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It's not about the lighting, that screenshot looks EXACTLY like wow, the textures are the same cell-shaded bullshit that I said we would probably get back on page 1.

WoW is cel-shaded? Since when?

I guess cell-shaded is the wrong way to describe it, but it's those extremely cartoony textures that have become "blizzard's style", it's hard to make something moody when the rock texture looks like it was ripped from a roadrunner cartoon.

Mostly I think it's a case of them making sure that the textures are fairly low memory but don't look like a garbled mess.

Remember, Blizzard aim for getting games to work well on lower end kit. Simple textures do that well.

I find it amusing that here, we have people whining that Diablo isn't dark enough, and in most 40k threads we get people whining about 'Oh no, more Grimdark, yawn.' Get over it, no one universe has to be homogeneously anything. Frankly, most of D2 wasn't dark either, contrary to rose-colored glasses. Act 1? Oh no, it's raining. Act 2? Wow, most of the ruins are ruins, this must be dark. Act 3? It's a jungle. Umm...Charlie in the trees? Yes, there were dark moments, and they were far more effective when they weren't an entire wide portion of the game. When I got to the bottom of the Cathedral and found pools of blood and dismembered bodies, it was far more striking than when I saw the n-teenth poor fucked-up bastard in Hell, because I hadn't been desensitized to it by spending hours walking by the same thing.

I'd just like to point out that I didn't say a damn thing about how the game needed to be super gritty/dark (I did say that it should have a suitably faux-gothyfantasyhorrory setting, but that's rather different from saying 'needs more grit rar!'). My only beef with they way what we've been shown so far looks, is that it looks a bit too brightly watercolored, and cartoonishly exaggerated throughout.

and cartoonishly exaggerated throughout.

The level does not seem too different from Warhammer online, and is still far less then WOW thankfully,

Mostly I think it's a case of them making sure that the textures are fairly low memory but don't look like a garbled mess.

Remember, Blizzard aim for getting games to work well on lower end kit. Simple textures do that well.
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Exactly, otherwise they cut-off a large chunk of their userbase, not good for business, even if it does push technology forward.

Vendetta wrote:Mostly I think it's a case of them making sure that the textures are fairly low memory but don't look like a garbled mess.

Remember, Blizzard aim for getting games to work well on lower end kit. Simple textures do that well.

Wrong. It is more correct to say (if this is even TRUE) that they aim to have the game run on higher settings on obsolete hardware. It is possible - stunning I know - for a game to be a) scalable and b) have a low quality option. HOLY SHIT DID I JUST BLOW YOUR MIND?

The very idea that anything but 'simple textures' (frankly, the D3 screenshots look like fucking Shadowground) would make a top-down hack-em-up unplayable on lowend hardware seems dodgey to me. Sure, Titan Quest was an inefficient engine and didn't even look that good (and holy shit, stay away from fire effects) but there are plenty of ways to make a game look better without cramping out lowend dudes.

There's a huge debate going on with Diablo fans about the graphics quality of DIII. And I know it's in pre-Alpha, but going by interviews, it's apparently been in the works for 4 (?) years and they're pretty much happy with the art direction and are focusing on the content now. I'm not happy. It looks too much like WoW. Have a look.

Actually they went through three changes in art direction before setting on their current style, since going for a more realistic would make it into a Guild war clone in appearance, since Guild wars was the only MMORPG that has fairly realistc looks for characters but also supports low-end hardware.