Diablo 3 (Video Game Review)

Review by Paeter Frandsen

I played all of Diablo and about half of Diablo 2 on PC. Although I enjoyed the experiences both had to offer, my attention was ultimately diverted by other games. I absolutely love the Diablo formula, but am oddly a bigger fan of "Diablo Clones" on video game consoles than I am of the first two Diablo games themselves, my favorite being Champions of Norrath for PS2. Something about the console controller just works better for me in the action RPG genre than the "point and click-fest" of the original format. (I did try the PS1 Diablo port, but found it to fall short.) So when Diablo 3 came to the Xbox 360, and reportedly without the "always on" connection demands of the PC version, I was sold.

The story is set 20 years after the events of Diablo 2. A star has fallen from the heavens and landed in New Tristram, and your hero arrives to investigate. Soon you are pulled into a growing number of dangers as the forces of hell begin to emerge and blah-blahblah-blahblah-who-cares. The story is the opposite of engaging- it is actually off-putting. The cinematics that launch each new Chapter and Act are wonderfully produced, but most of the story is fed to the player through in-game conversations in which your camera view remains high and removed from the characters. As a result, I never felt even the slightest bit emotionally engaged with the story or the people in it. Keeping the camera at such a distance from the characters resulted in keeping me at a distance from them as well. The end result is that the story became little more than an interruption to the flow of incredibly satisfying hack'n'slash RPG action.

Voice acting in this game is hit or miss. Deckard Cain, the aging mentor of the previous Diablo games, returns once again, voiced by the same actor who still seems bent on giving us his best Sean Connery impression. For fans of the series, his voice is part of what characterizes the games and will probably illicit nothing more than a smile and a head shake. But for newcomers, the style of performance used for this character may seem out of place. The rest of the voice acting was all standard quality, not bad but nothing compelling.

One sour note for me was the use of voice actor Cam Clarke for the Wizard class, which I used for my play of the game. Cam Clarke is a fine voice actor and has been working for a very long time (Leonardo in the classic “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” cartoon, Die Fledermaus from “The Tick” animated series, He-Man in the 2005 “Masters Of The Universe” cartoon series, and key supporting roles in over 80% of the video games I've played in the last 10 years). He does great work. But his voice stands out to me like a fire alarm and takes me out of the story. His "heroic" voice also didn't feel right for a wizard. I would have enjoyed hearing a different actor this time around.

The graphics are fine, but not great. I was surprised at the number of "jaggies" I could see in the straight lines of my character on the title screen. However, during gameplay itself the resolution was not distracting. The visual design, which is inspired by the best dark fantasy and horror of cinematic history, goes a long way toward making up for the graphical shortcomings. The look and behavior of the numerous enemy types is thematic and at times disturbing. Zombie hags give birth to more zombies by explosively vomiting them onto the ground. A fat monstrosity charges at you with surprising speed and even after being destroyed explodes into a handful of eels that continue to chase after you. If you like gory horror visuals, this game will not let you down.

With so much being hit or miss, is this game still worth playing? Asbo-freakin'-lutely! When it comes to action RPGs, it's all about that cycle of combat, looting, and upgrading, and this is where the game shines.

The combat is the focus of this game, and for good reason. I don't think I've ever played another game where I felt both immensely powerful and constantly in danger at the same time. One moment I would be thinking, "oh crap, I'm going to die," and the very next I'd think, "why do these losers pretend they even have a chance against me?" Initially, combat is about simply choosing between a couple different basic attacks that you begin with, and doing a little dodging now and then (a new and welcome mechanism introduced for the console version). But as you level up, the focus shifts to strategic skill-slotting (as you map a limited number of your skills to the buttons of your controller) and "on the fly" tactical decisions (as you try to use the best abilities for the situation at hand).

The controls work very well for the most part. Although ranged attacks don't line up quite as easily as I'd like, I found myself able to adapt quickly. Nothing about the controls hindered my enjoyment of the game.

Diablo 3 features multiple game modes with increasing difficulty. Each mode must be unlocked by playing through the entire game, but each mode also has numerous tiers of difficulty to choose from, making the experience extremely customizable in terms of its challenge level. Both casual and hardcore gamers (and everyone in between) should find a lot to enjoy here.

One of my favorite aspects of action RPGs is looting, and Diablo 3 has some of the best looting in the business. Defeating enemies and opening chests causes an eruption of gold and goodies that you can easily snatch up. Teleporting to and from the market is fast and simple, meaning that you can offload goods and buy new gear at almost any time. You also have the option to have new equipment crafted for you. I found myself going back and forth between relying on what I could find or buy and having items crafted for me. The game does not demand that you approach your equipment and upgrading strategy in any specific way, allowing for a very tailored progression of your character.

Replay value also seems to be very strong so far. I played through the game once on Normal difficulty (which took about 40-50 hours) and have begun playing through it again on Nightmare difficulty. When you start a new game, you can keep the progress and loot you've gained from previous play-throughs. This is pretty much vital if you move up to a new difficulty mode, since enemies not only increase their defense and damage output, they also gain new abilities, forcing you to adapt new strategies to take them down. There are still many levels for me to gain and abilities for me to learn, so the standard skills I rely on and the play style I'm using today will likely change several times through the course of my next play-through. Add to this the random level generation and the appearance of random sidequests every time you load the game, and the replay value is about as strong as it gets. Maybe not Skyrim strong, but incredibly impressive for an action RPG.

There is one downside that comes out of the random level generation, however. When playing through a dungeon map, the game creates the dungeon for you when you first enter the map, but if you log out of the game and return to it, that dungeon will have a completely new layout and your area map will once again be blacked out, as though you had never explored it before. If you reach a checkpoint in the dungeon, you will still be able to take a portal back to that spot when you next log in, but in the absence of checkpoints you will have to start from scratch on that dungeon.

The same is true of area maps. For example, the first time you enter the cemetery, the game may randomly create 2 extra dungeons and a sidequest location, along with the fixed dungeons that will always appear in the cemetery. That sidequest may look interesting, but you decide you want to explore one of the dungeons first. Halfway through the dungeon, you run out of time to play video games, so you save your game and quit. Unfortunately, if you didn't find a checkpoint in the dungeon, or if it was a random dungeon with no checkpoint, you will have to start that dungeon from scratch the next time you play. What's more, it is just as likely that the dungeon you were exploring will not be there the next time you play, nor will the sidequest that you neglected to take on before quitting your last play session. Instead there may now be one random dungeon and two completely different sidequests.

This all means that Diablo 3 is a completionist's nightmare. I have some completionist tendencies, so I often found it hard to quit playing until I had cleared not just an entire dungeon, but all the dungeons and sidequests in the area I was exploring. If you have similar tendencies, know that this game may not be easy for you to just casually jump in and out of as time permits.

Although the story does not demand attention or warrant emotional investment, it presents some interesting ideas that seem inspired by real world religious beliefs, but that also depart heavily from them. The game especially departs from the Biblical concepts of angels, demons, heaven, and hell, despite containing some of the classic trappings of traditional Christian representations of these ideas.

The world of Diablo, called "Sanctuary," serves as the battleground for a conflict between the forces of Heaven and Hell. Heaven is ruled by the Angiris Council, a group of archangels. The reign of Hell is fought over by the Prime Evils (super powerful demons), of which Diablo is one. There are no authority figures above these. The archangels answer to no god. In fact, the god that created them has now been destroyed.

A little research revealed the name of this god to be "Anu", who was apparently "perfect", yet wanted to improve upon himself (???) and so split himself into two gods who then fought and killed each other.  Now the archangels that Anu created are left running things, and they are about as "perfect" as their creator. The usual hypocrisy and ivory tower mentality given to religious types in fantasy is uncreatively present here as well, but this time the hypocrites are the angels themselves.

The lore of Diablo 3 runs parallel to the increasingly popular idea that God is not perfect. He is not all he can potentially be. He is still flawed, still figuring things out. Still a lot like us. (Meaning that we are kind of like him, too.) In the cosmology of this game, good and evil are not so clearly differentiated. Anu himself had some dark aspects in his being. He was partially corrupt by his very nature. This runs parallel to some Eastern religious philosophies that would define perfection not as moral purity but as a "balance" between good and evil.

I'm surprised by the large number of people who are content to trust their eternal destiny to a god who is still improving himself, still capable of less than perfection. If God is capable of change, how can we be guaranteed that he will not change his mind sometime down the road and snuff humans out? Maybe after a few billion millenia he'll decide to torture humans instead of loving them. If God can change and is less than perfect, who is to say this won't be the case?

Or if there is no God, as in the Diablo universe, but rather a bunch of flawed spiritual beings running the show, how is that an afterlife worth looking forward to? Sounds like American politics, only lasting forever. (Yikes!) It reminds me a bit of the old show "Crossing Over With John Edward," a talk show where a spiritual medium contacted the dead for people in his audience. It was not unheard of for him to connect with spirits who still had their grumpy, selfish moral flaws firmly intact. How is an afterlife populated by the same grumpy, selfish people we live with now anything worth looking forward to? Without a morally perfect and all-powerful judge in control, who can either fix moral dysfunction or quarantine those who don't want fixing, any kind of afterlife is not only more of the same, but potentially far worse than what we experience in life today. We would have no assurance, in this scenario, that eternal life would not eventually become worse and worse, culminating in an eternal state of misery.

However, the God of the Bible, and how he will rule in eternity, stands in sharp contrast to the Diablo 3 model.

(Matthew 5:48, ESV) You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

(James 1:17, ESV) Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

(Numbers 23:19, ESV) God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?

(Revelation 21:4, ESV) He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

Overall, Diablo 3 is a mixed bag, but the good parts taste so yummy you'll probably give little or no thought to the parts that fall short. Despite the fertile ground for reflection and thought regarding spiritual matters in the game, the storytelling format discourages attention. It has the potential to quietly affirm some bad philosophical ideas, but doesn't lend itself to much thought or conversation unless you're really leaning that way already.

Rated M for blood, gore and violence.
Quality: 9.0/10
Relevance: 7.0/10