[Cold Iron]

Ok I almost came in my pants last night when I thought of this:

DIII. On console. In HD.

What are the chances of Blizzard making the leap?

[Mentalist]

Diablo 3 is in development.
doub they'll go console, though

[Stalker]

Yea I also doubt console. Blizzard doesn't have a history with console type games. The last one I can remember was Starcraft Ghost... and that was shelved. Before that there was a port of Starcraft for Nintedo 64. It would be cool to see that or Starcraft 2 on a console, but I wouldn't expect it.

[Mentalist]

Blizzard has Battle.net as its own time-test multiplayer tool

and blizzard always tries to make their games good, but not awful resource hogs, so that you don't need top of the line, but just decent PC to play it.

I doubt they'll go console, b/c then they'll have to either make the controls gamepad oriented and port it to PC which would piss off those used to mouse-based control.
or they'll have to develop the 2 separately.

[Cold Iron]

Game controls are easy to change. I also doubt they will do it. But how cool would it be

[Spindrift]

I'm not sure how well it would translate to console. It's a very point & clicky type of game. You would either have to make a mouse cursor analogue that is controlled by the sticks, which is slow and imprecise compared to a mouse (remember starcraft on the console? the controls were abysmal) and would require changing the whole pacing of the game to suit that limitation. Or you would have to implement some kind of auto aiming system.
Auto-aim systems are plagued with problems. Especially for top down isometric type games when you have tons of enemies of various strengths onscreen at once (something diablo is known for). You have to trust that the autoaim ai will pick the enemy you want to target. Sometimes you want to go straight for a powerful enemy to take it down quickly, sometimes you want to clear some minions first because you don't want to get flanked while your wailing on the tough guy. Choosing which enemy to go for and when is often key to winning fights in diablo. Auto aim would seriously mess with that. Works okay for FPS/3rd person, but for diablo?

neither approach seems easy to implement, or fun to play.

This post has been edited by Spindrift: 14 January 2009 - 12:43 AM

[Stalker]

Yea I agree with Spin. The controls aren't as great on console when you get into games like this. The RTS' that have been coming out on consoles are trying to tweak the controls to be user friendly but to do that some buttons are used for everything.
Endwar is a good example of RTS on console, it may have been overlooked but its voice command to control unit system worked out nicely.

Also when you are Blizzard and make over a billion dollars from WoW subscriptions, the need isn't as great to expand their base.

[Mentalist]

plus Blizzard knows it has a steady fanbase of PCers that will buy Diablo III on PC--same as they have huge fllowing waiting for SCII

[Cold Iron]

You could do an R1, L1 paddle hit to select an enemy or item drop, combined with the stick click. I think it would be fine.

I agree that blizzard don't need to do it, and probably won't, but I for one am not going out to buy a new PC when DIII comes out (which i would need to to play it) and I'm certainly not going to spend up on a gfx card that can play on 1080p. So I will end up not even playing it until it is years old (same as I did with DII).

[Mentalist]

heh
i'm due for a new laptop soonish, I think
i'd liek to get it, ut not for DIII, which is years away
I want to play DOWII and SCII though....

[Cold Iron]

i'm too habitual for rts, i never change tactics

[Stalker]

Starcraft II FTW!!!

I absolutely need this game to come out soon. My laptop is like 4 months old, high quality and it needs some great games that have stunning graphics to play with.

[Mentalist]

Stalker, have you seen the awesome Dawn of War II cinematic yet?

[Stalker]

I don't think so Ment.

Is that the Warhammer 40k based game?

[Mentalist]

yes

tyranids are back

[Stalker]

Yeah, that looks very good. This may be a game to get into heh.

I like Warhammer 40k, when I see the omnibuses in the stores I usually pick them up. They are like 1000 pages for $10 and is some violent, action-packed sci-fi. So I bet I would enjoy the game. Thanks for the link.

[Cold Iron]

I like the way you go through levels rather than a static map but would've liked to see some fps ability in it

[Aptorian]

That trailer reminds me of the teaser for Warcraft 3

An orc and a human knight are battling back and forth on a windswept hill, it's really awesome and suddenly a giant fireball falls from the sky and knocks them over. Out of the crater comes a burning infernal and tears them to pieces.

God, that game was so awesome.

[Mentalist]

indeed
DOWII from the gameplay trailers appears to be much more squad based. Each marine squad is specialized and has a "hero-type" commander.
haven't seen any base-building gameplay yet....

so as to not hijack the topic:

I think what attracts me to DIII the most is the promised idea of non-lineriarity.
I play games for the story, rather then for the GFX, so the idea of a world basically open for exploration appeals to me...

[Sir Thursday]

Mentalist, on Jan 14 2009, 05:23 PM, said:

indeed
DOWII from the gameplay trailers appears to be much more squad based. Each marine squad is specialized and has a "hero-type" commander.
haven't seen any base-building gameplay yet....

so as to not hijack the topic:

I think what attracts me to DIII the most is the promised idea of non-lineriarity.
I play games for the story, rather then for the GFX, so the idea of a world basically open for exploration appeals to me...

I've always wondered how story = open world. Seems like in order to have one you kind of have to compromise the other...


Sir Thursday