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Diablo III does not feel like a Diablo game

O

Onemic

Member
Now I'm not saying that D3 is a bad game by any means, I think it's great....but at the same time this game doesn't feel like diablo in the sense that Diablo II felt like Diablo. From the high fantasy(read: warcraft) inspired art style to the blatant copying of acts in Diablo II(Act 1 is an almost direct copy of act 1 from D2, Act 2 is a copy of Act 3, Act 3 is a copy of Act 5 save for the final quest) to the lack of difficulty even on normal mode, to the ease of finding rarer items early on, From my 12 or so hours playing this game it certainly doesn't have that 'Diablo' feel, a Dungeon loot feel, but that grim world of despair in Diablo seems to, for the most part be lost here. Honestly, it almost feels as though they should have called this game something else, because other than the name, and general characters, this game does not feel like Diablo. That tense feeling I got going from hall to hall in my loot that felt that it was just below good enough, seems to be gone and replaced with a system in which you constantly feel safe and are rewarded glutinous amounts of loot for next to nothing. There is no tense feeling, there is nothing grim. Just colourful blood and what seems to be too much loot.

Anyone else feel this way?
 
I just want to say that WarCraft 3 felt distinctly different from WarCraft 2. More exotic if you will.
 
Sequels change things. Is it really as bad as you think, or have you not played Diablo II in a while? Memories always hold up better over time than the actual older games.
 
Feels the same to me except more refined. Besides, the last game was released 12 years ago. There's bound to be changes.
 
I was playing with a friend today on Act 2 and we were surprised that it was another desert level. The more we played it, the more we thought D2's desert was fucking awful. Then we bitched about the fucking jungle stage.

What I want to say is that it feels like Diablo.
 
Outside of being immensely more polished and a much better game, no.

I also never really understood the complaints about the art, outside of gaining color in certain, more lush environments and generally better vision it's not that much different to me. Still soaked with blood, gore and is still dark fantasy.

With the way the game and pacing changed, especially going into higher difficulties, I think I'd prefer the clarity over the grit anyway, myself, but I don't think it's wrong to think otherwise.
 
I'd argue that the feeling's been lost since Diablo 2. D1 had a load of atmosphere and its limitations (such as lack of run) really gave it some unique and horrifying aspects. Nothing quite matches the feeling of turning a corner and getting swarmed.

If actionbutton.net wasn't a malware-infested piece of shit website I'd link to a very intriguing D2 review that was posted there.
 
onemic said:
Now I'm not saying that D3 is a bad game by any means, I think it's great....but at the same time this game doesn't feel like diablo in the sense that Diablo II felt like Diablo. From the high fantasy(read: warcraft) inspired art style to the blatant copying of acts in Diablo II(Act 1 is an almost direct copy of act 1 from D2, Act 2 is a copy of Act 3, Act 3 is a copy of Act 5 save for the final quest, and of course act 4 is a copy of act 4) to the lack of difficulty even on normal mode, to the ease of finding rarer items early on, From my 12 or so hours playing this game it certainly doesn't have that 'Diablo' feel, a Dungeon loot feel, but that grim world of despair in Diablo seems to, for the most part be lost here. Honestly, it almost feels as though they should have called this game something else, because other than the name, and general characters, this game does not feel like Diablo. That tense feeling I got going from hall to hall in my loot that felt that it was just below good enough, seems to be gone and replaced with a system in which you constantly feel safe and are rewarded glutinous amounts of loot for next to nothing. There is no tense feeling, there is nothing grim. Just colourful blood and what seems to be too much loot.

Anyone else feel this way?
Click to expand...

I agree on one part, the challenge is gone. At least on normal. Does feel very safe and never in danger. also the atmosphere is nor really grim anymore
 
PepsimanVsJoe said:
I'd argue that the feeling's been lost since Diablo 2.

If actionbutton.net wasn't a malware-infested piece of shit website I'd link to a very intriguing D2 review that was posted there.
Click to expand...

I would agree with this, Diablo I was a more focused, horror-ish game. It had a cool style to it, even if it is nearly unplayable by contrast nowadays.

It would be neat to see a few horror themed RPGs.

I agree on one part, the challenge is gone. At least on normal. Does feel very safe and never in danger. also the atmosphere is nor really grim anymore
Click to expand...

It's just normal mode, and Diablo II was easy on normal mode too. It's a trope in this sub-genre I'd love to see go, especially in a game like Diablo III where difficulty seems to scale amazingly well otherwise.
 
Man said:
I just want to say that WarCraft 3 felt distinctly different from WarCraft 2. More exotic if you will.
Click to expand...

That is true.


And warcraft 2 felt quite a bit different than Warcraft 1, but that's mostly just because a huge evolution happened between them.


But Starcraft 2 feels amazingly similar to Starcraft 1, almost to the point where if people didn't know better (and couldn't judge based on graphics) they would think the games came out much, much closer to each other.


And I feel the same way about Diablo 3. It's very much a Diablo game. That's what's amazing about it to me.

There's an old cliche something along the lines of "you can never go home" meaning that you physically can go home, but it will never feel like the home it once did. That is now lost. Many old games fit this cliche perfectly. Updates to all sorts of series from Ghost Recon to Kid Icarus to Bionic Commando all prove this. Some of them are good/fun games, but none of them feel like the prior versions. They don't stir those same emotions in you.


For me, Diablo 3 is somehow able to make me feel exactly how I did when I played through Diablo 2. I don't know how, I don't know why, but it does. It's not nostalgia, it's not reminding me of the feeling - it is the feeling. I'm staying up until the sun comes up. I'm thinking about it when I'm not playing it. I'm devising tactics in my head for dealing with different types of battles.

I was 20 when Diablo came out, in college, sitting in front of my computer clicking away, loving every second. I was 23 when Diablo 2 came out, freshly out of school, living with an ex girlfriend, playing diablo every evening before heading out to the bars, coming home plastered and playing more only to log in the next morning to wake up wondering where the fuck I am. Now i'm 35, married, sober, hunched over my computer playing Diablo 3 and feeling the same way I did at 20 and 23. That, to me, is amazing.
 
I'm really liking it, but there is something a little off about it as a whole. I'm enjoying it more and more the further I go (about half way through). Took a while to get used to all the little changes they made.

The only thing that is absolute garbage is assigning skills. Just show me all the skills and let me tell you where I want it assigned instead of making me click on every spot and scroll through all the skills over and over.
 
I think its more that the art style is a lot more high fantasy than dark gothic, making the atmosphere of the game seem much lighter in tone than D2. And yes D1 was even darker than D2, but the jump wasn't that big between the two. D3 totally takes that dark feeling almost away competently. The ease of difficulty certainly doesn't help.
 
I have finished normal and in Act 1 and Act 2 I at least had really fun. But Act 3 was horrible and Act 4 got a little bit better. But as a whole I'm now a bit disapointed because of the last two acts.

The first two acts had that Diablo feeling.
 
onemic said:
I think its more that the art style is a lot more high fantasy than dark gothic, making the atmosphere of the game seem much lighter in tone than D2. And yes D1 was even darker than D2, but the jump wasn't that big between the two. D3 totally takes that dark feeling almost away competently. The ease of difficulty certainly doesn't help.
Click to expand...

Because it is pretty much on on easy-mode for the first run through. Nightmare difficulty is where the game picks up. how far through are you at the moment?
 
It really isn't a proper Diablo game, me and you are in the minority OP. If you want a true Diablo game get Torchlight 2. If people where unbiased you would agree.
 
onemic said:
Now I'm not saying that D3 is a bad game by any means, I think it's great....but at the same time this game doesn't feel like diablo in the sense that Diablo II felt like Diablo. From the high fantasy(read: warcraft) inspired art style to the blatant copying of acts in Diablo II(Act 1 is an almost direct copy of act 1 from D2, Act 2 is a copy of Act 3, Act 3 is a copy of Act 5 save for the final quest, and of course act 4 is a copy of act 4) to the lack of difficulty even on normal mode, to the ease of finding rarer items early on, From my 12 or so hours playing this game it certainly doesn't have that 'Diablo' feel, a Dungeon loot feel, but that grim world of despair in Diablo seems to, for the most part be lost here. Honestly, it almost feels as though they should have called this game something else, because other than the name, and general characters, this game does not feel like Diablo. That tense feeling I got going from hall to hall in my loot that felt that it was just below good enough, seems to be gone and replaced with a system in which you constantly feel safe and are rewarded glutinous amounts of loot for next to nothing. There is no tense feeling, there is nothing grim. Just colourful blood and what seems to be too much loot.

Anyone else feel this way?
Click to expand...

I disagree with your assessment and feel that you didn't even think before you made this topic. The acts take place in similar environments but are definitely different to their D2 counterparts. You obviously also haven't even played through nightmare or hell difficulties yet.
 
onemic said:
Now I'm not saying that D3 is a bad game by any means, I think it's great....but at the same time this game doesn't feel like diablo in the sense that Diablo II felt like Diablo. From the high fantasy(read: warcraft) inspired art style to the blatant copying of acts in Diablo II(Act 1 is an almost direct copy of act 1 from D2, Act 2 is a copy of Act 3, Act 3 is a copy of Act 5 save for the final quest, and of course act 4 is a copy of act 4) to the lack of difficulty even on normal mode, to the ease of finding rarer items early on, From my 12 or so hours playing this game it certainly doesn't have that 'Diablo' feel, a Dungeon loot feel, but that grim world of despair in Diablo seems to, for the most part be lost here. Honestly, it almost feels as though they should have called this game something else, because other than the name, and general characters, this game does not feel like Diablo. That tense feeling I got going from hall to hall in my loot that felt that it was just below good enough, seems to be gone and replaced with a system in which you constantly feel safe and are rewarded glutinous amounts of loot for next to nothing. There is no tense feeling, there is nothing grim. Just colourful blood and what seems to be too much loot.

Anyone else feel this way?
Click to expand...
I played both Diablo 1 and 2 for the first time this year. All within the last two months, to be precise.

Let me tell you something: Diablo II does not feel like Diablo.

The tonal difference between the two is immense, with only Act IV having any semblance of what to me made the first game so special. Diablo III has thus far been so much better at capturing the Diablo feel, not through imitation, but by referencing.

But I think a better way of thinking about it is thus:
All three entries in the series are wildly different in mechanics and tone. There is not set idea of what makes Diablo, Diablo. Having now played all three entries, I honestly cannot understand the complaints (mostly from D2 players) that D3 doesn't feel like it fits. I can only presume that it's been years since they played the original game, if they played it at all.
 
It's ridiculously easy on normal. By the time you start nightmare you really see the difference. Them fucking lasers.
 
Feels pretty Diabloish to me. In the same way how Diablo II felt like a nice upgrade to one, this does the same. Only complaint I have is the seemingly low volume for music overall...but that may be my old Sound Blaster Audigy + Windows 7 messing up.
 
I felt the same way when I had only seen videos of it, but now playing it I'm finding it easy to buy into the world. When I'm out killing these creatures it feels Diablo enough for me. Normal definitely could have used a difficulty boost though.
 
I'm a newcomer to the series and am enjoying it very much, the only qualms I have consist of moving the character with the click and stopping with shit, very tedious.

There should have been an option to use WASD. :/
 
That's because the original team that made the first two Diablo games are no longer at Blizzard, their now at Runic making the Torchlight series.
 
heliconsoul said:
Somebody clearly hasn't played the higher difficulty levels if they feel "safe". Hell and Inferno seem quite nasty.
Click to expand...

What do you think of the fact that people are happily soloing through inferno now, some 70 hours or so after the game was released?
 
Freakinchair said:
I disagree with your assessment and feel that you didn't even think before you made this topic. The acts take place in similar environments but are definitely different to their D2 counterparts. You obviously also haven't even played through nightmare or hell difficulties yet.
Click to expand...

what do you mean by different? if it's the same environment, it pretty much is a copy considering every map is randomly generated.
 
I'm with you on almost everything.

The change of setting/style definitely softens the really dark gothic look that defined the diablo franchise, the game has it's moments like the end of act 3, but there really is a huge influence of the work they did with Wow these last few years and not always for the better.

The Acts, like you said follow almost the exact pattern of their respective ancestors in Diablo2, with only Act 3, being closer to LoD than Kurast.

Normal difficulty is easy, and from my point of view it's not necessarily a bad thing, but if you put that aside with the way the story is told to the player it just become ridiculous and removes everything of the tension they try to build at times, with you cutting thinks like butter.

And this time the story is just bad period, i'm not saying that Diablo 2 story was stellar, but there was something in the way they told it that made it very special and entertaining.

And i'm sincerely concerned about the way skill works, it's a fast and free system and it feels real good, but it becomes quite clear after seeing many builds that we lost some depth in it.
In D2 i could play a Bonemancer, or a NecroSummoner it was the same character but with two different playstyles, same with a Bow or Javelin amazon, for now with D3 it just seems everyone is using the same 4 spells out of 6 with some variations on passives.

And did i mention the cow level ? jeez .....
 
Morokh said:
And i'm sincerely concerned about the way skill works, it's a fast and free system and it feels real good, but it becomes quite clear after seeing many builds that we lost some depth in it.
In D2 i could play a Bonemancer, or a NecroSummoner it was the same character but with two different playstyles, same with a Bow or Javelin amazon, for now with D3 it just seems everyone is using the same 4 spells out of 6 with some variations on passives.

And did i mention the cow level ? jeez .....
Click to expand...
Sounds like how I felt about Oblivion. "Where did all the skills go from Morrowind?"

What's the deal with the cow level?
 
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