Crescendo170 said:
http://i27.tinypic.com/2jexp1x.jpg
So their solution is to remove all colors from the game... genius!
On the one hand, I sort of see their point. Diablo III is clearly infected with WC3/WoW-style cartoonish art designs, just as SCII is to a degree, and just like Starcraft and Diablo I and II were not... with Warcraft it started earlier; WCII was the first cartoonish one (WC1 being more realistic styled). Blizzard has slowly extended that style across all of their games, it seems -- and those shots of Diablo III do look a LOT like WoW or WC3 shots, I will agree... and I would also agree that that isn't necessarily a good thing. I have nothing against cartoonish graphics, it works well in Warcraft, but... Diablo and Starcraft are different... the styles are bleeding over a bit too much, perhaps. Blizz thinks they need a "Blizzard" art style, perhaps? Sure SC had humor, and definite cartoonish elements to its art design, but it's definitely more pronounced in SCII, like the whole game went through a WCIII/WoW filter. It maintains enough of a SC look to look distinct from WCIII/WoW, but it looked less different than SC and either WCII or WCIII, I think. In the case of Diablo III, things seem to be even worse. Some of those shots look indistinguishable from Warcraft stuff... but the old Diablo games were distinctly different in art style. Those differences are obviously much less pronounced now, though they are still present.
It is worth nothing that the concept art hasn't changed. It's just the ingame models that have. Compare WCI and WCII and WCIII's concept art, for instance... each game has a very different ingame art style, but much more similar concept art designs.
Anyway, but on the other hand, too many games these days have no color, so is the solution "drain out all the colors" really a good one? There's too much brown-and-grey as it is... but is Diablo the right game for cartoonish graphics and bright colors? Probably not. But even so, some of their pictures aren't improvements. The answer isn't "just remove all of the blue, green, and yellow!" Diablo II had plenty of colors, where they were appropriate... and longer draw distances and bright colors, in the day, particularly in the desert. The question really is if what we've seen of Diablo III so far is representative of the whole game or not, and we can't answer that question yet. As for their edits, removing a lot of the blue and green really doesn't help anything. In some the darker colors make things look better, but just removing almost all of the blue from spell effects, for instance? That's not a good change. Color isn't inherently bad, it just needs to be used appropriately. Blue in spell effects looks fine...
In the end though, I think when the game is finished this won't be an issue. The gamestill has quite a ways to go. I think they'll find an acceptable balance between WoW-izing the graphics for better sales and keeping the graphical styles that make the Diablo series what it is.
But still... it really is too bad that the art style and art direction had to change so dramatically. Ignoring all the lighting and color issues (which, as I said, are relatively minor), the fundamental art style of the game is definitely different from Diablo II, and more like WoW. That's too bad.
