Diablo 3 is being designed by an entirely new design team; no one now working on D3 played a key role in creating D2, or were part of the team who first began work on D3, back in 2002 at Blizzard North. What do the D2 guys think of the direction in which Blizzard is steering their creation? Michael Huang was the Technical Director on Diablo 2 and worked on the earliest version of Diablo 3. He thinks D3 looks great and not cartoony, appreciates the design opportunities a full 3D engine allows, and likes that the game world is expanding. He has some disagreements as well though, such as with the decision to bring back the Barbarian character.
"Michael Huang: I remember when we were developing Diablo II, and many people asked us why we didn't bring the Warrior (from Diablo I) back, and our response was that we had designed the Barbarian class. We could have brought the Warrior back and added all the same skills as the Barbarian and named him Warrior, but we didn't. By creating the Barbarian class, we opened up a lot more possibilities and expanded the Diablo universe; with this new class, we could create a new backstory to the character, give him a tribe, a homeland, and motivations for fighting the Prime Evils."
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A decent successor that expands on the original, but never really surpasses it.
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Interesting that Mike didn't pull every punch or simply say what he thought Blizzard would want to hear. He's not working in the PC gaming industry now, which probably had something to do with his willingness to comment honestly. I've talked to a lot of the ex-Blizzard North guys, and so far only Mike, Ben Boos, and Max Schaefer have been willing to comment, on the record, on D3.
BTW, our previous interview on this subject, with Ben Boos, can be seen here on n4g.
http://www.n4g.com/pc/News-...
It went to 540 degrees, so hopefully you guys will find this one interesting as well.
Really interesting to see what the older devs think. Nice stuff.
great read. it's great to have these older dev's talking a about a sequel this big. and great to see no one takes cheap shot's at it.