E3 Unveiled

Item Display:

Pressing the ALT key highlights items laying on the ground, making them display their names in a tooltip-like box that scrolls out from them.  Since Diablo II no longer uses the old 8x8 tile systems, picking items up is changed task.  Now, by pressing ALT, you can click on the tooltip box containing the item´s name and you will pick it up.

More on the Convert Skill:

This year´s E3 convention unveiled many new things previously unknown about Diablo II, but one of the best and strangest was the news of a new universal skill called "Convert."  When monsters die, they drop various body parts as well as items; such things like eyes, hearts, jawbones, and spines.  Each of these spare bodyparts has the potential to become valuable items once the Convert skill is used upon them.  Some of the examples from the E3 build were hearts becoming healing potions, eyes becoming mana potions, jawbones and spines becoming arrows.  This skill will be very important because, to our knowledge, only the Amazon has the true healing ability.

Perspective Scrolling and Parallax:

Perspective Scrolling and Parallax is new display option useable with 3D acceleration in Diablo II.  This display option is said to provide a more immersive display of the game with objects disappearing into the background as you travel away from them.  I don´t know if we have any screenshots were this display system is being used, but as soon as we do you can expect a thorough analysis.

An example: your character is running through the town in Act II.  The buildings at the foreground move quickly, while the buildings in the background advance slowly.  What this does is establish the isometric point of view completely, showing you what it would look like from your actual vantage point if the characters were to run.  Very interesting...

Game Saving:

One of the most confusing aspects of Diablo II was the announcement that you could save games in multiplayer.  Basically, in Diablo II you can save a game while you are on Battle.net, that way you can reload it when you want to resume play.  Reloading the game restores the state things were in when you saved it, but other things may unfold differently than the game you had previously been in.

Advanced AI:

Diablo II will have a greatly modified AI, many times better than Diablo´s.  For a good look at how much better it will be, read this sample from an E3-goer´s analysis:

I saw part of the Blood Raven quest in Act One, which is a heretic Rogue Priestess who has turned to the side of evil, and you must attempt to slay her. She was frighteningly fast, screaming around the cemetery in Act One, shooting spells at you and then running off the screen far faster than you could move. And while pursuing her you would nearly always run into other monsters, Fallen packs or Gargantuan Beasts or the like. And she'd continue throwing spells at you while you dealt with the other monsters. Much harder and more complex to deal with that quest than with any of the quests in Diablo 1, I'd say. And that was just a very early Act One quest.

No more straightforward attack till you drop monsters now, everything seems to have a strategy and method of attack.  Makes me wonder how intelligent Diablo might be this time around?

- Darkk (WebMaster)