Op Ed [Sep 22, 2011, 10:38 am ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
GameSpy - Should Diablo III have been first person?
I'll admit it. My first ever hands-on time with any Diablo game occurred just 24 hours ago, when my inexperienced Demon Hunter took his first fumbling steps into the Diablo III beta's dark and ominous dungeons. It took just three hours before I'd hacked and slashed my way to the main storyline's satisfying conclusion, but in that short period of time my eyes were opened to an entirely new perspective on a gaming world. As a lover of first person games, the isometric camera system in Diablo III felt very unfamiliar, and I inevitably wondered why Blizzard didn't make the leap to first person like so many other developers. This led me to wonder - should Diablo III have been a first person game, and what are the pros and cons of this approach? Let's find out.
Beamer wrote on Sep 22, 2011, 18:50:
Know what never works with FP? Randomly generated content. It works in Diablo because you're so removed from the landscape that you don't notice how sparse and repetitive it is. Zoom down to eye level and you will.
I think that back in the 90's/early 2000's you'd get that kind of sparse and/or repetitive content. I remember Soldier of Fortune 2 had the option for random multiplayer levels. It was almost there (the experiment worked), but the tech wasn't ready. I think that nowadays developers could certainly figure out a way to make better use of tileset transitions and add random environmental things like stalagmites, flora/fauna, rocks, use of water and weather in a random way that will be more interesting and immersive.
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