Diablo III Art Director Quits

Diablo III Art Director Brian Morrisroe has left Blizzard, but the company says his departure has nothing to do with controversy surrounding the game's new art direction, and promises the colorful style isn't going to change.

Following the unveiling of the game, Blizzard released a gameplay video and several screenshots showing that Diablo III would be a more colorful and well-lit game than its predecessors, a change which earned the ire of many fans. An online petition asking the studio to return to the dark, Gothic style of the first two titles has thus far garnered over 54,000 signatures, but lead designer Jay Wilson said the die has already been cast. "There's no going back now," he said in an interview with MTV Multiplayer. "We're very happy with how the art style is. The art team's happy. The company's happy. We really like this art style, and we're not changing it."

"If you want to blame anyone for the rainbows, you'd blame our art director Brian [Morrisroe]," he said. "Because Brian is more the person who drove the art style into where it is. But it didn't really come directly from him. What he brought to the art team was concepts and ideas - the idea of contrast, the idea of using color more, the idea of going for a more stylized look. Because what we were looking at before was more photo-realistic. Really trying to get something that looks like a painting - that was his goal."

In an interesting twist, however, the inspiration for this new direction has now moved on to greener pastures. Rumblings about Morrisroe's departure were first reported by Kotaku, which noticed a job opening for Diablo III art director posted by Blizzard on Tuesday. Blizzard confirmed Morrisroe's rumored departure in a statement late yesterday, saying, "Regarding Brian, he recently resigned to form a startup technology company (outside the game industry), which is why we've posted about the open position. This change won't impact the game... we're really pleased with the look and feel that Brian helped create for Diablo III, and the new person we bring onboard will work with the other artists on the team to maintain the art style moving forward."

Wilson reiterated Blizzard's commitment to the new art direction in the interview while examining a series of "before and after" screenshots that had been altered by various fans to illustrate subtle artistic fine points such as "How it should look like" and "WoW gayness." He explained that in most cases, the fan-altered art would either detract from gameplay or be impractical to render on current PCs, and also suggested that Diablo II might not be as dark and foreboding as fans remember.

Explaining how earlier builds of Diablo III actually had an artistic direction based on "what we were thinking what Diablo II looks like," Wilson said playtesting during development is what convinced the team to make the change to the new style. "We played through, and we were like, this isn't very fun. And then we started going, 'Why was Diablo II so much more fun?' And some of the Blizzard North guys [developer of Diablo and Diablo II] knew why right away. They were like, 'Well, because we didn't make all the areas like this.' And if you think about even the areas they did, the creatures were really bright. Like in the gray and dark dungeons, those are the places that you run into the ghosts who were almost like glowing brightness, and that was so that they would stand out from the backgrounds."

You can check out the new Diablo III art for yourself, and maybe even apply for a job as art director, at blizzard.com/diablo3.

Source: MTV Multiplayer

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Damn straight. In this case gameplay should take precedence over DeviantArt.

Ah yes, because clearly they aren't following the intensely dark and gritty aesthetic of diablo II...

Nice pic to illustrate a point. Diablo 2 definitely had colors (especially with spells, and creatures recently poisoned or frozen), but does anyone else notice that this screen capture looks grittier than the shots from Diablo 3? I'm just hoping that there will be at least few dungeons that revisit this gothic look in 3.

Zerbye:
Nice pic to illustrate a point. Diablo 2 definitely had colors (especially with spells, and creatures recently poisoned or frozen), but does anyone else notice that this screen capture looks grittier than the shots from Diablo 3?

If by "grittier" you mean "contains only 1023 shades instead of 16 million" then yes. Otherwise, no.

-- Steve

I dont really see a big floor in add colours to the game if you really want it to be dark.. just turn the brightness down. It is oneof those grahpical options in all games.. and if it really bugs you i belive you can charge grahpices settings to make it as dark and as brown as people want it to be.

Anton P. Nym:

If by "grittier" you mean "contains only 1023 shades instead of 16 million" then yes. Otherwise, no.

-- Steve

Actually, I think a resolution comparison would have been more appropriate, as colors aren't the issue. Gritty being characterized by abrasiveness, low saturation, loose particles, and all that. Anyways, I don't think Morrisroe's departure will have much impact on the look of the game now.

I'm a big fan of the new direction, and I hope Wilson is telling the straight truth when he says Morrisroe's departure won't change this new style they've gone with. I played the hell out of Diablo and Diablo II, great games, loved them both, but I'm looking forward to something different. This idea that sequels should be virtually identical to their predecessors (see Fallout 3) really baffles me. What's the point?

BOOOOO!!!!

Like 80% of the people wanting to play this game even played Diablo 2. Oh well, it is Blizzard, what can you expect.

Malygris:
I'm a big fan of the new direction, and I hope Wilson is telling the straight truth when he says Morrisroe's departure won't change this new style they've gone with. I played the hell out of Diablo and Diablo II, great games, loved them both, but I'm looking forward to something different. This idea that sequels should be virtually identical to their predecessors (see Fallout 3) really baffles me. What's the point?

Amen!

Malygris:
I'm a big fan of the new direction, and I hope Wilson is telling the straight truth when he says Morrisroe's departure won't change this new style they've gone with. I played the hell out of Diablo and Diablo II, great games, loved them both, but I'm looking forward to something different. This idea that sequels should be virtually identical to their predecessors (see Fallout 3) really baffles me. What's the point?

It's not that sequels should be identical. They shouldn't, otherwise it's a clone, not a sequel. However, a good sequel, while expanding and exploring new ideas, has to retain the essence of what made the previous instalments so great (Think of Return Of The King, fer instance). Blizzard can take all the artistic license they want with Diablo III, but if it loses the dark atmospheric qualities that made the previous games what they were, then its a sequel in name only.

I would be more concerned if this was representative of the entire game, but I'm sure its not. Its the tutorial level for <religious symbol>'s sake. The game is supposed to change environments every 45 minutes or something, of course some of the environments will have green. It's not like the people who play Diablo religiously actually pay attention to the graphics anyway.

Somehow, I think that the cinematic sequences will maintain the original dark atmospheric look of the earlier games. Even in Warcraft III, which started the 3D cartoon-look that Blizzard has refined in WOW, had cinematics that could almost have fit in the Diablo universe. In WCIII, the tone almost completely shifted from gameplay to cinematics. I've always had the feeling that as graphics improved, the gameplay graphics would slowly converge with the look and feel of the cinematics, but that clearly hasn't been the case. However, I'm sure Diablo 3 will be as fun as a barrel full of monkeys.

Did people WATCH the cinematic trailer? See the armies of hell? Did they watch the boss bite the barbarian's head off? Honestly, anyone who thinks that they're suddenly going to make it a fluffy cartoony Disney game is slightly bonkers.

Contrast people, contrast. If you have greener areas, then after the real demon invasion you can come back to them and they'll be all drab and destroyed. Just how you like.

I really think those Diablo 2 clinger-oners are just moaning for the sake of it. The pussies.

Rock on, Blizzard!

I don't get the whole problem. Colour is not the sole definition of style. You can have the old Gothic style with nice colours and shades.
Have your cake and eat it, i say.

People bitching about how it's not a 'dark' as Diablo 2 obviously don't have a very good memory regarding Diablo 2.

Seriously, it was about as dark as a box of crayons.

I don't have a single complaint about what we've seen of Diablo 3 thus far. Most of the time when people are moaning about how D3 isn't as gothy as its prebears they point to the outdoor sections and cry foul. Yeah. There's stuff outside. Get over it. D2 had outdoor stuff as well, and it wasn't all gloomy monochrome either. And they're ignoring the very well done, very dark and foreboding indoor/dungeon areas that were also shown. There's your gothy.

I swear, people will complain about anything.

I really hope that Diablo 3 stays AWAY from boring, dark drab enviroments.

I want to see COLOR!

I think the people that want Diablo 3 to be darker are just literary blinded by nostalgia.

my opinion on the matter:

http://areyouatooltoo.blogspot.com/2008/07/diablo-3-quit-your-bitching-seriously.html

I dun get it, Daiblo had a solid range of colors...it was not "modern" tones of 4 shades of brown,green and red............

Greyscale should be left to MySpacers with bad complexions, not level design in the 21st century.

I think the new art style looks better, as i didn't' care much for the Dark, grainier look of Diablo 2, also It's more realistic, as pure black in a dungeon isn't realistic like, as it's usually dark Blue, but that's my 2 Cents. :)

They spelled shiny wrong on the petition...

They also spelled cartoonish wrong.

I don't get their beef with the big shoulderpads. They've always been in Blizzard games, including Diablo 2. The better your armor gets, the bigger and more exaggerated your shoulderpads become. Check out some of the high-end barbarian armors and you'll see what I mean.

That's a screencap of Halbu from Pandemonium Fortress. The big shoulderpads are just apart of Blizzard's style, it's not exclusive to WoW at all.

As for colors, there were enemies every color of the rainbow. In the Arcane Sanctuary, the clan demons were BRIGHT RED. I recall purple, green and blue enemies as well, not to mention they turned neon colors after being poisoned or frozen. Certain armors and weapons were bright colors such as purple, green, blue, etc..

I think this is just a case of people remembering things the way they want to, and not the way they actually were. :P

I think the new art style does manage to keep the colors going strong and maintain the original feel of the Diablo series. I sat through the Art panel at the Blizzard WWI when they announced D3 and Morrisroe was the one presenting. He definitely emphasized that this was what they were going for. Simply updating what everyone knows already. I highly doubt anything will change with his leaving. Sure the art director may be gone, but I guarantee the majority of the actual artists and visionaries are still actively working on the project. People come and go all the time.

Really don't have a problem with a colorful Diablo III... I'm so sick of brown and gray, Hellgate London finished off any love of those colors, and as much as I love silver and gold, it's becoming brown and gray's replacement.