King Leoric.
The music, I like it. I like it more than most of d2. I don't know why some people are bitching about the music of all things. I really like the town theme, and one of the outdoor themes reminded me of the cathedral place in Banjo Kazooie. If you don't see that as a complement I'll kill you.
The audio volume of the sounds needs tweaking for sure. Barbarian impacts are a bit too loud compared to everything else, and I had to formulate some volume cockadooky to get the voice actors audible over everything else. There's still a lot of d2 placeholders (I hope are placeholders at least), and some stuff just sounds awful. But I need to play the casters to formulate my final opinion on the audio work.
Writing
Blizzard uses Dark and Evil every fucking chance they get WHY
Well, Diablo never had truly strong writing. It was the actors that made it. Nothing stands out to me in either direction currently, but I have a feeling Blizzard will simplify the writing a la sc2 to cater to dumb casuals. Sad, but true.
Overall
The Blizzard I knew died a long time ago, with their ashes scattered amongst Arena.net, Red 5, and others. The new Blizzard has become a lardy monolith hellbent on sucking the industry's rotting corpse as dry as it can before the Ropargnarok happens, when the sea becomes as lard as the sky rains interns. But d3's team, I think they have the potential to make something worth playing before then. In its current state, D3 is clearly very unfinished and lacking a lot of environmental and scripting work. If they patch this up, it may just be worth a purchase.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv3nSM9BAio - Wizard A