There was a good reason why more than a decade passed between Diablo II and Diablo III.

When Diablo III was released, one of the biggest criticisms it received that its art direction was different from what the first two games of the series represented. It was too bright, and perhaps too colourful for a Diablo title, and it did not have that oppressive darkness in it.

PureDiablo has multiple screenshots of the original concept of Diablo III. You can see on them that the visuals and the art style was the same as in Diablo II. These aren’t some fake Photoshopped images, as these come from Oscar Cuesta. He was an artist at Blizzard North, the original studio of Diablo, until it got closed in 2005. Cuesta says the models „were pretty low polygon and we were only using base color maps.” And yes, they are incomplete, but even going by the images below, we can see that the game’s initial vision would have continued the grim and gothic art style, although a bit restrained and muted.

Blizzard might have learned the lesson. Diablo IV is promised to go back to this gritty darkness that we have seen in the first two games. However, we have not seen the game in action, and we likely won’t until November, when the new BlizzCon will happen. It could be digital, though, as Blizzard is already considering digital options for it (we wrote about it before).

Diablo IV will likely be a next-gen title, meaning it will potentially be available on both the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X. We might have to wait a while, though, as Luis Barriga, the director of the game, said during its announcement that it’s „not coming out soon. Not even ‘Blizzard soon’.”

Source: PCGamer

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