Diablo III Preview

IncGamers landed in paris on Thursday for Blizzard's WWI event. There has been much speculation this week as to whether Blizzard would announce a new game, and after reports earlier in the week on numerous websites that Diablo III would be announced, the rumour became reality.

Blizzard's President, Mike Morhaime, did his usual event speech following the introduction of the pro gamers who were attending the event to take part in the numerous tournaments over the two days. You could feel the tension in the room, time was running out for an announcement but finally Mike introduced Diablo III as those famous Diablo intro guitar chords were played live across the hall. A cheer roared out from the audience. The introduction movie played and the cinematics were everything you would expect from the awesome Blizzard Film Department. Blizzard are keen to stress that Diablo III is about action, being able to hop on for a complete blast, it's not a complete time-sink like World of Warcraft. This is an action RPG.

While little has been said about how the game carries on from Diablo II, we do know it's been set 20 years after the end of Diablo II, and the events of the previous games have become mythology to the people of Sanctuary with only a few heroes and characters from the original timeline remembering the events of the previoius games. Sanctuary was never invaded by the denizens of Hell at the end of Diablo II, so inhabitants of Sanctuary think the events of the past were over exaggerated, and those that were present at the time have either gone mad or failed to convince the current inhabitants they truly had a battle on their hands.

Diablo players will be wondering about the many locations in the original game, and some are returning. Tristram has now become New Tristram for example, but the game world has been expanded and fleshed out for this new game. The development team have the challenge of creating the backstory for the characters and their place in the Diablo world. This time players can expect a much richer game world than the previous two games which is great news.

What was most exciting was to actually see the game in action and the first thing you notice is the similarity with the interface design in reference to the original games. Blizzard obviously realised there was no need to reinvent the wheel, the Diablo II interface was well thought out and made the game highly accessible to everyone. Familiar features such as the mana and health balls are present, the semi-transparent min-map in the top right and the player avatars in the top left. It's all so familiar which is comforting.

Diablo III is not an MMO as some had expected, but a return to the action-rpg isometric view. This time the game is in glorious 3D with lush, but dark, environments and some pretty spectacular physics and destructible level objects and scripted sequences. A good move in our view, the formula worked well before and will work just as good if not better this time round thanks to technology moving on.

The WWI demo showed the first character class to be revealed, the Barbarian. Gamers familiar with Diablo II will know the class well, and as you'd expect, he's a brute, stomping, leaping and swirling around the screen. Some of the original skills make a return such as whirlwind which sends the Barbarian spinning and dicing his foes. Obstacles such as broken bridges over chasms are also surmountable as the Barbarian can perform some impressive leaps to cross a void. He's big, he's tough and extremely powerful and the Barbarian can make good use of the destructible environments by smashing down walls to crush the enemy under the falling stones.