The difference between the Art Styles of D2, D3 & D4

General Discussion
1

This here is my attempt to illustrate the difference between the art styles of D2, D3 and D4 in regards to their color schemes, by using the Cover Art of Diablo 2 as a base.

Here is the D2 Original.
The colors of Diablo 2 were of a medium saturation and there was a lot of black/darkness:

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In Diablo 4 however, the darkness and also the saturation of color is significantly reduced.
It is much more tuned towards a greyscale as the predominant colors in the game are grey and brown, while the rest of the colors are more washed out:

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In Diablo 3, the colors are very saturated, and some of colors are so bright that they are shining like a neon bulb (e.g. blue / yellow elites, certain spell and elemental effects, elite affixes, etc) and it looks like the particles in the air are glowing. The darkness is noticably reduced.

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I tried to illustrate it as good as I could within a limited time.

Do you agree or disagree?
Would you have done it differently?
And which style do you prefer?

4 Likes
2

I personally love everything about D4 art style. And with all the options I expect we to have in it regarding visuals I can’t wait to test D4.

I don’t think I would do the visual part of D4 better if I was its designer. In this aspect the game is 10/10 for me personally.

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Yeah, I actually prefer Diablo 4 style currently. The so-called “washed out” color only emphasizes the bleak world setting that Diablo 4 is expected to have imo.

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I am not sure why you are focused on the saturation levels. Diablo 1 contained some monsters with very saturated colors, like the Black Death zombies, without it causing any issues.
The problem with D3 is that it lacks cohesiveness, with its champion and rares having added blue or yellow lighting that are there for no intradiegetic reason, and their powers that have very bright effects pop up out of nowhere.

5

Please don’t start this. we don’t need a washed out to the point of absurdity replacement for whimsyshire.

6

Actually, the color brightness or lack of it is often used to get an emotional response in visual media.

Take the movie, Kingdom of Heaven. In the scenes that take place in England or France or what ever the European country is filmed with a filter of grey and light blue to emote a feeling of depression and illustrate the bleakness of living there.

While the scenes that are supposed to be Middle Eastern area are bright and colorful to represent the thriving people of the place, despite being war torn. Even the battles are bright with whites and bright blues and oranges and reds to elicit a feeling of excitement.

(Yes I know that neither place was actually represented correctly through color)

Point is, a game can elicit emotions through color but though the brightness or color of the place can also have no effect on the action of the game or movie or whatever and it’s the other things you see that can be just as disturbing or not.

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7

For me it is kinda the opposite.
D3 went too far and D2 was a perfect (or at least very, very good) blend of darkness and medium saturated colors.

D4 on the other hand has a major focus on grey and brown, and the colors being very, very washed out in combination with more brightness (which also contributes to a more washed out style).

In fact I would say that it is even worse than in the second image.

For me, D4 is more depressing than actually dark.

That certainly is or can be the case, but it still makes D4 look very depressing.
It is not even dark, it is just depressing, at least to me.

It is not just about the saturation, as it is just one part of the whole.

In a way it is like that you can have gore like in Happy Tree Friends, but the whole thing in just flimsy, silly and super colorful, as gore is just one thing that creates & contributes to the atmosphere of a game, a move, etc.

D2 had this as well. It had a medium saturation of colors, but still a lot of black and darkness, while D3 and also D4 have a lot less black and darkness, where D3 oversaturated its colors and D4 over-de-saturated the colors.

Yeah, that is what I refer to as “bright, shiny neon lights” or “bright, shiny particle effects”.

D3 had a ton of them, and D4 and even D2 Resurrected only have some of these (aka the particle effects for Fire in D2r, which at least for me are souring my eyes and don’t fit at all in a Diablo game).

Great movie, loved it, and yes, sure, you are right with that assessment, but do you want to watch Kingdom of Heaven or moves of a similar style on a regular, maybe daily basis, like people would play games?

I would not want that, especially that from what I have seen the whole game is like that, and not just one region.

The combat in D4 looks very good, however, for me personally I still “feel depressed” (metaphorically speaking in an exaggerated way) when I watch gameplay videos from D4, and that does have nothing to do with the combat.

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Another example, would be something like The Hills Have Eyes, very bright movie but it’s the content that’s disturbing not the color. It’s just an illustration.

Edit:

And yes, people will often just stick to one genre whether historical or horror and spend hour upon hour watching movies with the same themes, just like video games.

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But is this bad?

https://www.mmobase.de/img/spiele/gallery/diablo-4-ujjhr.jpg

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I have not seen that, but I get your point.

That is a good point.
For me that preferred art style would be Diablo 2 LoD (not D2 Resurrected), other people might be more into other styles.

It boils down to a matter of preference.

What I can tell you is that most of of the footage I watched from D4 left me - in regards to the artstyle - with a feeling that I can only make analogies about, like eating meat that has a dull taste and makes your moth dry, or a sense of excitement suddenly turning into disappointment.

Like it is not suffering, but it noticeably lowers / drains your mood.

Or when a 1 is considered suffering, a 5 is neutral and a 10 is intense happiness, then D4’S art style is a 3.5 or 4 on that particular scale. A bit below neutral. It is not bad, but for me personally it is not satisfying or neutral either.

If the designers intent is to convey what a terrible, desolate, depressing, etc place Sanctuary is, then yes, they succeeded, but that world with this atmosphere is not really something that I would want to get my teeth into on a more regular basis.

2 Likes
11

Maybe that is because we want to play the game, but we can’t. Many D2R players are disappointed they didn’t get an Alpha access. Maybe the same is happening with us when we are watching D4 footage and we know the game is years from being released.

I am just saying this feeling could be due to multiple factors, not only the graphics, but you focus yourself on the graphics since it’s the most noticeably disturbing issue for you.

12

That’s actually just fine imo. The world is supposed to feel hopeless or depressing. People have no hope, and the land is rampant with despair, as such the bleakness is warranted imo. As for dark, I’m certain, there will be plenty of parts in the game where it’d be dark.

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Yes. We literally saw only 2% of the game environments.

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Again, the issue isn’t that the colors are oversaturated, D1 had that too on some monster attacks (succubi and their blood stars, liches and their ranged attack), without any issue. The problem comes from the fact that it is inconsistent and comes from nowhere.
If you took the arcane enchantment laser and put it as a Maghda attack that she shoots out from her hands, it would be fine, because it would be consistent with her design and come from an intradiagetic source. And the reflect enchantment doesn’t feel any better than the arcane enchantment does, despite not being oversaturated, because it comes from an extradiagetic source, without regards to any coherence.

15

No, for me it is definitely the art style.

I very much know very well what I like and dislike.

Sure, but should we, the players feel like that as well on a more constant basis when playing the game, just by playing that game. It certainly makes me more ‘depressed’ (it kinda lowers my mood, but not to the level of depression, but still).

From what I have seen so far, D4 also has an issue that D3 has as well, which is that it looks like the particles in the air are glowing, which takes away a lot of the darkness. Here are a few examples:

The first images on the top is modified, while the image below is the original.
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It is similar with many other images and gameplay from D4, where there is just too much brightness which takes away the darkness / blackness and moves the color scheme much more into the direction of grey…

… aka not dark, but rather depressing.

I disagree with the premise that the oversaturation of colors was not an issue or not part of the issue.

It definitely was part of the issue among other things that contributed to the game looking like a cartoon series.

Here are a few examples of images that just have the darkness increased and the saturation of colors decreased:

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It would be consistent with the game looking too much like a children’s cartoon, which is the problem with D3’s artystyle.

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I think it’s freaking horrible. It looks like a matte background painting. Bob Ross did better with his happy little trees. It’s like what they did to D2r. It needed to be toned down a bit but they turned it into a blurry smear in a lot of places.

17

Don’t know what to tell ya honestly. If the world is making you feel “depressed”, then I can’t say much beyond don’t take it seriously and/or try not to it to heart. Me? I actually like the color scheme, because it tells and shows me that the world is in dire straits. It literally has me thinking how can our characters turn things around, or is it even possible. So yeah, by all means, I’m all for more bleakness.

Which is only a fraction of what’s to be in the game. So in short, you haven’t seen very much, like the rest of us.

18

I dont need the game to be dark. Being dark is extremely overrated.
But D4 looks dull, and muted. That is bad.
Use more colors, stronger colors. Not just grey-in-brown.

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19

I’ll tell you what a game company should do. Make a console that comes with a black & white TV, like my family had when I was really young. Stuff was filmed in color but the technology wasn’t capable of showing it.

But still, those old shows were just visually appealing as the stuff today on a color TV.

I think that might be part of the problem with the differences being brought up in this thread. Someone like me might remember when visual media as far as TV and what not wasn’t all bright or dark colors but it was the content that was entertaining and what made the show.

So today, I’m not as interested in what color something is but what they are actually showing me that moves me.

Edit:

Point is, some of you folks worry too much about colors to the point that’ll make or break the game for you.

My least favorite part of Diablo 2 was Act 2, the whole thing, not parts of it but the whole dang thing because the colors were different for that whole act than they were in every other part of the game, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t fun. The creatures were cool, the story was fun and grim but what they were trying to get across with the color didn’t land. So yes, I’m not so old as to not care but the color of Act 2 didn’t make me hate the game.

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I hate the color pallete of D4 so much! It’s not dark, it’s dull!

For me, even the D3 pallete is better, but the D2 colors would be fine.

I think Blizzard should implement an option in the settings, so that the player would be able to adjust the colors to fit their taste. Just put 3 sliders: one for brightness, one for saturation and one for color.