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Time:   20:10:41 CET   11:10:41 PST   14:10:41 EST   04:10:41 Seoul   03:10:41 Beijing

NEWS
Bill Roper: "Diablo III isn't gothic enough"

By Raivo 'stormm' Streistermanis
Mar 19, 2009 06:30


ImageThe ex-vice president of Blizzard North and one of the chief architects behind the Diablo series, Bill Roper thinks that the upcoming sequel Diablo III isn't "Diablo" enough.



Bill Roper could be named as one of the reasons why all three major Blizzards games earned their success. Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo franchises are just some of the games that he played a major role in.

After parting ways with Blizzard, Bill Roper co-founded Flagship studios, the developer for Hellgate: London and later on joined Cryptic Studios as their Design Director and Executive Producer for their newest project, Champions Online. A superhero-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

In an interview with VideoGamer.com (via kotaku) speaks about the new Diablo III, the design team behind it and its visuals.

Here's what he had to say:
"One of the things I always enjoyed about that separation between Blizzard and Blizzard North was that the Diablo games had a very distinct art style. They had different art directors, they had different people working on it, they had a different sensibility about them. Diablo was I think grittier and darker and a little more leaning towards the photo realistic. Whereas the Craft games that were being built down in Irvine were bigger and broader in scope, brighter colours, just different pallets and different presentation. Both of those were very strong from that visual standpoint, for example."

"But it makes complete sense to me where they went because they basically took the Diablo universe and then approached it from the Blizzard Ivine stance for the visuals. That's the way they approach things. It wasn't that I looked at it and went, oh my God that looks terrible. I was like, that looks like Blizzard. The guys in Irvine. That's what it looks like to me. Their interpretation of it."

"I think that one of the things that we always tried to get across was that Diablo was Gothic fantasy and I think there was just a need that was put in there from the visuals that I didn't necessarily get. I got it from the architecture and to a degree from the character design but not the feeling of the world. I can't say that I dislike it. I didn't look at it and go, oh my God that's horrible. But I looked at it and went, it's not really... to me as a player it just didn't really ring with Diablo."



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