Diablo III Interview, Part One

The first half of an interview with Diablo III art director Chris Lichtner and lead technical artist Julian Love is now available on GamerZines.

GZ: Working from an isometric camera angle it enables you to control exactly what the player sees. As an artist what sort of advantages does that give?

CL: We love the isometric camera angle as an art team, it lets us do things that we couldn’t do otherwise. We can really cater to it, it’s fixed to us and we know what to expect from it and we get to do things, that we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. A lot of the look and feel of Diablo from what has been released so far is really based on the fact we have an isometric camera. Also I think early in the development there was some experimentation with different cameras and it really never felt like Diablo so this was really the perfect choice. In a lot of ways it really is a perfect fit. Art wise we have a lot of things that we can do that we couldn’t do otherwise. It’s very integral to the look of the game. We’re shooting for something that has a painted look to it, something that people will be able to play many, many years from now.

It’s refreshing to hear that there are still some AAA developers who not only favor the isometric camera angle, but actually feel that it’s “integral” to the game they’re developing. Why is the mentality at Blizzard so different from everywhere else?