Imperius hadn’t fought mortal Tyrael.
Kind of hard to do a boss fight this way.
People are having problems… 
I can understand where Olbat is coming from with this.
In my humble opinion, the human fear system should be considered when attempting to make a horror experience of any kind.
Giant, inescapable monsters are a part of that - but its only a small part and its a fear trigger that works better earlier in someones development than later. While universal its relatively transient depending on the experiences of the audience member (trauma can overrule this).
We all have the basic hard wired fears like sudden loud noises or looming objects - they invoke a startle response almost universally in living things. But that’s hard to replicate in a medium where we are looking down on ‘ourselves’ and have control over the volume - like parents playing after kids are asleep, not wanting to use headphones and be unaware of child waking up but wanting to keep the sound down at the same time.
There are a wide range of fears that are genetically transmitted but need the environment to activate them. The human fear system is a bit open ended in that it is open to calibration by the environment.
Case in point, Murlocs.
Prior to 2004 - I honestly did not rate these little bastards as scary. However, vanilla wow trained myself and millions of others to be flat out terrified of the sight or trade mark sound of them. They were the cost of precious time, currency, progress and made us vulnerable to being murdered by opposing faction members by forcing us to use cooldowns we would otherwise save to fight off such threats - essentially fulfilling a fear of losing status by being defeated by another player then teabagged.
In one small, seemingly emotionless and relentless force - blizzard created an environment that played on almost the whole range of biologically constrained domains of fear.
Medieval times had so many threats to human life that DIV could capitalize on. As a species we feared predators (both real and imagined), hostile members of our own species, invisible pathogens, bacteria/viruses, loss of status/ostracization or social exclusion which in those times was potentially fatal. Also lethal injuries from dangerous weather events and topographical hazards.
Since the golden rule in survival is ‘better safe than sorry’ you can use the environment to really dial up the sensitivity to these fears and potentially cause the fear system to unreasonably expand a category and target a previously innocuous object.
The point being, the above fears are relatable, easily calibrated and are from sources that are either our physical size, smaller, invisible or inanimate.
Dont get me wrong, I dont think Diablo should be a survival title. But I feel like having demons as the ONLY source of danger isnt going to cut it anymore if they want a horror experience.
Diablo 2 had the ever present fear of other players which really did make you feel like you took your life into your hands just leaving town. But that can be exploited and off putting to some. So in lieu of that, perhaps a return to basics to replicate that fear of leaving the safety of town. Then couple that with NPC reputation where if given a choice to kill or spare someone infected, you risk being exiled and losing the relative safety of a town that may or may not have a ‘jack the ripper’ type who has a penchant for gutting magic users etc.
Just a thought, I am by no means a game designer or expert in this field. I just feel like after 3 games of turning demons into little red clouds we can take the child proofing off the environment and see how well we do against human nature, mother nature and hell combined.
2 Likes
was overly down playing imperius. they did both fight in angel form and imperius was nothing before the almighty tyreal.
the world was conquered by a death cult then;
see how hard it is to touch reality without free speech, even in this unique game?
Completely Agree with every word written.
Unfortunately, think today’s blizzard are incapable of making games as dark and serious as Diablo 1&2 were.
2 Likes
I uploaded and edited the character selection screen:
https://ibb.co/y5ZKpKm
- Removed the moonlight because it’s a too “vampire” style that does not belong to Diablo
- Removed the cartoony trees to make the trees more believable and immersive
- made the background more shallow because the shapes were distracting the eye.
- Reduced the infinite horizon which looked high-fantasy, like a fantastic world to discover. Instead, the idea is not to make the surroundings perceptible. To keep the questions unanswered.
Sorry I don’t have the source files nor 3d files so It’s a bit too dark, it could be lighter. The idea is to contrast between the camp fire and the environment.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
3 Likes
i dont really like the vampire style here to ;p
Im linking to my post on the eu forum, speaking to much the same sentiment.