Okay. It's been a week since Blizzard held their Worldwide Invitational in Paris, so that's plenty of time for the details to surface and more information to be revealed. Let's head back there, to get some more of the lowdown on the little game we like to call Diablo 3.

The first panel on the main stage on the second day of events was all about the World Lore and Environment Art from Diablo 3, and this was such a huge topic I've actually split it into two posts so it's a little easier to digest.

While Art Director Brian Morrisroe took the microphone for the second half of the presentation, going into some details about the art involved in the game, and what the art department were aiming for, the first half of the presentation saw Lead World Designer Leonard Boyarski concentrated totally on the lore aspect of the game, and that's what's in this first part.

(By the way, if you're a game trivia buff, the name Leonard Boyarski may be ringing some bells. He was one of the three major players behind the original Fallout, where he was designer, writer, art director and lead artist on the project. He also worked on Fallout 2, before leaving Interplay to create Troika Games, who then went on to create Arcanum and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, before closing down in early 2005. Looks like Blizzard snapped him up, and now here he is - Lead World Designer for Diablo 3. I think we're in safe hands.)

To begin, Leonard briefly showed us characters from a couple of zones that will be explorable in Diablo 3 - Skovos and Caldeum. Part of the dilemma faced by the artists is how to explain details to the player, who is preoccupied with running around trying to get his next quest - without labouring the point or forcing information down their throat.

The answer that Blizzard are trying with Diablo 3 is to make the NPCs quite stylised, so they reflect where they come from. This is useful in two important ways - to create a great RPG, you need great NPCs, you need to play in a living world that has some depth to it. In order to create this depth, the world needs culture. The opposite applies as well - if the NPCs and other characters dress and behave in a certain way according to one particular culture, then the player will learn more about the way of life much quicker and easier than if they have reams of text forced upon them.

So - as soon as you meet a man who claims to come from Caldeum, and he is dressed in Eastern garb, you will form an opinion of what Caldeum will be like - or when you encounter someone from Skovos, they will be decked out in a way that illustrates the fact it is an ancient city where rogues come from.


Two looks at Caldeum, plus a spooky church
Leonard then went on to explain how the story for the game has changed over the years. People say that you don't need a story for an action game, but Leonard disagrees, believing that a good action game will also feature a good story, one that gives a lot of emphasis to the characters and the action itself, rather than something separate.

The aim should be to make you want to find out what happens next in the story equally as much as you'd like to get the next level or get the next piece of armour. As long as the developers can keep your interest, you're going to be more engaged in the game, and stick around longer.

Another element that the devs have worked on, trying to engage the gamer, is to expand the player voice in the game. While it was originally used to explain when an inventory was full, or perhaps to make a comment after a monster had been killed, it's now much more frequent, and much more indepth. All of the characters are unique now, with their own specific personalities and voices, they're now much less generic or "off the shelf". Leonard explained that part of this change has introduced a different conversation system to the game, too. Originally there were monologues, people ingame talking at you. In Diablo 3, the storytelling is more engaging, more lively - where your character will reply to the NPCs, and the player will feel more like they're driving the action, and "less like an errand boy".

The story of the game is told through lore books that are findable ingame - but also through the environment. Scripted events are set up to explain things in more creative ways - for example, you are walking through a forest and discover a trail of dead bodies. You decide to follow this trail, and come into a clearing that is smeared with blood, with a warrior sitting on top of a giant pile of dead monsters. The warrior is peacefully meditating, despite the destruction all around him. Just by painting this image, the warrior character is much more interesting than if you are merely told about him.

At the same time though, players have told Blizzard that they don't want to be "bogged down with a story", so the devs have taken that into consideration as well - with the story being used as a creative means to get details across, rather than necessarily stopping the action.

Deckard Cain

So... how about a recap of the story so far...
The game starts in New Tristram, which is just outside of Old Tristram. It is 20 years after Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction, the expansion pack to the original sequel. We left Deckard Cain convinced that Hell was positioned to invade Earth... but it has not. The Worldstone was destroyed... and not very much has happened since, despite any predictions you may have heard.

Cain is racked with guilt, feeling responsible for the events of the first two games - he should have been able to tell what was about to happen when he saw the signs. (Leonard points out here that we're glad Cain didn't stop things - if he had, there'd have been no games!)

Many of the people who lived through the original events are no longer alive (Leonard explains that this is in the Middle Ages - if you live past 40, you're lucky (Deckard Cain, by this reasoning, is very lucky!), and most people die much younger. Many of those who are left, who lived through the terrifying events are now heroes (and you may meet some old friends, enemies or acquaintances) - but many of those who were normal, run-of-the-mill people back then didn't really know how to cope with this kind of "serious evil", and a lot of them went crazy. Even if they survived the ordeals, many have now disappeared. Because this means there are limited first-hand witnesses on board, many of the younger generation believe that the stories are myths, exaggeration, a kind of scary fairy tale.

For those of us on this side though, those who know that it did happen, there are several questions that need to be answered.

Archangel Tyrael

Firstly - what has happened to Tyrael? He was the angel who helped mankind, going against the wishes of Heaven. At the end of Diablo II, he was forced to destroy the Worldstone, and nobody has seen or heard from him in the two decades since.

How did this event change him? While he's an angel and would therefore react differently to a human, what sort of effect or impact did this explosion have on him? Why has he disappeared? ...is he dead?

...and secondly, the big, obvious question - Why hasn't Hell invaded? The destruction of the Worldstone was supposed to trigger an influx - but this never happened. All of this adds fuel to the fire that the stories are just that - stories - and the fabled disasters didn't happen.

However - we gamers know they did - and Diablo 3 is all about showing what happens next, to put our minds (and those of the villagers) at rest.

Coming up next: Blizzard's Art Director, Brian Morrisroe, takes a long hard look at the art featured in Diablo 3, and explains why some things look the way they do.