Irvine 2011: Interview mit Jason Bender (en)
Can we get some information about the Book of Cain?
Yeah, thats a compilation of Deckard Cains writings of his research that he has done over the course of his life, mostly the last 20 years. Kind of consolidating from Deckard Cains point of view, the lore of the world, different aspects of the world what he has found out about things. And also putting things together what he thinks is going to happen, trying to figure out whats coming down the road.
Will the book be released before the game?
I am not sure what the actual release date is on, I have to look into that.
Will we learn more about the Horadrim?
Yes, you will learn more about the horadrim, there is some story elements, backstory elements, that you will find out about, little bit about their history, something like this. There are some story elements about what the horadrim have done, lets put it that way.
You are working on the game for a long time now, how do you keep the same motivation?
The process itself is fairly exciting and because it’s changing all the time while we are itterating and reitterating. You know there is days where you think “Oh my God, we gonna redo this again?”, but most of the time it’s not hard to keep up your excitement for it because there is a lot of playing the game and as the game progresses it gets better, it keeps you excited.
A lot of players fall in love with the Diablo universe and want to know more about it, but they don’t know where to begin. Do you plan to release somehing like a book of lore with information about the Diablo universe (world, characters, lore)?
The Book of Cain is pretty much that, it is going to give you that and we also have some early novels that we did. They just kind of took place in the Sanctuary and they really didn’t add much to the lore, but we do have a trilogy of books called the “Sin War”. They talk about what happened when heaven and hell first discovered the existance of Sanctuary. That’s a little bit deeper on the lore front, so there is that as well.
Can you get some of this information in the game? A timeline or something like this?
We have a timeline up on the web, but in the game you can have optional conversations, side conversations, with characters and get a lot of backstory about what has happened in the world and the state of things.
“And the Heavens shall tremble” indicates that the heavenly forces finally take a stand and an active role in the story. To what degree is this the case?
You have to play to find that out *laughs*
Which will be the differences between nightmare and hell difficulty? Will there be more monster types or just more monsters?
I’m not sure exaactly, thats really out of my area of expertise. But it will be harder. *laughs*
There are monsters from Diablo 2 that had their comeback in Diablo 3. What was the reason for doing this and how did you change them?
The reason we brought back a lot of creatures from Diablo 2 and Diablo 1 for that matter was because we felt that there was more to do with them. We felt there was a deeper story to tell, there was a way to expand the universe with them, maybe treat them a bit more seriously. Like making them feel more like a part of the natural world. What we call the Lacuney now, were just called panthers, but now they have a culture and a place in the world. They are natural creatures and it was kind of like our whole vision for this game was really taking the existing franchise and giving it more depth. One of the ways that we felt that we could do that was taking existing things and really show how they fit into the world. It felt like we made only new stuff and kind of tried to give that depth and show the world was deeper with all this new stuff, it seemed almost like a disconnect, if that makes sense. Also people are already familiar with this stuff, so I think it’s kind of interessting for us to go back and bring it forward and give it depth. Then people have the touchdown of having seen it before.
At the end of Diablo 3, will there be a true ending or will there be a cliffhanger or something between the two?
It will have an ending. *laughs*
How comes the old heros (except for the barbarian) are nowhere to be seen? Surely an order as powerfull as the Viz-Jaq’taar for example wouldn’t just vanish from Sanctuario.
The orders, let’s take for example the circle of the Necromancers, there are still Necromancers in the world and they are still a powerfull force in the world. The reason we decided to bring back the Barbarian was because we felt that he could be done better. We did not return to the Necromancer from Diablo 2, because we felt that there wasn’t really much to add to him. We felt he was done very well in Diablo 2, it would have just been repeating while we think the Diablo 3 version of the Barbarian has so much more depth and is more what we had envisioned what he should be. So we are not saying these other factions don’t exist anymore, we are just focusing on different ones.
Are there quests that you can do exclusively with the templar or any other follower?
No, we explored that early on, but the difficulty with that is we have totally random content and if you start the game with the templar as a follower and then we roll the world and say we have to roll this event for the Templar and then you switch Followers, but you have rolled a world with a certain percentage of the world dedicated to this quest. And now you are out there and you have content that can’t be played. Does that make sense? So that was more like an original conception that we would have Sidequests that pertained specifically to the Followers after the classes and it just felt like we could add a lot more depth for all the players by adding story elements like the Followers are part of the main story arc. You meet them and hear about their Quest, you can talk to them and hear about their backstory as well as them talking to you while you run around. And thats kind of how we involved them in the story.
How old is Deckard Cain exactly? He already was old in Diablo 1, he was even older in Diablo 2 and now 20 years later he still somehow managed not to die of old age.
I think is that he is probably in his eighties. That would be my guess because I think Diablo 1 and 2 were only weeks or a month apart and because of the middle age or Renaissance or whatever you wanna call it he probably wasn’t older than sixty. Sixty was a rifled age back in those days. So he is getting up there, but I think he is probably in his eighties.
Will it be possible in the future to mix two spells of two or three characters like setting on fire a wall of zombies?
I don’t know if we have plans on expanding the spellsets like that. That would be a question more for Jay, I don’t think we have that plan at this point.
Will there be events that are influenced by the time of the day or even the day of the week? Like a dungeon only appearing on a wednesday?
No, because we wanted it to be, regardless of wether we wanted it to be or not, Diablo is a fast moving game where you are always moving forward, never pausing for a breath and always pushing forward. So for us to have Content like “Oh my god I have to get into this dungeon, but i can’t do it right now” just really breaks that pace.
If a level 40 and a level 30 character in a game, will it be easier than if there were two level 40 characters in the game?
First of all you have two things, the level of difficulty of the game and then you have the level of difficulty because you have multiplayer. If I am a level 40 character and I go back in and play Act 1 in Normal Mode it’s going to be really easy for me. We don’t scale difficulty of monsters depending on your level, so it just has to do with what area of the game you are playing. If you are playing the first area of the game you are going to fight Level 5 monster or whatever they are, regardless of what level you are.
Will enemies be able to buff other monsters, like increase their attack or attack speed?
I don’t know if we have anything like that right now.
Will we see some attributes on crafted items that won’t exist on rare or legendary items?
I don’t think so. I can’t say for 100% certain, but I don’t believe so. I think our attributes are throughout the whole system.
Do you plan something like the Challenges in Starcraft II for Diablo 3?
Not at his point that I know of.
Can you give us some example of achievements or rewards?
No I’m sorry, I have given them some ideas for archievments, but I don’t know if any of them have been taken up.
Besides achievements and PvP, what will be the reasons to play this game for a long time?
Well besides the different difficulty levels I think there is an intrinsic draw to the loot game. It’s not something I can explain beyond saying human nature, but there is still people playing Diablo 2 every day and it’s just the nature of the game. Finding that next piece of loot, looking for that great piece of armor, that is really drives people forward.
Even if you can buy those things now in the auction house?
Well you have to make your money to buy those things in the auction house. The point that we are trying to make is, that this really isn’t going to change anything that was going on before. It’s the same thing that was happening, it’s just that people don’t have to go to risky third-party-sites or trust that somebody is going to do what they say they are going to if you trade them an item. That kind of economy has already existed in the game and people were still driven to play.
Will our characters earn titles for completing a difficulty mode like in Diablo 2?
I don’t know, but you get different things for your banner at each difficulty mode, I’m not sure if a title goes along with that or not. I wouldn’t be surprised, as it sounds feasible.
If my computer is able to run World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2 in high resolution and high details, will it be able to run Diablo 3?
I would assume so. I’m not on the technical end of things, but a core value a Blizzard is to make our minimum specs as low as we possibly can, because we want people to be able to play these games. We are definitely not a company that wants you to have to go out and buy the latest and greatest hardware to be able to play our games. We are all about delivering the best entertainment experience for the widest possible market or fanbase I could say.
Do you plan to write a book yourself about the Diablo universe?
I thought about it. I started writing a shortstory about it, but I quickly got tied up in stuff in the game. Right now we are doing stories that we will post on the web about different aspects of the game, different characters, as we are closer to launch.
Will the DVD be necessary to launch the game (after installation)?
I do not know how they are going to handle that.
Will an internet connection be necessary to launch the game at the first time?
Yes.
Do you plan to use a launcher like for StarCraft 2 that checks for updates and something like that?
Yes when you start the game it will check if there are updates or not.
Do you plan a page with statistics like the amount of killed monsters, lootet items – like the one of World of Warcraft with a lot of statistics about everything?
I do not know.
It seems that if you get a higher level, your armor will appear to be heavier. In Diablo 2 there were also the lighter armors. Are there in the end content armors that look like being a lot lighter than the ones for the barbarian or are they just really heavy?
When you get into the really epic endgame armors are all just going to be huge and over the top, because its just more powering and bigger. But they are geared towards the classes so they will look different. The Witchdoctor for example does not apear to be really heavily armored, but thats actually not quite the case.