PURE PANDEMONIUM

For those of you who haven’t listened to the exclusive audio interview with Michael Gough (voice of Deckard Cain in the Diablo series), here it is, reposted on the new Pure Pandemonium layout.

Michael Gough Audio Interview

Transcript of Interview (PDF)

UPDATE: Looking in the gameplay video, there appears to be town portals used. When the Barbarian is rescuing Deckard Cain, he casts a town portal, unto which Cain travels through. Maybe town portals will be in game, but have a cooldown of sorts? Also, it looks like town portals are in the menu bar of the character as well. Maybe we’ll know more at BlizzCon.

Is this a town portal?

Community manager Bashiok contunues to speak on Diablo III, this time about death mechanics and town portals. Instead of going back to town or running from town to your body, they are implementing ‘checkpoints’ so when you die your body will spawn at the latest checkpoint.

Before I get in to what we are doing let me go over some things we want to avoid with a death mechanic.

We want to separate being in town and being out on a quest/adventure/dungeon as much as possible. Leaving the safety of a town should not be a decision you take lightly. We don’t want to remove the sense of suspense and danger by making town something you’re always going back to pretty much whenever you like. The intent is to create a greater separation from being in town, and not, and to make your time away from town a lot more tense.

On that same note we also don’t want to remove the player from the action. Throwing them back to town for every death really breaks up the action, and not in a fun, interesting, or necessary way.

So, with these things in mind we’ve found that a check point system works really well. Throughout your adventures, and generally at the ends of each “floor” of a dungeon your character is saved to a checkpoint. When you die you’re dropped back at the last checkpoint with a small amount of health, and the rest regenerates slowly. It’s obviously a very forgiving system as it is. It’s just too early to put a ton of thought in to what penalties there should be, if any, added on top of it.
Regardless, potential penalties aside, this is the death mechanic we’re currently using and it’s working really well so far.

Source

Diablo III community manager Bashiok, commented recently on the idea of Spellbooks in D3. Spellbooks were items used in Diablo 1 to learn and use magic skills.

That came back in Diablo II too eventually in the form of rune words, and I don’t think it really worked out too well in the end. I do think it actually could be designed and implemented properly; balanced, etc. but…

For me the more important question though is what impact does it have on the class you’re playing and also our knowledge of the Diablo world? Is a class nothing more than someone who read from a book, or is holding a specific item? No, they’re very specific and very iconic figures (heroes even) from very distinct styles and backgrounds. The characters we play are these concentrated images of their cultures, beliefs, etc. Everything they do resembles who they are and where they’re from, and what does it mean to then piecemeal that out to any one who just happens to throw a couple runes in to an item.

It worked better in Diablo (1) I think. Conceptually it was a bit easier to digest just because of the basic pen and paper underpinnings, and the heroes were far more generic. It was also far less obtrusive.

In Diablo II though, for me anyway, it always undermined the uniqueness of playing a specific class, and also what it meant to be that character. Aside from everything else it caused.

 

He had us shaking when he led us to believe that guns would be used in Diablo III.

Well, you have to realize that it’s been 20 years, and in technological terms that can be a very long time. We’re trying to create a world that’s not static, its filled out, and with that it’s an advancing world. With that amount of time, and also the loss of the Arreat Summit much of the remaining barbarian culture has focused on… nah I’m just kidding, there aren’t any guns.