Diablo IV: no color available.

 

Blizzard have announced the awaited, although not for many (and this number is dropping considerably), ARPG Diablo IV as their first game on Blizzcon 2019. The announcement should get you hyped if you are a Diablo fan, right? Wrong! Well, let me elaborate.
We all wish that Blizzard would learn from their past mistakes like the RMAH (Real Money Action House) and the heavy critique they received for Diablo III's art style. But apparently they just don't care. At the end of the day, if the game is making money and people are buying it then it's going to be considered a success no matter the general opinion. Even if the press is somehow negative you can always do give aways, release public apologies and make it appear as you care, instead being a multi-million dollar company that just wants profits. To be fair with the amount of nasty practices the gamers put up it's surprising the state of the industry isn't worse. Now, to the game and why is it a disappointing:

1. Color:

This seems like such a nitpicking and a random thing to complain. How is this the first point you ask? It's not like Diablo is a franchise known for its great and diverse colors anyway, right?
Yes, you are completely right, but also wrong. While Diablo and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction barely had any color, they played very well with it to make the world around you seem dark, mysterious and grim. On top of that you had various kinds of greys and blacks all around.

   

However in Diablo III we started to see these weird muted colors that just engulfed your entire screen making it look as if you were fused in some plastic monotone world. Well, that doesn't sound like Diablo, does it? Apparently it does because Diablo IV doubles on these shades.

The game looks as if someone without any idea of what dark or grim looks like got told to add a cape of grey to whatever scenario they were making and call it a day. This reminds me of how back in 2012 all games used to have this brown bloom everywhere, especially noticeable on the Battlefield series where they killed colors for the sake of it.

It certainly is a weird topic to complain but considering the fact that you are supposed to be immersed in a world taken by the dark forces from Hell there's no way that this game gives you that illusion. Maybe if Diablo IV was a mobile game I could give it a pass but it's one of the most famous IPs.

Although it wouldn't even surprise me that Blizzard just took Diablo III and threw grey paint at it calling it Diablo IV.

2. Hardware Limitations/Reuse of Diablo III:

Considering that we will be getting soonTM a new generation of consoles the fact that Blizzard decided to release their game on current gen is an indication of either:

a) This was a panic move to save face from last year's "do you have phones" incident.
b) This was a panic move to save face from HK-Chine controversy going around. By announcing all their projects ahead of time they would manage to somehow generate hype and calm down the fans, or at least turn around their views.

But how would you release a game so quick anyway? Usually AAA games take years in development to even have an alpha. It wouldn't be possible to make something like this if you didn't have something (Diablo III) to work with already! Yes, I think they are just reusing Diablo III assests as much as possible to make the game as fast as they can. Considering that they are going to release it on current generation consoles it makes all the sense, otherwise they would have gone for a PC version first (remember how the majority of the Diablo fans are desktop users?) and after a while they'd release the game on next gen: Playstation 5 and Project Scarlet.

But since they decided against this last idea this is why the game looks graphically dented for something that's going to release in 2020. When you are developing something for consoles you have to take into consideration their limitations, and this is why some games have a hard time being ported/running on a Switch, it just has less power.

At least we have learned that console market is as important as the PC market for Blizzard and Diablo.

3. Lack of customization:

One of the saddest moments of the Diablo panel was the people in charge talking about it.

And one of the key moments to understand how Blizzard is trating the game is to hear what Luis Barriga, the game director, says when he presented the talent trees: he wasn't sure that the players would like it - he said those words after the audience cheered at the talent trees. This just shows the disconnect between the developer team of Blizzard and its audience. They are making an aRPG and they don't know if they players want to have choices and customize their own characters. This is madness.

It's clear that sometimes too many choices can confuse and overwhelm the player. And although I'm not for it, I can understand the logic and the reasoning we have X choices instead of Y. But limiting a game as much as Blizzard are doing it right now seems ridiculous.

The stance they are taking is definitely due to current gaming meta of min-maxing (especially seen in WoW) so instead of having complex tooltips that nobody is going to read they throw you the basic stats, the basic talents and you are ready to go. At the end of the day you just get the same experience, right? While it's partially true, this is a RPG we are talking about where the game should allow the players to ROLEPLAY and PLAY however they see fit and make fun builds for the sake of it. But it seems that Blizzard are just too disconnected to understand this very simple and basic concept. Something that made Diablo 2 such a classic that influenced so many games.

Now, the good:

As always the art team at Blizzard is their best talent (not the color team though). The games might disappoint but everyone is excited to see those cinematics.