WWI08: Lore and art in Diablo 3 (Part 2 - Q&A)
Q&A with Leo and Brian
Q: In the end of Diablo 2 we went to hell, killed him, smashed his Soulstone and essence of him, Bael, Maphesto ... how do we justify him coming back?
Leo: You don't know for sure that Diablo is coming back. [Ed: ... !] We don't want to divulge too much of the story, we just want to say that it will be entertaining when you come to it.
Q: In previous game you had quests to achieve to get, say the Horadric Cube. Will there be similar quests? Will we be able to get the Horadric Cube again?
Leo: The way the process works is we look into the story, look into the lore, and we want that to drive the gameplay and drive the quests. I can say there will be quests related to lore. In Diablo 2 they didn't just set out to say "let's make this great cube," it came out of the design process.
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Q: I wanted to know about the random generation of outdoor environments
Brian: The extent of the randomness outdoor environs is still being explored. One of the interesting things we're doing artistically is the random adventures in which small pockets of the environment will be randomly swapped out.
Leo: What we're doing in the environments Brian mentioned we have small plots of land where we'll swap out small occurrences. Cool eye candy can help tell the story, self-contained ways to explain, maybe, a specific detail of the universe or offer an intriguing piece of information. But you might get that tidbit while playing the game and your friend might not.
Q: What are places from Diablo 2 we'll see and how have they changed in the past 20 years?
Leo: The game starts in new Tristram, just outside of old Tristram. Deckard Cain comes back and you'll see an NPC or hero or two you've seen before but other than that, you'll just have to wait.
Q: Hard to believe people would have just forgotten [the events of] Diablo 1 and 2 when they left obvious environmental impacts on the world and write it off as a fairy tale.
Leo: People can't deny that weird stuff isn't happening. Civilizations fall all the time by being overrun by weird bizarre creatures. The question is whether this is part of their ordinary world or is this a large-scale war. Denial mechanism, and if you didn't experience it yourself, you're just taking someone's word about Diablo being dead, etc.
Q: Are you going to add more riddles and Easter Eggs like the cow level?
Leo: We put that sort of stuff into every Blizzard game. we don't have a solid list yet but I'm sure there will be.
Q: What's up with Innarius (the angel in hell -- used the Worldstone to create sanctuary -- in an arrangement between heaven and hell, he was taken to hell for punishment)? Is he still in the prison of mirrors?
Leo: As far as we know, he's still there.
Q: How destructive is it going to be? What are we going to get to blow up and smash?
Brian: As much as we need to to have the game be as fun as possible. It's something we're constantly exploring.
