Diablo III Console Interview

AusGamers had the opportunity to chat with Blizzard Entertainment’s Josh Mosqueira and Matthew Berger about the newly released console edition of Diablo III, the recently announced Reaper of Souls expansion pack, and their plans for the next generation of consoles.

AusGamers: So can we run through some of the bigger changes between DIII PC release to DIII console release, just for the record?

Matthew: So first of all, all the content updates that have been made by the PC team since launch upto patch 1.08 are integrated into the console version. So we’ve added monster power, the Infernal Machine event, brawling — all those elements that have constantly improved over the original [game] are already inside the console version for launch.

We’ve added a new move to every character, which is evade and allows you to reposition yourself in combat and also to avoid large attacks from enemies. I’m just gonna bullet point through this: we’ve updated a lot of the boss fights; updated their introductions, updated the camera, the visuals. updated their attacks and the pacing of the boss fights. We’ve added a new buff that we call nephilim glory, and so from time to time instead of getting a health orb you get a golden health orb and if you take it you get this buff and it gives you a bit of increased movement speed, a little bit of increased damage and a little bit of health regeneration. And from that point on, any time get a health orb it’ll actually increase the potency of your nephilim glory buff — and there are three levels: on the second level every time you hit enemies you have lightening that arcs between them and on the third level columns of light fall down on your target and cracks out, so that’s a really, really cool thing we’ve added.

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AusGamers: Obviously we’re months away from next-gen as well, can you talk about the difference between launching now and what next-gen means for the game and team moving forward?

Matthew: So we’re not going to be a launch title, we’re releasing in 2014. And obviously next-gen is more powerful hardware so there’s going to be a little bit of a graphical overhaul, or update rather, and at this point we’re looking at the controller and social features and how we’re going to use those — what’s important for us is anything we do with them enhances the experience and isn’t just a back of the box checklist sort of a gimmick thing, so it’s not a huge shaker that the first thing we have tried with the controller is how does it feel to interact with the inventory. that’s kind of the natural one, and it’s also the logical choice and in fact, because you don’t have a select button anymore on the new PS4 controller, you have the touchpad, so we open the inventory now by clicking on the touchpad and because your thumb’s already there you can then navigate [the inventory]. So that’s an interaction that seems to work for us and it’s one we started looking at — it’s in prototype phase so we’re still working on it, but anything past that, it would have to be something that will enhance the experience.