BlizzCon 2019 - Art of Diablo IV Panel Recap

[Stoy]

BlizzCon 2019 - Art of Diablo IV Panel Recap

• General Concept
  
  • The art in Diablo is more grounded and realistic.
  • The team was inspired by medieval art.
  • They want to present magic in a lower fantasy way with Diablo IV.
  • Andariel is returning in Diablo IV and they got to re-imagine her for this version.
• Character Models
  
  • They wanted to make more grounded and realistic characters.
  • New to Diablo IV is the appearance system, which lets you choose from different customization optopns such as hair styles, ethnicities, scars and jewelry.
  • Class legendaries have looks that are inspired by the class that uses it.
  • Character artists also make the weapon and npc models.
• Animation
  
  • Animation team wanted to keep the fluid and fast combat from previous Diablo games, but developed some new technology to do so.
  • Characters have a running stop animation.
  • There are layered turns to show weight shift when turning around.
  • Uphill and downhill runs are now animations that happen seamlessly.
  • 4 Legged creatures have much more natural movement than previous games.
  • They have added layered combat, which is more readible on screen.
• Visual Effects
  
  • You can seamlessly shapeshift from one form to the next by using your different abilities as a Druid.
  • The team is using motion blur to show force, power, and speed in a more grounded way.
  • Dynamic lighting is being used on spell effects.
  • They can now put weather in the spell effects, seen with the Druid.
  • Death animations are tied to skills, and so you'll see different enemy death animations based on the attack you use.
  • Boss death animations are unique as well, such as Ashava's chest exploding upon death.
• Environments
  
  • Medieval Scotland was the inspiration for Scosglen.
  • The team collects information of real world areas and uses them in their in-game biomes.
• Lighting
  
  • The team took a very naturalistic approach to lighting in Diablo IV.
  • The new engine can take a tile set and gut the lighting completely.
  • They use a lot of black depth fog.
• Q and A
  
  • There will be an equal amount of class appearances for each class.
  • Your character will be in cutscenes.
  • There will be class item sets that change your character's appearance.
  • There is a lot of rain in Diablo IV where it makes sense. Dynamic weather is used.
  • A game art portfolio should have wire frames and under the hood models.
  • The team discusses if certain things are too dark a lot.

[dhru2]

I don't know you guys but D3 looks better than this. I think D4 graphic will not age well. Mainly the surface lighting is really bad, like in POE. Makes you puke looking at the bad reflections of light at the edges of the objects. The effects look really minimal like if they are planing to release this to phones in the near future...

When an older game (Lost Ark) looks better than this...

[Spurious]

Personally I think the art style in D3 was better. It's more stylized, and prevents the graphics from looking dated too fast. I mean just look at wow. The game is 15 years old and the cartoonish graphics have helped keep the look of wow intact. By going so hyper realistic it's just going to look like many other games.

D3's short comings were gameplay wise. Not design/art.

[jstnw89]

It's still in it's infancy and it already looks a lot better than D3 so I can only imagine it getting better as time goes on..

Not feeling the outside as much but the dungeons looking amazing

[Ohmmega]

Personally I think the art style in D3 was better. It's more stylized, and prevents the graphics from looking dated too fast. I mean just look at wow. The game is 15 years old and the cartoonish graphics have helped keep the look of wow intact. By going so hyper realistic it's just going to look like many other games.

D3's short comings were gameplay wise. Not design/art.

D3 is cartonish, the univers isn't diablo except for the name, I quit playing it at chapter 2. D3 is a spinoff of Torchlight, D4 is the true successor of D2

[Nitex]

Would love to see a Diablo 2 remake with this engine. It just looks amazing. It looks exactly how I always wanted Diablo to look.

[kythor]

I didn't like D3 mainly for its Art/design. It feels too much like WoW, very colorful and bright. I guess it'll work well as a WoW in isometric but not Diablo.

This D4 looks way better and I'm loving it so far.

[Thrashmetal]

People why say "D3 looks better", I have a question: when last time you played D3? D3 is ugly AF with additional WoW painted textures syndrome.
I want Diablo to be realistic, to use propper shaders and what I see here is great start