Diablo III Interview

AtomicGamer managed to corner Diablo III lead content designer Kevin Martens for a two-page interview about the growing competition in the action RPG market, the additions that Diablo III is bringing to the series, the odds that we’ll see a console version, and more. A generous excerpt:

AG: Can you talk about some of the more defining features Diablo III is bringing to the series?

KM: The first thing of all the new stuff that we can talk about is that of the five classes we have, four are brand new to the universe. They have a lot of new play styles involved with that. Furthermore, when you have all these classes, there’s a lot of diversity, not just which powers you choose or which type of wizard you’re going to be, but whether you’re going to go with disintegration, fire, etc. But even within those, we have this system called (runes), where you can take these powers and do just crazy stuff with them. You can take a witchdoctor power called (Plague of Toads(, and turn you into a giant toad. It literally swallows the enemy and spits out the gold inside of them and so on. So the customization is extraordinarily huge. It’s astonishingly re-playable. We have a lot more areas of the world that no one has seen before, so we’re changing the universe. The quest system itself is way better; the quest and the stories are much deeper and probably more re-playable than Diablo II as well. So that’s some of the new things that we’ve done. Additionally, I think that the co-op multiplayer is better than ever; Battle.net is going to become the new standard for multiplayer systems online.

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AG: Is there anything specifically from Diablo II that the team felt needed improvement and wanted to tweak for Diablo III?

KM: The questing and story. I think we’ve added way more quests, more variety of quests. We’ve randomized the quests, and have these sort of quests that are self contained. For example, if you enter a dungeon in Diablo III, there might be somebody standing at the entrance, like a treasure hunter, saying, (Hey, I heard stories about the Idol of Rygnar is hidden somewhere in this dungeon. Help me find it and you can share in the reward.) Then you go through the dungeon and protect this guy. Then you’ll find the idol and you’ll get the reward. People will turn on you.you’re never quite sure what is going to happen. We’re adding all those random elements all over the world. There is way more quest content overall than Diablo II, period. Also, I think we wanted to do a much better job on the storytelling aspects, not just the cinematics, which are fantastic, but also in the storytelling itself, like more twists and turns, more interesting quests, more variety of experiences. That’s what we spent a lot of time on, and making the co-op nature of it better as well.

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AG: What are the chances we’ll actually see Diablo III on consoles in the near future?

KM: We’re definitely looking into it. We’re seriously considering it. I would say that the whole system specs thing is one of the cool things about Blizzard. You’re always hearing in interviews with us about the death of the PC gaming. We’re always like, (What death?) I think one part of that secret.you know, quality and polish and all of that as well.but part of that is keeping the system specs low. Everybody had a PC, even if they just use it for nothing but e-mail and web surfing. Almost everyone has one, so we do have a pretty giant install base. That said, gaming systems like Xbox and PS3 and so on. Diablo is one of the more natural hits for a Blizzard title to go on those, so I think that’s why we are looking at it pretty seriously.