Leo & Kevin - Page 2

Diablo has never officially supported modding although they haven't really banned it. Is there any thought towards modding going into this or even map editing? Have you guys thought about including a map editor?

Leo: We talked about it early on and we considered it but the way we put together our maps and the fact that it's random ... it's very artistic-centric. And, on top of that, the fact that it's so random it's like, would people just change the random number generator? You know what I mean? [laughs]

I suppose not, if It's already random.

Leo: We don't hand-build our dungeons anyways, but the way we build our maps kind of makes that prohibitive. But we're always looking at what the end users might want so we did look at including a map editor and we just said that it's never been a big part of Diablo. So we didn't feel it was necessary.

Kevin: We're certainly not opposed to modding it.

Leo: Yeah, we're not going to put in things that, "Oh my God, you can never mod this!" If somebody comes along and makes this great editor and makes this great mod...

Kevin: At this point, we're knee-deep in just making the game. That's sort of at the periphery of our discussions at this point.

So regarding the new loot drop system. If I'm understanding this correctly, if you're playing in a party, when you see drops, you see the items on the ground, that's what you can pick up. The other characters in your party won't see that. But you can pick it up and drop it again for someone else.

Leo: Yes.

Kevin: That's right.

Does it actually have to enter your inventory or can you just immediately pick it up, you know, when you have your inventory open, you have the option of kind of, "Alright, I'm just going to drag it over here."

Leo: I believe, as it stands right now in the demo, you pick it up into your inventory and then drop it. But we'll figure out the easiest way for people to do that is if they want to share. We'll try to make that as fast as possible.

In the character selection screen, the female Monk is not available. Is that just because she's not finished yet, the female? There will be a female monk?

Leo: That's right.

Kevin: All of our classes will have gender choices.

In the demo that's playable here, have you guys hidden anything, any Easter Eggs?

Kevin: There's some Easter Eggs.

Leo: Yeah, there's something hidden in there. It's just fun stuff. It's nothing that the people are going to be like, "Oh my God, I found this thing. I found the fifth class!" Nothing like that. It's just fun little jokes here and there.

The Monk has a very limited weapon set. In the demo, nearly every weapon the Monk picked up had a big red X on it because he can't use it. Is that how he will be in the final game?

Leo: Not quite as limited as it is now but yeah.

Right now the staff he comes with is the only thing I've been able to use.

Leo: He's got fist weapons too, like fist knives, pretty cool-looking stuff.

Kevin: But it's just not all done yet. So we wanted to make sure what we did have on the demo is of the same quality as the other classes. We had to limit that.

Leo: And the difference between him and the other characters is that his stuff will probably take a lot longer to percolate into the game because his skills are very much based on his weapon choices, kind of like how the Assassin in D2 was very much defined by her weaponry. That's kind of how he is. When he has a staff, he has a lot of skills available to him. If you've picked them and bought them I guess, they're very sweeping. Whereas if he has fist weapons, his skills are based on quick hits and stuff.

So that's kind of the way we're going with him. So as you can imagine, it's not as easy as just putting a sword in a character's hand that disappears when he does all his skills and stuff. With the caveat, of course, that if we decide that's not the way we're going to go, we're going to give him 20 weapons, you know. [laughs]

With the whole martial arts influence on the monk, has it been tempting to throw in like a Bruce Lee cry when he goes nuts in there?

Leo: No, we're trying to kind of combine an Eastern European Monk with the Asian feel. We don't want to go one way or another. It's been a difficult balancing process, and my artists looked pretty perplexed when I first approached them and said, "No, he's got to be kind of more European" and they're like, "What do you mean?" [laughs] So it was a little bit of a balancing act but I think we're getting that feel. We're really trying to do something that has its own little niche. It feels a little bit like he's got some of that Asian influence, you know, in some kind of a weird combination, so we probably wouldn't want to throw that in there. But who knows? It could be that down the road we think that's a great idea.

Kevin: It is martial arts fantasy fulfillment but with a twist. We wanted to do something creative with him. We like what we did.