Diablo 3 Hands On Preview [PC]

Fans of the Diablo series were looking forward to the 2009 BlizzCon for months, and with good reason. Blizzard had expertly whetted our appetites for new content by giving us absolutely nothing to chew on all summer. A new screenshot of the same old area/character/monsters was cause for celebration,

As the event approached, debate raged. Most fans were sure we'd see a new character announced... but which one? The Barbarian, Witch Doctor, and Wizard had been known for some time, which left fans expecting some sort of light-fighter (a la Diablo 2's Paladin) and some sort of ranged attacker (a la Diablo 2's Amazon). I'm not sure who the smart money was on, but as the gates of BlizzCon opened at 10am Friday morning, and the 11:30am opening ceremony approached... anyone who bet against the archer won, when Blizzard's Korean Diablo 3 site posted images, information, and a cinematic movie for the Monk, Diablo 3's fourth character.

The only problem with this revelation was that the BlizzCon 2009 opening ceremony was still half an hour from starting, and all new information was under an embargo until then. Apparently, someone in Korea had some difficulty calculating "PDT," or -8 GMT, and though the information was quickly removed, and then the entire site taken down, but it was too late. A screenshot of the four characters spread across the internet, a movie file pointing to a ".kr" address was distributed (it was found but would not download) and the word was out. Not that many of the tens of thousands on the BlizzCon show floor heard the news, judging by the cries of excitement they raised during the Monk introductory cinematic.

While the leaked info was a bit of a black eye for Blizzard, and perhaps a rolled head for the Korean web team, it was no more than an amusing footnote to the successful introduction of the Monk, and the well-received Diablo 3 demo that thousands of fans got some hands-on time with at the event.


The Monk

The Monk was the big new feature of the demo, and though he was a lot of fun to play, he was clearly a work in progress.  The fact that he was a "he," for instance. All of the characters in Diablo 3 are available in male and female versions, and it's not some simple head switch in the graphics. The males and females are very different in body size, posture, dimensions, armor, etc, a fact that essentially forces the artists and animators to create 10 character models for the 5 characters.  This explains why the Monk was only available in the male flavour, since the female version wasn't yet playable. Nor viewable, judging by the fact that only the male appeared in the concept art Blizzard passed out to in its media kit.

Only the female Wizard was playable in last year's BlizzCon demo, but at least the male could be seen in concept art. No such luck with the female Monk, that will be called the... um... well... Nun?

Besides the single gender choice, players of the Monk had but eight skills to choose from. All eight were well-animated and fully-functional, but compared to the 35 or so skills available for the other three characters, eight seemed a sure sign of a some last minute development. They were fun, though. The Monk is a melee combat specialist, with fast, hard-hitting attacks but far less defense than the tank-like Barbarian, and all of his BlizzCon build skills supported this play style. His unique skill approach comes chiefly from his "combo" skills, which work like a series of moves from an arcade fighting title.  Each of the three combo skills available in the BlizzCon build had three stages, which could be chained together by clicking the mouse key quickly enough to trigger them, one after the other.

With each of these combos skills, the first two "stages" performed some sort of melee attack not so dissimilar from those possessed by the other characters. The third stage though, was a much more powerful and visually-impressive attack, one that could only be used after running through stages one and two. And that's not all; the cleverest innovation of these Monk combo skills is that they can be mixed and matched. They all have three stages, and a player with quick fingers can use stage one of one skill, stage two of another, and stage three of the third, or any other permutation of combos.

This should provide for some interesting strategy. For instance, Exploding Palm, the most powerful combo skill, had a weak stage one and two, before the explosive stage three finale. That seemed like a wise balancing move, but as players immediately realised, they could use the first two stages from another combo skill, then switch to Exploding Palm for just the third stage, triggering the massive AoE explosion that skill was immediately renowned for.