French Translation - Overgame

We met with Bill Roper on April 22 at Havas Interactive in Paris, one of the many stops of his European tour of Diablo II. (He had just gotten off from London and was leaving for Milan the next day [maybe we should expect an Italian review?]) Despite his tiredness, Bill showed us the latest demo version of Diablo2.

"Rogue-like games really influenced us when we created Diablo. When we started conceptualizing, we got together and said to ourselves:

-remember Rogue and Nethack?
-yeah! yeah!
-Remember how goo they were? Everything was placed randomly, you never knew what you would find ahead of time. You would pick up these great
items all throughout the game and then when you started over, everything was different!
-yeah! yeah!
-Well, that's what we want to do.
-Great!

But we also wanted to be graphically stunning (or rich), like all games in 1997 had to be. And clearly, I believe that our characters were a little bit better than exclamation points and weird ASCII characters... (laugh). That said, we wanted to reproduce that sensation, to remember how much we had had fun, with those and other games like Dungeons and Dragons... We would get together on weekend nights and say... you know, we only have to do one part... let's make a dungeon! Diablo was clearly that. That's where most of our inspiration came from." (ok, this was totally pointless to translate, but I'm doing this simultaneously as I read so...)

They shared some of their memories of past D&D games and Bill Roper entertained us: As a cleric, he never offered his services for free. When his comrades were half dead he would say "And what do I get if I heal you?" That's how we like our teams :)

Finally Diablo was no more than a more evolved version of Moria with graphics. But for part 2, things are going to change. Roper says, that while Diablo was a very vertical game (go down, come back up, go down further, etc.) DiabloII will be horizontal. The levels, split into Acts are much bigger and happen occasionally outdoors, which gives us a nice change from the damp and dank smelly underground. More so, the map is covered with buildings (caves, monasteries, towers, houses, cathedrals...) in which, contrary to Diablo, we can enter. Inside we can find the usual subterranean passages but especially we can find NPCs with which to talk to and receive quests or find out rumors. In all, the amount of places to explore will be at least 5 times bigger than in Diablo.

Going from one point to another in such a huge world could become very tiring. Within the first few hours of Diablo (until the discovery of TP) we can remember having to go back and forth between the catacombs and the village to get healed or to buy new equipment. To counteract this problem, the creators have on one side thought of the ability to "run". This is limited by a stamina meter however. On the other side, there will also be a system of interconnected teleporters. They will be in a fixed location and will be permanently defined when you start a game. Using one of these allows the player to reach any other teleporter, as long as he has activated it first. (I think this is new info...)

As you probably already know, DiabloII will have five different character classes: the amazon, the necromancer, the paladin, the barbarian and the sorceress. Each of these classes will have their own unique abilities, but the greatest new feature is the ability to develop your character in different areas, almost like sub-classes. Each character will have a skill tree which the player can develop as he likes. For example, one amazon may choose to train herself specifically in the javelin while another chooses to develop her bow abilities. The developers are hoping this way to create a larger variety of characters.

Multiplayer

We recall how Diablo games on the internet were severely polluted by cheating problems. Certain players were able to modify their characters in such a way as to make them super strong or even invincible. They would then amuse themselves by killing all the other players they would encounter. There was a time when playing on Bnet was more dangerous than biking on the highway (yeah...). Bill Roper assures us that this problem will not happen in DiabloII. Without going into details, he explains that a character played on Bnet will have his stats stored on Blizzard's servers, and not on the players HD. Therefore, the division between modem games and internet games is complete. So no more acquiring your XP at home in peace before heading out to confront the hell of Bnet.

It still has not been decided whether or not to allow player killing. One solution would be to have a specific place designated for players who want to duel with others, a kind of arena (I thought this was already implemented?). The other would be to check a box if we want to be able to kill other players. This idea didn't impress us much. for example if your friend in a game just walked up to a creature that you had almost died killing and took the unique ring that was on him, you would want to slice him up into little bits. But if you didn't check that little box, tough luck! We notified Bill Roper of this, adding that never being 100% sure of our playing partners loyalty is part of the game. He was in complete agreement, and said that they would do everything they could so that suspicion and treachery would always be present (??? personally I like just a good co-op), especially since teams can have up to 8 players. Havas Interactive has planned the opening of some servers in France.

One of Diablo's strong points was the unique items, which were very rare and brought extra special abilities to their wearer. Obviously, a sort of commerce had developed to trade or sell these wonders. We could see players drop items in town on the ground, and then take minute calculated steps in order to exchange places and get the sword or helm of their dreams! In Diablo II, unique objects will be greater in number and some will be extremely rare. However, we will no longer find potions to permanently increase a characters stats. Bill Roper says it was a source of unbalance between the players.

Trading will still take place but without the wonderful little dance steps: Blizzard has devised a secure trade system, a kind of window where the players can put the items they would like to trade or buy. The agreement of both parties will be necessary to effectuate the transaction. This trade window will also be present on Bnet outside of games. This easy way of trading should stimulate commerce. We asked Bill Roper what his reaction would be if players started selling unique items not with game money but with real money, as has happened recently in Ultima Online. With a smile, Bill Roper replied that he hadn't really thought of it, but that it didn't bother him. "It would mean that they loved the game", was all he answered, and apparently that is all that interests him.

Page 3, screenshots and Conclusion

The game is far from being done. Today, Act 3 is finished which means that about 70% of the game is complete. In the demo presented to us, there was still some unknowns. For example, the way in which inventories are going to be handled. Right now, it is possible to place items onto other items (for example, a spell book can contain several scrolls and a belt can hold a few potions) but this can still change. We were also unable to appreciate the 3D acceleration, Bill Roper's labtop did not have a sufficient graphics card. (you'd think they'd give him something good?). Without the 3D effects, we can still assure you that the graphics are satisfying.

 

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