Lads, ‘suspicious’ that you log in and see you have never had any account activity, even though you know you posted before (as in, yesterday). I’m expecting another warning from our benevolent dictators over this one, but hell – they’ll have a lot of work to do to prove I’m saying anything ‘inappropriate’.
‘No jokes allowed – no witticisms, no sarcasm, citizen: you may express opinions, provided they align with our opinions that promote this game and make us money. You are permitted to post another topic and praise the game unconditionally. Thank you for your cooperation and we hope you enjoy Diablo 2 Resurrected’.
Online dystopia. I’m posting this thing again because hell I didn’t just write it for the craic.
It’s no secret I hate D2R’s intensely prescriptive, ‘there’s only one right way to play’ gameplay. I have a semi-stressful job – the only difference between it and D2R is that my job pays frankly great cash for micromanagement, mechanical chores and learning off hundreds of insipid rules in order to maximise efficiency.
I want a Diablo 3 or Diablo 4 in terms of fun, stress-relief gameplay. I want to log in for an hour or two and be entertained without having to look up ‘best build guides’ or having to wonder about where I put one crappy point into a skill or if I should completely ignore energy – because only noobs put points into energy, right? Except the game doesn’t tell you that, you have to read it online.
It’s like a game based on a cheerless wiki you have to read in work.
I played all classes ‘back in the day’, and for D2R I played as a druid and spent the better half of the ‘normal’ experience just clicking on the screen and watching the same ‘fissure’ animation dropping goatmen and the like. Again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
Familiarity breeds contempt. Diablo 3 at least mixed up the skills. And you could mercifully respec any time – again, this is entertainment. Who honestly wants a hard-rule that you only have 3 chances to respec, with any others being dependant on some immense chore that rivals real world work in terms of commitment but doesn’t pay real world cash?
Diablo 4 anyways. I saw the recent update – and yeah, it’s impressive what sound engineers get up to. It’s the least glamourous art form, I think – essential but not really something that blows the mind like great visual art. At least for someone like me who also dabbles in visual art outside of coding.
But the youtube comments are right: the visuals are going in the wrong direction. The silly flame snake that the sorcerous creates is, as many have mentioned, ridiculous. New Blizz can’t help themselves, can they?
IMO, they need to get New Blizz employees off the game. They have a big audience in WOW and other cartoony tripe. That’s what New Blizz is good at.
Vicarious Visions are more artistically talented at ‘mature’ art – at subtlety and visually impactful psychology. D2R’s art is outstanding. Look again at the impotent fire effects in the latest D4 trailers – they’re limp and creatively small by comparison.
D4 is going to be a proper mess by the looks of things. Gameplaywise, it will beat D2R. But that’s the product of a different skillset, a different talent to story and visual art, at which New Blizz is inconsistent and confused.
The brilliant D4 cinematic, with the outstanding Lilith design, was succeeded by a weak-sauce copy of Disney’s Maleficent for the new Lilith model, a completely spineless, creatively bankrupt design choice.
These ‘art directors’ probably get paid 5 times the salary of your average talented indie dev – and have 1/5 of the creative brainpower.
A shame, because D2R’s art is truly a feast for the eyes. They slipped up with the bonkers reworking of female models – but I feel that’s a result of New Blizz’s PC-slavering than anything else.
Or least you’d hope artists this good also know it’s ‘ok’ to create aesthetically pleasing female models and they don’t all have to look like us blocky, square-jawed, pseudo-chimpanzee men.
I don’t even think the original D2 female models looked overly sexualised – I see more sexualised girls out in the pub every weekend. Should they be banned from wearing all those short skirts and tight dresses? Are they being non-PC in looking like temptress eye-candy?
For some reason, I don’t think they care. And games that try to hide/bury the fact that girls/women do indeed dress up to look sexy can go keep doing that if it makes them feel better. Personally I think the people that green light it need to just walk into your average pub or night club to get a reality check.
PS: usual disclaimer – I’m very unlikely to read replies to anything I write on forums anymore. I get it: we all hate each other unless we have the same opinion as each other.
I do not care about appeasing anyone and just write what I think, cheers.
