Diablo III and the Art Argument

Diablo III’s art direction has been a subject of endless debate pretty much since the game was announced, and will probably be even until release, so it’s not surprising that the editors at Save and Quit decided to tackle it in an article where they argue that Diablo III’s art direction may not be so removed from that of the originals, with plenty of screenshots.

If you’ve been following the development of Diablo III at all, you’re probably aware that there has been some unhappiness in the community concerning the game’s art direction. Common arguments against the look of DIII’˜s art usually involve the assertions that the game is too colorful and (kiddie.) Detractors have also brought up Blizzard’s other fantasy RPG behemoth, World of Warcraft, complaining that Diablo III takes too many cues from the stylized universe of WoW. More recently, the release of a video showing the Follower system has started an interesting trend of Internet commentary on Diablo III’˜s status. Let’s take a look at one Youtube comment in particular that raised my ire. Names have been omitted to protect the ignorant.

Characters look gay, graphics look poor and where the hell is the Diablo atmosphere?

Oh, Internet bigot, where would we be without you? Surely in a more tolerant and reasonable world. I’m not even going to address the (characters look gay) comment, for fear of losing my cool. The graphics in Diablo III may not be what we’re used to seeing in current triple A titles, but Blizzard has already made it clear that they were trying to make Diablo III scale well so people without top-of-the-line computers could still run it. Just because DIII doesn’t look like Crysis 2 doesn’t mean that it isn’t a damn good-looking game