Video Game Forums

It's been a long time coming, but finally, here on the show floor at Gamescom, I got my first chance to play Diablo 3. I'll cut straight to it: It was an almost religious experience. Within moments, all my hopes and expectations for a modern Diablo sequel were met. It's a fine line -- on the one hand, you want all the familiar pieces that made the prior two games so addictive. And on the other hand, there's the evolution of other action-RPG games in the intervening time since Diablo 2.

With a choice of Witch Doctor, Barbarian, or Wizard greeting me, I dove right in. Not sure of how the Witch Doctor's grenade-like potion tossing would work, and a veteran of many a Barbarian campaign, I opted for the Wizard. My main attack loadout consisted of spectral blade (a spell that thrashed enemies in front of me with a flurry of magic swords) on the left mouse button and arcane orb (a slow moving ball of electricity shot out as a projectile) on the right.

The demo area turned me loose into the desert region Alcarnus. Starting from an outpost, the primary quest was to travel over to Lut Bahadur. After a brief walk through wind-worn ravines, the scene opened up into a sprawling desert with no shortage of enemies who weren't too please to see me there. Almost immediately, the "Diablo-ness" of this sequel came out. Over-excited by the moment, I charged into the first group of enemies and wound up dead quite quickly. Remembering how to play, I was able to settle into a rewarding tactic of luring a few foes out, freezing them in place with frost nova, moving back and blasting them with arcane orb, and finally mopping up the remainders with the more powerful spectral blade.

As you'd expect, a variety of demons and creatures came out of the sand to attack me. Some, such as the Lacuni Warrior and Fallen Overseer, had a fairly traditional demonic look with a hunched over posture and flaming swords in each hand. Others were desert creatures, like the Sand Wasp that flittered around a little ways off while launching volleys of baby wasps at me. One of the more dramatic opponents was the Dune Dervish; it twirled and spun around, and used those spins to produce a vicious stun attack with a knockback effect.

All this action looked familiarly enough like Diablo, but with all the polish of a modern game. Liberal use of special effects made a big impact on the presentation; the screen warped with the impact of spells and became obscured from dust swirling around the Dervish. And through it all, the unmistakable art style left no doubt what game I was playing.

Taking a quick look around the menus found the skill trees that, not surprisingly, look very much like those of World of Warcraft. Divided from the top into three branches, working down the tree adds numerous skills and upgrades to your character. In-game bonuses can also be had -- for instance, survive a battle that's taken you down to your last bit of health, and you receive an experience bonus for the enemies you just killed.

If it's possible, playing Diablo 3 made me even more anxious for the day when I get to sit down, install the game, and start my first character. If it weren't for several thousand square feet filled with other games here at Gamescom I'd just park myself at the demo. For fans of the series there's a light at the end of the tunnel headed to Diablo 3, and it's shining quite brightly.

A new Diablo III character class has been uncovered. Looks like the Monk will be the latest class to join the party of adventurers battling the forces of the underworld.
The info was discovered in the Korean section of the official website. Blizzard is presumably in the process of getting the site up and running for Blizzcon, which begins today.

The Monk will join the Barbarian, the Witch Doctor and the Wizard. The Barbarian is the only class to return from Diablo II.

Diablo III has no release date at the moment, but Blizzard has hinted that it will be arriving sometime in 2010.

Garnett already played some Diablo 3 and its desert level on the other side of the planet, and detailed stuff about the basic quest (go to a town on the other side of the map), but he only had the chance to play as the Wizard. Now that Blizzard has announced the Monk, it's easy to know what my focus for this write-up will be.

For the demo, the Monk starts with Exploding Palm (warning: the skills I remember are ones that I used regularly, while the ones that I can only describe yet not name are ones that I didn't use very much) as his main bread-and-butter attack on the left mouse button, and a swappable (via either the mouse scroll wheel or the Tab key) attack via the right mouse button -- these can be either the Crippling Wave or a Seven-Sided Strike. The number keys are used for defensive abilities, like a temporary shield that gives you 100 percent dodge for a very short time, debuffs (like blinding all enemies surrounding you), and area denial (a simple rite that marks a circle on the floor that enemies cannot get past for six seconds).

The Exploding Palm is a pretty awesome attack, as it's a three-hit combo where the first two hits simply increase damage, while the third strikes for the most damage and induces both bleeding damage and explosion potential; the bleeding aspect adds additional damage over time to the target, and if the victim dies as a result of the third hit, then he explodes and inflicts area-effect damage. Exploding Palm is pretty awesome for targeting specific, somewhat stronger foes, and hoping that the third explosive hit will be enough to take out a big foe's entourage.

The other two attack powers the Monk starts with are Seven-Sided Strike, where he essentially teleports to his target and does a Nightcrawler-from-X2-style series of strikes (each one weak, but the accumulated damage is pretty good), and the Crippling Wave, which is a series of debuffs (like slowing down the opponent for each hit; great against those fast dervishes that Garnett encountered in his preview). Later on, I'm able to add the Way of the Hundred Fists, a combo attack where each successive hit increases damage, and the final hits everyone immediately in front of you. Way of the Hundred Fists is a great way to take out weak enemies in confined spaces, as you can usually force them down a choke point to line up in front, and then get taken out by the final strike. By the end of the demo, I alternated between Exploding Palm for awesome explosions and Way of the Hundred Fists for tearing through weaklings.

My biggest surprise with Diablo 3 isn't how insanely fast and fun the Monk is. Rather, it's how much I'm getting caught up with side quests. A good chunk of my hour's playtime ends up alternating between killing monsters for loot and XP, then finishing up side quests. One of the first ones I encountered has a girl undergoing some sort of sacrifice by cultists in the middle of nowhere -- killing them results in the (partially sacrificed, and therefore sick and dying) girl asking you to find her town and tell her family what happened: her protector actually sold her and her friends to the cultists. Right at the town gate, she explodes into a font of goo, and you then fight your way past some critters over to the same guy who literally sold her. He whimpers a bunch about how he has to sell girls to keep the cultists out, and I pretty much get sick of him sobbing, and leave. The town itself is under siege by monsters, but once I Exploding Palm-ed a bunch of them, I'm then able to tell the girl's father the truth about the his daughter. As a follow-up, I go back to the sobbing guy who confessed to selling the girls and kill him to even things out.

I'll have to verify this with my interview with the Diablo 3 developers, but that quest felt a bit randomly-generated. Other side quests I ran into include a squad of adventurers trapped in some ruins, with their captain asking you to find his stranded men under siege, and a treasure hunter who tags along with you in a dungeon and asks you to clear the enemies out for him to snag treasure. After doing these three side quests, I decide to skip the other dungeon (which I'm told utilizes some sort of timer mechanic) and push on to the end of the main quest, which has you dealing with a town full of cultists and summoners. That translates into a human fireworks show courtesy of a screenful of weak cultists and a whole lot of Exploding Palm.

I'm still super curious about who Diablo 3's fifth and final class will be, but right now, as much as the Witch Doctor or the Wizard or the Barbarian are cool, I'm definitely planning to Monk it up the next time I play. Unless the final playable class turns out to be something like... I don't know, a ninja pirate cowboy.

Of all Blizzard's major IPs, Diablo III is the one that seems to make the most sense for consoles. Apparently realizing this, it looks like Blizzard is currently "talking to the first parties" about a possible console port.
According to a tweet by GameTrailers TV host Geoff Keighley, "[Chief Operating Officer] Paul Sams of Blizzard says they haven't ruled out Diablo III for consoles -- and are currently talking to the first parties."

Blizzard, of course, has been suggesting that Diablo III might be coming to consoles for a while now. Last October, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime said that a console version was definitely on the table.

"Every game we have the discussion about which platforms make the most sense," he said.

"As Diablo III takes shape, I think we'll do an evaluation. I think there is a pretty good argument to be made that that type of game might work very well on consoles. There might be some technical limitations though that we might need to get past."

This is the first time we've heard of Blizzard having serious discussions about bringing Diablo III to consoles, so it seems as if that evaluation is complete.

Hopefully we'll be hearing more about the potential console port soon.

Valigarmander wrote:Diablo? On a console? That'd be weird.