The Lord of Terror Has Risen
I will have to direct your attention to this earlier blog post of mine Because these recent news just confirm my theories and everything I wrote there.
What am I talking about, you ask? Well, simply This: Blizzard has officially announced today that a sequel to the award winning and critically and commercially acclaimed Diablo II is currently in development!
Official site can be found here.
Here is the official cinematic teaser:
So far only two character classes has been confirmed, namely the Barbarian and the Witch Doctor. The Barbarian should be known to players of the previous installment. The Witch Doctor, however, is more of a mystery.
Here’s a sample of Barbarian gameplay. As in the previous installment, the Barbarian relies on cold steal and physical prowess to survive in combat. As evident from the video, the Barbarian has several Area of Effect attacks in his repertoire, such as a jump attack that covers a lot of distance, as well as annihilates a group of enemies. It’s slightly similar to Charge or Intercept from World of Warcraft only 50 times cooler.
A shockwave attack that deals damage to enemy targets in a line.
A cleaving attack similar to Cleave from World of Warcraft, that does damage to at least 2 enemies per swipe. This ability may be passive, rather than active.
A ground stomp, that disarms enemies of their shields.
And a whirlwind attack similar to, well.. Whirlwind from World of Warcraft.
Here’s a sample of Witch Doctor gameplay. Not much is known to me about this class, except for a few abilities he possesses. One of them is the ability to summon pets, as well as amplifying their strengths.
As evident in the video, the Witch Doctor also appears to possess magical melee and Area of Effect attacks.
It also seems he has a few debuffs up his sleeves, such as curses and/or diseases Which makes sense, I mean he is a Witch Doctor.
As with the previous installment, online gaming will take place on battle.net
Take a gander at a few official screenshots here:
The atmosphere of the previous installments remains intact in Diablo III
A Bridge Too Far
The Witch Doctor making house calls
As I said, Diablo III appears to maintain the much-loved “Diablo atmosphere”, and it’ll be interesting to see how the story evolves, and how well it connects with the already-very-solid mythology. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a lot of new books expanding upon the Diablo universe. It’s simply the Blizzard way.
Here’s 10 minutes worth of gameplay footage:
As you can see, Diablo III also maintains the essence of the Hack & Slash, action role-playing game that was Diablo II. The overview camera, the very similar, yet improved interface, the dungeons, the combat and the overall gameplay all appears to contain the Diablo essence.
I’m looking forward to learning more about the new features, as the already revealed additions such as weapon enchants and environment interaction, sounds promising.
Watching the Barbarian slaughter his way through the tombs with such prowess and mobility, feeds the Kimbo inside me!
I find myself looking enormously forward to this game, and will await further information with great anticipation. It’s been at least four years since I played Diablo 2 properly, maybe it’s time to re-install and level a character? Perhaps say.. Barbarian?
Kimbo laughs with malevolent glee
You see what I mean? These only lend further proofs to my theories, and validates everything I wrote In this post! It’s all there! It’s all there, I tell you!
Anyway, with that being said, I conclude this mad ramble and leave you to your sanity.
By the way, I originally intended this as a “Veronica Mars” or “Eating my own Words” post, but decided to postpone t a day or so, after Blizzard made their announcement today.
“This place is thick with the stench of ghouls“.
Posts
I never played much computer-games with the modest exceptions of some really old ones on my parents’ first computer, Warlords III and the Heroes of Might and Magic-line, but I did play Diablo a little. Can’t for the life of me remember if it was I or II though. Seem to recall it was decent for a non-strategy-game, so yay for a sequel.
2. July 2008 @ 16:27 ( Permalink )
The forums were riddled with anticipation before the announcements, and posts evolved into 15 pages of people discussing what Blizzard could be making.
Though most people were pretty confident that it was a new Diablo installment in the making, seeing as Starcraft II was announced last year.
I have only played 1-3 of Heroes of Might and Magic, back when I was younger, but I seem to recall it being pretty ace.
3. July 2008 @ 08:11 ( Permalink )
I never played 1, but II and III were awesome. I know IV got a lot of shit, apparently due to a shitty A.I. I think, but I was never good enough at the game to notice - I loved the way the fourth one was done.
With V, though, they really struck gold in my eyes - they’ve basically reverted back to the way they did things in III, having learned their lesson from the poor reception to the major changes IV had, but it’s III with all the added stuff of being seven years more modern. I love it - it’s fantasy, so ace in the hole there, and it’s got so many different fractions to play (especially with the expansions - the original V had undead, dark elves, wood elves, medieval-themed human knights, arabic-themes human wizards, and demons. With the two expansions you’ve now also got the option to play norse-themed Dwarves, or Orcs (the latter corresponding to the barbarian-city of past games))
3. July 2008 @ 08:22 ( Permalink )
The fantasy theme was my main motivator starting to play ll those years ago. That, and the fact that my brother played it as well.
I was never any good at turn-based strategy games - which hasn”t changed, judging by my performance in “Battle of Wesnoth” - , but it never stopped me from enjoying. I’ve been toying with the idea of buying the collector’s edition when I get a new PC.
And Norse-theme Dwarves? I like!.
3. July 2008 @ 10:36 ( Permalink )
I do believe there’s an edition out that’s got all five games with all the expansions to all of the games in one package at a relatively reasonable price. Don’t know if it’s the Collector’s edition though.
The fifth installment have only one kind of hero per fraction (they stopped the one magic and one might-focused hero per castle-thing after III), but they’ve all got one speciality no other hero can have and that’s stronger the more castles of the same alignment you own. (Like necromancy for Necromancers in III, only something for everyone) The Dwarf-heroes (”Runemages”) have “runes”, which is a second set of spells independent of the spell-book, paid for by normal resources instead of mana.
I haven’t played them that much, but the fraction looks very interesting. To give you an idea of their look: Every hero-type in V has a distinct mount on the adventure map (except the demon-heroes who are colossal enough to just walk around on their own), and the Runemages ride mammoths. The cavalry-unit of the Dwarf castle rides different kinds of bears.
And I suck at such games too. Oddly, they’re the only ones I seem to have any kind of stamina in enjoying.
3. July 2008 @ 11:17 ( Permalink )