If you've been paying attention, you'd know that Jay Wilson is the Lead Designer on Diablo III, and he recently took to the stage in Paris, with two other Blizzard designers, to talk about behind-the-scenes design work for the game.

Once he got his "clicky thing" to work, he has to show off the "cool art", before explaining that the original Diablo was really the first of its kind, the first "real" role-playing game, and it really revolutionised the gaming market. Diablo II helped this when it was released several years later - and now, Diablo III is here to take that design even further (and we've got all the details!).


To start, let's take a look at the key points of each game:
Diablo 1 features:
Random dungeons and items
Simple gameplay action
Character customisation

Diablo 2 features:
Considerably bigger world
Outdoor environments
Unique character classes - (introducing barbarians, necromancers etc - not just warrior, rogue etc)
Unique skill tree system (which has now almost become a standard for the industry)

Diablo III goals:
Stay true to the Diablo experience
Amazing moment-to-moment action
Expand the roleplaying game experience (make a better RPG than we have before)
Introducing new, better systems

While Jay explained that they can't really talk much about the last point today, he promises there are some big surprises coming in the next few months, before going into some detail on each of those points.


So - Stay true to the Diablo experience - what exactly do they need to be true to?
Jay explained that they could just make Diablo II again (and that a lot of people would be pretty happy with that!), but that they wanted to make something different and better. Their goal was to make the game similar to the originals, but with its own identity so that the concept of the game could advance, rather than just being more of the same. Part of this involved sitting down and working out the "really important" things.

The "really important" things to focus on:
Making it a genuinely replayable RPG.
Maintaining all of the randomness that featured in the first two.
Creating powerful heroes, who take part in epic-scale combat
Keeping the focus largely on co-operative play

...let's break that down a bit:

REPLAYABILITY
While it's not really evident in the videos shown earlier, the designers really wanted to emphasise the fact that Diablo III contains randomness just like in the earlier two games. Jay showed off an application that creates "tons of different combinations" when building environments, and explains that there is almost an endless number of layouts possible. There are also random monsters, random items, and they've maintained the higher difficulty levels as there were in earlier games.

One new addition is that of Random Adventures - a whole new feature that introduces random scripted elements almost anywhere in the game world, just to make things more interesting.

EPIC HEROES
Believe it or not, the goal here was actually to make "over-the-top, crazy, cool, awesome destructive powered heroes", according to Jay. They set out to make characters that the player really wants to be, to fulfill some fantasies by letting people step into a different world.

The problem came when designing large-scale combat with "lots and lots of monsters" - how to make the characters massively powerful, but not just by giving them ridiculously over-powered skills. Instead, their aim was to make people feel powerful, by the clever use of effects and sounds. This way, they can create really strong, unique archetypes - such as the Witch Doctor. These are considered to be a hallmark of Diablo II's design, and is something the developers wanted to improve upon and make better for Diablo III.

APPROACHABILITY
"If you can click a mouse, you can play Diablo" is a catchphrase around Blizzard, and Jay explains that they didn't even consider changing the isometric overhead perspective of the game. This would, they feel, have affected the feel of the title, and go against what they wanted.

Instead, the designers ahve been focussing on increasing the depth of the game, creating a difficulty curve that's nice and smooth. Diablo II did it very right, making a game that's "very easy to get into, not too challenging" initially, but as you ramp it up, it gets more and more complex. Even casual gamers will be able to pick up Diablo III and want to keep playing, reaching new skill levels beyond what they thought they might achieve.

CO-OPERATIVE PLAY
In videogames today, a lot of the focus is directed at competitive play - this is turned on its head for Diablo III. (Jay was quick to point out that there will "definitely" be some sort of competitive play aspect to the game - they're just not talking about it just yet!)

Instead, the guys at Blizzard are concentrating on co-operative play. Battle.net is involved, the all-new version that will debut with StarCraft II that features many improvements on the current model. "Everything StarCraft II uses, we will try to take advantage of," joked Jay.

This design supports easy communication, easy connection, matchmaking - basically everything you need to enable you to log on, find friends, get into a game quickly, and then have a great time. They're promising some "massively" cooperative battles, but explain that battle.net is "not quite ready for prime time" - so expect some big announcements in that arena!


A big deal for the developers was trying to make Diablo III a better action game. Part of their plan was to feature less spam, more depth... but don't think you're getting off lightly, you might still have to stock up on peripherals, Jay warns - "It's a mousekiller - we're trying to get it not quite as carpal tunnel as Diablo II!"

One of their main aims was to rebalance the game, featuring skills over potion use. much of the concentration in Diablo and Diablo II was on the use of potions to get out of tricky situations. This didn't really make for compelling combat, and the developers wanted the players to use some more diverse skills. There's a new hotbar being introduced, which will enable gamers to use more combinations of techniques, rather than just relying on smashing the potion button.

This is part of the new user interface, which is less complex than the UI featured in Diablo II. You can use the hotbar to access things, using the same screen real-estate as the old UI. This time around, there's no F-keys, instead using a combination of the hotbar and the mousewheel. This redeveloped UI means that as your skillset becomes more diverse, it effectively becomes easier to use over time, and it's cleaner, so meaning that it's more useful for all gamers, rather than just the few who've invested the time in figuring it out.

...don't worry though, they promise it's still very fastpaced, still very easy to get into, and still all about beating a big pile of monsters.

Fans of the game will likely agree, Diablo III really needed a new health system. The designers experimented with many different ideas - even trying a Halo-esque shield system to regen quickly, but this wasn't the sort of effect they were after, forcing people to leave the battle to regen their health. Part of the Diablo concept was to keep the pace up - so the concept of introducing a system where you finish a battle and then quickly drink a health potion was also out, as it would slow things down. The aim was to have little to no downtime.

What they've decided on is a new health-globe system, which actually drops from monsters! The aim is to get people to fight as much as possible - "I'm low on health... I want to fight monsters!" as well as "I'm high on health... I want to fight monsters!"

What sort of health-globe actually drops is based on your character, where you are in the world, and what it is you're fighting. It's been designed to make characters go places they don't want to go - what they desperately need may only be accessible past ten monsters over in that forest.

If you're wondering how this will interact with their desire for co-op play, it actually fits in quite nicely. If you are in a group and pick up a health-globe, any of your friends who are nearby will also get the same benefit as you do. Now all the good stuff won't just go to the guy at the front of the pack - the Witch Doctor at the back also gets the benefits of all his hard work.

Anyway. The monsters themselves. While some have been designed to be swarming and crushing, with huge numbers - there are also many that are more detailed and more complex (like the Berserker, for instance). It's also interesting to note the great levels of synergy within some of the monsters - such as the shield bearers - they're very slow, but also very tough... until you get rid of their shield, and once they're without protection, they can be dropped with one shot!


The developers didn't want to lose the feeling of Diablo and Diablo II, so they've included a lot of storytelling. If you just want to jump in, hack 'n' slash away, all of the story is opt-in - you won't be subjected to long cutscenes, masses of dialogue or mountains of text. If you want to read it, however, it's all there. The aim here was to improve the sense of the game being set in the end of the world, with lots of stuff going on. There's lots of NPC interaction, plenty of cool events, and loads of cool quests. A lot has been learned about stories and quest designs since Diablo II, and the designers want to incorporate all of that into Diablo III.

Another addition to the storyline is the incorporation of a new "adventure" system, which is an expansion on a lot of the randomness featured in Diablo and Diablo II. Essentially, it puts a scripted event almost anywhere in the game world. So, when you visit a location, it might have an old abandoned house full of undead and a story excerpt about the family who used to live there. Alternatively, there could be a caravan that needs protecting while they're being attacked, or they might need help to get to the next town. Another visit might find a clearing with a character performing an ancient ritual - or there could be absolutely nobody there at all. It's not just the same basic location with different monsters - the adventures are much more random.

Adding to this, the characters - including NPCs - have been designed to be more interactive. They will actually talk to each other in their own voice - telling their own story and driving the game forward. You can see the NPCs being brought to life, which makes the story much more engaging.


Jay explained the primary goals of the design team:
Remain true to the Diablo series
Create a deeper action game (without sacrificing the easy to play, fast nature of the game)
Improve upon existing story elements of the series
...and continue working on a bunch of features they can't talk about right now.

All in all, this is sounding pretty impressive. We're waiting on a fact sheet to give you some specifics, but this insight should be enough to get you frothing at the mouth.