Character Design

What we know: Art Director Brian Morrisroe comes from the World of Warcraft team, and the characters we’ve seen do share some visual style with WoW heroes. You can see the same exaggerated physique in D3’s Barbarian that you do in WoW’s Ogre Warriors, and the Witch Doctor looks like a mix of elements from Undead Warlocks and Trolls. An in-game cinematic sequence shows characters moving with broad, sweeping gestures. Each class comes with both male and female versions, so your gender will no longer be dictated by your function.

What we think: Charlie Sheen also looks a bit like Martin Sheen - and hey, they’re both good-looking guys. Tank classes are going to be big muscular folks no matter what, and magic-based classes traditionally lean toward the lean. Still, we wouldn’t go so far as to call the new style “cartoony” - just heroically exaggerated and archetypal. For all the hubbub, Diablo III looks more like Diablo than WoW to us, even if the character animations seen in that cinematic did appear to be kind of… grand. And we love that both classes include male and female models; more choice is always the best choice.

The Enemies

What we know: Walking Corpses, Dark Bersekers, life-sucking Wraiths, lumbering horned Beasts… if you’re looking for a particularly deadly bestiary, look to Diablo III. Among the more interesting concepts: The Grotesque, a stitched-together corpulent ball of flesh that explodes into lamprey eels; Dark Vessels, weak cultists just waiting to be possessed by demons and become much more dangerous Activated Vessels; and the return of the relentless MoonClan satyrs. We’ve also seen two boss-style characters: the Thousand Pounder (“Gluttony Incarnate”), a demon summoned from a sacrificial ritual who claps together twin maces for massive damage, and the Siegebreaker Assault Beast, a screen-filling six-limbed monstrosity that strikes out with spiked gauntlets and occasionally bites heroes’ heads off.

What we think: It’s still early days on Diablo III specifics, but we’re pleased to see such a wide variety of enemies revealed already. Skeletons and zombies are predictably cool, and while some of what we’ve seen falls into the “been there, slaughtered that” category, we’re seeing some fresh, original takes on older concepts. Those eel-filled Grotesque had our flesh crawling, and we loved it when the Siegebreaker bit the head off the Barbarian - and not cleanly, either. Any boss willing to floss his teeth with sinew gets high marks from us.

Music, Sounds & Voices

What we think: If there’s anything that inspires nostalgia for games, it’s audio. It’s a treat to hear the loot sounds and Deckard Cain’s haggard voice again, but the music is less convincing. Matt Uelmen’s subtle scores for Diablo and Diablo II are true classics, but he parted ways with Blizzard after the release of Burning Crusade. The new themes aren’t exactly bombastic, but they do sound bigger and more epic, with a larger orchestra… and, therefore, a little impersonal. It will all come down to the music’s context, but we’re not expecting the newest Diablo to sound the way we remember its predecessors sounding.

Interface & Controls

What we know: At first glance, the two globes on the heads-up display - a red one on the left for health, a blue one on the right for mana - look reassuring and unmistakably Diablo-esque. But the potions belt has been replaced by a WoW-style hotbar loaded with character skills and powers, suggesting a greater reliance on mixing up attacks instead of just grinding away with one or two of the same old strikes. As in WoW, you can instantly access four attacks with the 1 through 4 keys, plus use 5 and 6 for inventory items. The mouse wheel or tab key can swap between two main skills; their icons swap places on the interface, too, with the current one slightly larger than the one in reserve. Blizzard proudly says that the whole game can be played with just the mouse if you like. The gauntlet cursor has been replaced with a simpler bold arrow, but the point-to-move method from the first two games looks to be fully intact.

What we think: Going back and playing a few rounds of Diablo II made us long for a WASD interface - the pointing and clicking felt surprisingly awkward, but it wasn’t 10 minutes before we were back in the swing. It’s one of those elements that will help preserve the Diablo feel for loyalists, too. And while it’s nice to know we can play the whole game with one hand, we don’t expect to want to.

Weapons, Armor, & Loot

What we know: Potions, be gone! Well, not really, but Diablo III is being created with less reliance on carry-along health packs. Dying enemies will cough up red orbs that give you an immediate health recharge, so you don’t have to stockpile potions (they are, however, still in the game). We spotted stackable Scrolls of Identify and Scrolls of Town Portal, so you should expect to find unknown treasures and shuttle them back to civilization on demand. Weapons like the Double Axe of Frost and Annihilator Maul of Immolation clearly display their damage per second and attacks (!) per second in inventory, as well as their sell value. The sources of loot remain pretty much what you’d expect: chests and corpses, with the bigger, scarier foes dropping the best stuff.

What we think: Potions were so iconic for the previous two games that it’s hard to imagine what Diablo will be like without them as the main source of health. The “pick up the red globe to heal” mechanic shouldn’t feel any more awkward to accept than the inherent impossibility of looting a two-handed axe off a swarm of insects in Diablo II’s Flayer Jungle…but right now, it seems like a significant change that adds a bigger dose of action to the action RPG mix. Then again, if less reliance on potions makes for more room in inventory for treasure and magic items, then we’re game. A quick look at the inventory screen suggests that the restrictive pack of the past - where two-handed axes take up a 3x2 grid, claymores only fit in 1x4, and nothing could be rotated, Tetris-style, to fit - will be replaced with a more flexible system. That’s a change we’d be thrilled to see.

What we don’t know

As generous as Blizzard has been with the initial onslaught of D3 info, we’re still in the dark about many key elements. What are these “enhancements” promised via Battle.net, and what improvements can we expect to multiplayer matchmaking? Blizzard is also mum on minimum system specs, the remaining three character classes, and what their class-specific missions will entail. The biggest question, however, is the simplest: When? It’s hard to argue with Blizzard’s “when it’s done” philosophy - not when Diablo II is still installed on so many hard drives, nearly a decade later. If good things come to those who wait, we’re hoping great things come to those who have been waiting 10 years for Diablo III.