I will have to direct your attention to this earlier blog post of mine Because these recent news just confirm my theories and everything I wrote there.
What am I talking about, you ask? Well, simply This: Blizzard has officially announced today that a sequel to the award winning and critically and commercially acclaimed Diablo II is currently in development!
Official site can be found here.
Here is the official cinematic teaser:
So far only two character classes has been confirmed, namely the Barbarian and the Witch Doctor. The Barbarian should be known to players of the previous installment. The Witch Doctor, however, is more of a mystery.
Here’s a sample of Barbarian gameplay. As in the previous installment, the Barbarian relies on cold steal and physical prowess to survive in combat. As evident from the video, the Barbarian has several Area of Effect attacks in his repertoire, such as a jump attack that covers a lot of distance, as well as annihilates a group of enemies. It’s slightly similar to Charge or Intercept from World of Warcraft only 50 times cooler.
A shockwave attack that deals damage to enemy targets in a line.
A cleaving attack similar to Cleave from World of Warcraft, that does damage to at least 2 enemies per swipe. This ability may be passive, rather than active.
A ground stomp, that disarms enemies of their shields.
And a whirlwind attack similar to, well.. Whirlwind from World of Warcraft.
Here’s a sample of Witch Doctor gameplay. Not much is known to me about this class, except for a few abilities he possesses. One of them is the ability to summon pets, as well as amplifying their strengths.
As evident in the video, the Witch Doctor also appears to possess magical melee and Area of Effect attacks.
It also seems he has a few debuffs up his sleeves, such as curses and/or diseases Which makes sense, I mean he is a Witch Doctor.
As with the previous installment, online gaming will take place on battle.net
Take a gander at a few official screenshots here:
The atmosphere of the previous installments remains intact in Diablo III
A Bridge Too Far
The Witch Doctor making house calls
As I said, Diablo III appears to maintain the much-loved “Diablo atmosphere”, and it’ll be interesting to see how the story evolves, and how well it connects with the already-very-solid mythology. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a lot of new books expanding upon the Diablo universe. It’s simply the Blizzard way.
Here’s 10 minutes worth of gameplay footage:
As you can see, Diablo III also maintains the essence of the Hack & Slash, action role-playing game that was Diablo II. The overview camera, the very similar, yet improved interface, the dungeons, the combat and the overall gameplay all appears to contain the Diablo essence.
I’m looking forward to learning more about the new features, as the already revealed additions such as weapon enchants and environment interaction, sounds promising.
Watching the Barbarian slaughter his way through the tombs with such prowess and mobility, feeds the Kimbo inside me!
I find myself looking enormously forward to this game, and will await further information with great anticipation. It’s been at least four years since I played Diablo 2 properly, maybe it’s time to re-install and level a character? Perhaps say.. Barbarian?
Kimbo laughs with malevolent glee
You see what I mean? These only lend further proofs to my theories, and validates everything I wrote In this post! It’s all there! It’s all there, I tell you!
Anyway, with that being said, I conclude this mad ramble and leave you to your sanity.
By the way, I originally intended this as a “Veronica Mars” or “Eating my own Words” post, but decided to postpone t a day or so, after Blizzard made their announcement today.
“This place is thick with the stench of ghouls“.
