Na galeria acima, podem conferir a concept art e a imagem 3D de Wizard, a mais recente classe divulgada pela Blizzard. Algumas screenshots também estão na galeria.

Agora o que realmente interessa, um vídeo com o gameplay do Wizard que vai te impressionar:

Para conferir mais detalhes:

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/characters/wizard.xml

A tentativa era de manter o estilo gótico presente em Daiblo 1 e Diablo 2. Mais de 50mil pessoas assinaram a petição e nada adiantou. Eles souberam e deram a posição, coloquei a matéria inteira a seguir, se alguém tiver ou souber de alguém que tenha traduzido, por favor, comente com o link.

Texto na íntegra:

Don’t like “Diablo III“’s colorful art direction? Too bad. We were told today that it’s not going anywhere.

Lead “Diablo III” designer Jay Wilson told me that even though 52,000 “Diablo” fans have signed a petition asking Blizzard to return to the darker, more gothic look of the old “Diablo” games, the new, vibrant art style is here to stay.

This is how he put it:

“There’s no going back now,” he said during an interview in a Manhattan hotel where Blizzard was showcasing their newest games. “We’re very happy with how the art style is. The art team’s happy. The company’s happy. We really like this art style, and we’re not changing it.”

The first and second iterations of the art direction had a “modern, gritty look” but made it difficult to distinguish enemies from the environment.

But fans take note: The decision to add color to the macabre world of “Diablo” didn’t come lightly. “It’s actually the thing we struggled with the most,” Wilson said. When Wilson joined the project two and-a-half years ago, the game was similar-looking to what fans of the old games might expect — darker, desaturated and a lot of brown and gray tones. However, translating the game from 2D to 3D with a dark color palette didn’t make for the best gameplay experience. The first and second iterations of the art direction had a “modern, gritty look” but made it difficult to distinguish enemies from the environment. “When you have 30 creatures on screen — and four or five different types — target prioritization is a factor,” he said. “You need to be able to tell those things apart fast, and you can’t do that when your world is gray and your creatures are gray.”

After much debate within the team itself, they finally agreed on the third, more colorful (and “final-ish”) rendition we see today. Wilson and his team also wanted to make the game stand out from all the other dark games, citing “Gears of War” an example.

We didn’t want you to look at ‘Diablo III’ and go, ‘Oh, that looks like ‘Gears of War.’”

“It’s not that we don’t like games like that,” Wilson explained, “but they tend to be shorter games, like first-person shooters that are five or six hours long. You’ll be playing ‘Diablo III’ for potentially hundreds of hours, and being in one type of environment with one type of look… it really became boring very quickly. There’s a lot of gray-and-brown games out there, and there’s lots of photo-realism out there. If you want that, there’s no end of games for you to play. We didn’t want you to look at ‘Diablo III’ and go, ‘Oh, that looks like ‘Gears of War.’”

Wilson also addressed a few of the concerns that critics of the new art direction had. Many blamed “World of Warcraft” for the change and the influence. But Wilson didn’t see that as a bad thing. “I think it’s impossible for us to not be influenced by our other creations,” he said. “There’s a lot of back and forth between the two games, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. We look at ‘World of Warcraft’ and the art style there is more cartoony than we wanted, but in terms of target identification and having a world that feels like you can move through it and spend lots of time in it, there’s a lot of elements to the art style that really work. We wanted an art style that really feels like Blizzard. And we pull new influences from a lot of areas. I think people over-emphasize the ‘World of Warcraft’ comparison. But are we influenced by ‘World of Warcraft’? Of course. As I think anyone who makes games nowadays, they have to be.”

I think people over-emphasize the ‘World of Warcraft’ comparison.

Another part of the game that some hardcore fans missed was having a light radius follow the player’s character. Because some of the areas of past “Diablo” games were so dark, the player had a circle of light following them around to help them navigate the depths of dungeons. Wilson said the team tried to make use of the light radius, but it just didn’t work with a 3D engine. “It looked really bad,” he admitted. “If you took an environment and you basically lit the whole thing up with just a flashlight, it works way better in a 2D game… we’ve really found that you needed other light sources to be able to make the game look good.” However, that doesn’t mean the beloved light radius won’t show up in “Diablo III.” “Not in all dungeons, but there might be in some,” he revealed. “I think people really remembered it in like one or two places where it was prevalent in ‘Diablo II,’ but forget that it almost didn’t exist in the other 90 percent of the game.But if we can find one dungeon where it’s really good to use it, and we can create a lot of gameplay out of it and make it look cool, then yeah, we’ll do it. And it’s not like within the team there’s a lack of desire to do that, it’s just that we don’t want to do it if it’s not going to play well or it doesn’t look good.”

Overall, Wilson and his team are completely satisfied with the look of the game. He knows that they can’t please everyone. “I don’t know that we can convince people who don’t like the art direction that they’re ever going to like it,” he said. “In terms of tone, they will find the game as dark as any of the previous ones and in some ways darker. And I think that’s probably, hopefully, enough to satisfy them. I think the vast majority of our fans like the new art style and when they play it and they actually see the influence it has on gameplay, I think a lot of people who don’t like it will turn around. Not all of them, and that’s fine. We know that we can’t satisfy everybody.”

Wilson also assured me that the environments will get darker as the game progresses (what’s out now are early stages of the game), and the team is still in the process of “smattering the world with dead bodies and horrific skeletons and things like that” along the way.

And like all Blizzard titles, “Diablo III” will come out “when it’s done.”

Fonte:MTV Multiplayer

Caros leitores,

Há uma petição em andamento para convencer a Blizzard e seus diretores de arte a fazerem mudanças para que o Diablo 3 não se descaracterize e vire um novo Warcraft no lugar d e um novo Diablo.

Neste momento existem 55323 assinaturas no total.

Segue na integra o conteúdo da petição:

This petition is being made as a way to express the disappointment of us, the Diablo fans, about the way Diablo III artistic direction is being done.
There’s a long discussion about this matter happening in http://www.diablofans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9283 , there’s thousands of comments in there so if you have any comment or suggestion feel free to do it there.
The main objective of this petition is to show Blizzard that there’s a significant number of players that dont agree with the current art style of the game, with this petition we hope to make Blizzard ear our voices, our opinions and our suggestions and we seriously want some changes in the artistic direction of the game so it could be more coherent and familiar with the Diablo universe.

It is our opinion that the graphic elements that characterize the Diablo universe are not fully present in this sequel, Diablo universe is made of:
- Gothic and obscure scenarios, cryptic, dark and shadowy dungeons
- Graphically realistic world with realistic, dirty and muddy textures
- Realistic armory and weaponry without over-sized and exaggerated proportions like big shoulder guards
- A macabre, dark and realistic art style
- Light radius, as all of you can remember, Diablo dungeons were characterized by the combination of a light radius system with shadows, everything that resides outside of the character vision sight is shadowed.
What we got in Diablo III:
- Cartoon’ish art direction, obviously influenced by the Warcraft universe, Diablo isnt Warcraft.
- Hand made, pastel looking textures with bold lines, defined contours, smooth colors and clean shapes.
- Dungeons with a blue/green environment lighting, technique used in cartoons to depict a dark, creepy and scary feeling but once again, this is Diablo, a mature game, dungeons should have a dark aura with the occasional lights from candles, just like we got in the previews Diablo’s.
- Character models defined by cartoon characteristics like over-sized and exaggerated parts, vivid colors and unrealistic elements, almost directly taken away from World of Warcraft and pasted to Diablo.
- Outside scenarios with vivid colors, beautiful forests with colorful vegetation, shinny and beautiful waterfalls where even rainbows take place.
- Cartoon’ish and unrealistic weaponry and armory, over-sized and stylish armors, over-sized weapons, items that look pasted directly from World of Warcraft.
- Blocky, cartoon’ish graphic elements like big, over-sized fire braziers in dungeons, heavily influenced by the World of Warcraft art style, over-sized and cartoon’ish scenario decorations like smiling statues, Warcraft styled architecture and decorations.
What we want:
- A darker, gothic, cryptic and creepier environment.
- A more realistic artistic direction, more independent from the Warcraft universe art direction.
- Darker dungeons without a blue/green environment, Diablo dungeons are dark and shadowy.
- The return of the light radius / shadow system from Diablo 1 and 2, a concept modified picture made by me roughly shows and suggests how the shadow system should work on Diablo 3: http://i31.tinypic.com/2zta5o7.jpg
- Slightly less colorful and less vivid outside scenarios, they are too heavily influenced by the World of Warcraft ones.
- Darker and less colorful landscapes, Tristam never was colorful and beautiful: here’s how it looked in Diablo 1 (before the evil was released across the lands): http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/5194/tristram2jh.jpg
- And most importantly: An independent and renewed artistic direction, not a recycled art direction taken from the Warcraft world, Diablo never was meant to be as cartoon’ish as Warcraft, they shall have independent and distinct styles, this isnt happening in Diablo 3, at first sight it looks like a remake of World of Warcraft, graphically and artistically speaking.
- Example of the heavy influence from World of Warcraft that we dont think it fits the Diablo universe: http://img56.imageshack.us/img56/6795/diabloiii20080628035157dw4.jpg and http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/_images/screenshots/ss9-hires.jpg
Common arguments:
Q: The game is still under development, it’s on pre alpha stage, we only saw the first act, much can change.
A: True, the game is still under development but the artistic direction isnt since it’s one of the first steps in the development of a game, until you have a fully developed artistic direction and concept you cant easily move on with the development of the game, the artistic direction will tell the artists (modelers, texture artists, etc) how the game elements shall look and feel. Since this artistic direction is already fully and happily developed (words from Blizzard) this cartoon’ish and colorful style will be present in the whole game.
Q: Being less cartoon’ish and more realistic would make the game heavier on computers
A: False, there’s a lot of techniques like bump mapping that help developers give a realistic look to textures, any recent graphic card with less than 8 years support bump mapping, there’s a lot more techniques that can help giving that realistic look, being 3D doesnt mean it should look cartoon’ish.
Q: Diablo 3 happens 20 years after Diablo 2, the world is peaceful and the evil is gone, that’s why the scenarios are colorful and vivid.
A: That doesnt mean forgotten dungeons should be clean and shinny, looking like a team of house keeping maidens spent hours there cleaning and making everything clean and shinny, without any trace of dirt, dungeons are supposed to be creepy and scary.
Diablo 1 Tristam also looked evil and scary before the evil was unleashed, check this picture of Diablo 1 Tristam and compare it to Diablo 3 Tristam: http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/5194/tristram2jh.jpg find the differences.
And lastly here’s a few concept pictures of how fans want Diablo 3 to be, they might be inaccurate and exaggerated but remember, they’re just concept pictures, suggestions of how the game could look, Blizzard can find a balanced term:
The light radius from Diablo 2 in Diablo 3:
http://i31.tinypic.com/2zta5o7.jpg
Environment suggestions:
http://i32.tinypic.com/2zqr9yx.jpg
http://i27.tinypic.com/2jexp1x.jpg
http://i27.tinypic.com/vep6ix.jpg
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l318/frostwake/Diablo32.jpg
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l318/frostwake/Diablo31.jpg
http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/1681/1214657022122wu5oq6.jpg
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/7807/itshouldrh5.jpg
http://img180.imageshack.us/my.php?image=makeluvnotwarcraftzs3.jpg
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/6065/howitshouldlooklikevx5.jpg

What we ask Blizzard is to find a way of pleasing the fans of the Diablo universe by giving us a true sequel to Diablo 2 that is graphically coherent with the Diablo universe it belongs to.

Thanks

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Se você concorda, assine também em:

http://www.petitiononline.com/d3art/petition.html

Caso contrário, deixa sua opinião como comentário.

Só esperar que Diablo IV ou Diablo: the return chegará um dia.

Fonte: Multiplayer-MTV

Espero que aproveitem, o blog será focado nas novidades do Diablo 3 até que o jogo seja oficialmente lançado.

Qualquer dúvida, pedido de parceria ou contribuição pode ser feita entrando em contato em http://www.diablo3brasil.com.br/blog/contato/