Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Interview

The editors over at AusGamers have continued their recent Blizzard Entertainment coverage with an interview Diablo III: Reaper of Souls lead level designer Matthew Berger regarding the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of the game that they’re working on, and how they will compare to the PC version. A sampling, as you might have expected:

AusGamers: Are there any unique features that you guys are kicking off on the next-gen consoles that you haven’t really spoken about yet? There’s a lot of social features there that both parties haven’t really spoken about, and I know you’re only showing PS4, but is there anything you can talk about in terms of stuff like the Share Button and stuff like that; what you guys are doing there?

Matthew: The Share Button is handled by the PS4’s architecture, so we don’t really have anything that we need to do with it — it does its own little thing and we’re very happy with that. I think one of the things that we were adding, which is not going to be on PC; there are three new features.

We have this philosophy on the original, and you and I talked about this (at Gamescom), where we wanted it to be ‘˜one couch to rule them all’; we wanted it to be tailor-made for console and pick-up-and-play. Those were our guiding pillars for the original console version of the game. We added a new one, to share your adventures, and what’s social is very much in the air these days. You can see the new consoles are very much embracing that. Our version of that is: we want you to feel like you’re part of a greater community when you’re playing the game, even if your friends are not necessarily playing with you at the same time.

So we’ve added three things: we’ve added player mail, player gifts, and avenger kills. Player mail is very simple: there’s a mailbox in town, you go there, you’ve found a cool item and you mail it to me; I get it, I’m happy; awesome — it’s very basic. Player gifts is this neat little feature where you’re adventuring in Sanctuary, you kill a monster and an item drops: a legendary drops for instance, and there’s a column of light with a little sound, and you’re, like, (ooh, legendary!) and before you’re able to pick it up, another item is going to jump off that legendary and drop on the ground. There’s going to be a little box on the ground, and it’s going to say (Gift for Matthew), because you and I are friends, and I’m on your friends list. So you’re going to take it and you’re going to send it to me, and I can open it with anyone of my characters, and it’s going to give me an item that is level-appropriate and tailored to that class.

So I have a level 10 character, and I have a level 70 character; I’m not really playing with my level 10 barbarian right now, but I am playing with my level 70 demon hunter and going through my paragon levels, so I’m going to open it with that one, and I’m going to get a level 70 rare or legendary item that is going to be tailor-made for my demon hunter. That’s cool, right?

Now most things are just like (hey, we’re connected, whatever, blah, blah, blah); avenger kills are where it’s at! Our game director Josh Mosqueira love to say (Love the player), that’s his big philosophy in life, love the player — it’s a good philosophy when you’re making videogames. But sometimes you’ve got to give a little bit of love back to the monsters, because you know, they’re the ones getting murdered — they’re getting killed by these players. So you’re adventuring, and a monster kills you — bummer, you’re on the ground and waiting to resurrect — and that monster is going to level up, and a portal is going to appear, and he’s going to jump in the portal and disappear. Then he’s going to pick somebody in your list of friends who plays Diablo III, and he’s going to jump into their game.

They’re going to see a unique-named monster, and it’s going to say ‘˜you are being hunted’, and that monster is going to be named after you, and it’s going to come and hunt them, and have new powers. If they kill it, they get loot and you get loot. If it kills them, it’s going to get named after them and it’s going to level up, have more powers, and jump into their friends list and hunt another one of their friends.

So it’s that idea of: we’re not playing together, but we’re connected as adventurers going through Sanctuary. That’s out version of social today, in a sense. Those three features are unique to console.