1UP: Diablo II solidified the action-RPG genre further, but that was back in 2000. How do you keep Diablo III relevant to a modern audience?
RP: I think ultimately the gameplay is still very solid, and I think keeping it relevant is kind of building upon technology and really trying to learn not only from previous Diablo games, but also from all the other games in other genres. That's one of the things we really looked at a lot, the idea of, "this is an action-RPG, with (hopefully) a capital-A on the action." So we really wanted to make the game a lot more visceral. We kind took some cues from God of War and games like that. You know, really trying to ratchet up the visceral feel of the game to an 11 on a scale of 1-10.
[...]
1UP: On the subject of Diablo III being a more colorful game, there's already comments online about the color palette. Can you talk about how the team arrived at the decision for a wider color palette?
RP: Yeah, so we've probably been through, I don't know, maybe three major art direction changes on the game. And the previous two were probably a little more similar to the Diablo II look. But it just didn't feel right anymore. It didn't feel like an interesting enough environment to play in anymore. So when we finally came up with this look, what we're really trying to do is add more color to the game, and we were very careful to not want to go to WOW. We don't want the game to look like WOW. We want it to look like Diablo. But we felt that there was an opportunity to add more color to the game but still keep the game feeling dark. And I think that's something a little tougher to see in a demo. I think when you're playing the game, people will fall in love with it, and will realize, "you know what? You can have reds and blues and a more painted look and still have a very dark, gothic feel to it all."
