Sometimes I feel like if the entire sum of a game’s impact
could be quantified it would be done in units of ire. Video game communities
just aren’t all that good at projecting coherent positivity; it happens in
these tiny pulses of ‘so cool’ and ‘it was fun’, but seldom monuments to
satisfaction and appreciation. Finding ways to articulate why a particular game
(or an aspect of it) is enjoyable can feel like an unnecessary challenge that
ultimately hinges on an implacable sense of personal taste. Relating a perceived short-fall carries the supposition that weight and precision must support it, or else readers think
the issue is, again, one of taste.
It’s a shame: taste guides appreciation for refined mechanics as much as ‘good
story’, but the former is more alluring for someone who wants to be (or,
rather, appear) objective. So, as a consequence of being obliged to
split games into themes and mechanics (and the disproportionate attention the
latter receives due to being seen as more concrete), most
corners are far more proficient at constructing nuanced towers of criticism and
general discontent. Take Final Fantasy VII for instance, a game loved by many:
the only sentiment I seem to see about it these days is that it is overrated;
it has a simplistic system, sub-par models, slow and easy battles, etc. You might get the
idea that the game being described is something that should be avoided, but
you’d be wrong! It still measures strong on the Ire-o-meter after all these
years. Not an easy feat.
So, with that befuddling idea in mind, Diablo 3: it has
accrued much negativity to climb through.
The core of this formed around the many perceived holes in the endgame;
not enough scenery to support such a grind, grotesque leaps in enemy strength
and an awkward homogeneity between characters of the same class and level. To
draw attention only to this endgame aspect, though, implies that getting to
that point is fine. And it is! Skills are
well-distributed and the growth in enemy power from Normal to Nightmare to Hell
(the first three of four difficulties) is satisfying if somewhat constricting
toward the end of Hell. Ordinarily I would say this bodes well; the last Dragon
Quest game I played (the ninth, I think) suffered from what could be
called—though somewhat carelessly, as these games are very different—the same
problems: a dull and un-engaging grind-fest awaits you (Inferno difficulty in
this case) once the main content is through. Sadly Diablo 3 doesn’t take an
eighth of the time to get to that phase. The endgame to DQIX was an
after-thought; Diablo 3’s endgame is the
game.
If it’s assumed that players of an online RPG are
necessarily sticking around because of how it plays (as opposed to things like
narrative, themes and music) you get into a weird place where a mechanically
tight experience can be fronted by almost anything, so long as it isn’t
intrusive or jarring. In Diablo 3’s case this means inheriting much of its
predecessors’ elements: randomly-generated maps (that are actually less
variable than Diablo 2’s), the ‘going down’ convention of every dungeon, and a
level of what I guess you could call ‘ambient goriness’ that is more ridiculous
than horrific. Fan-service abounds: re-use of enemies, shameless amounts of
namedropping, and outright ret-conning to bring established (though often
peripheral) characters closer together. It
became clear after a couple of plays through the acts that reconciling this
conservative and nostalgia-seeking approach with a streamlined and linear quest-to-quest
formula makes for a very constricted experience that doesn’t even have the
benefit of originality. And as I’ve mentioned: the ire-towers already tilt ominously
over Diablo 3’s gameplay philosophy.
Most any other form’s critical circles would find the
multitude of well-founded spires of frustration an indication that there are at
least some issues here. As I said
before, though, this is what communities do to games they like; they criticise
the hell out of the specific bits they don’t
like. But Diablo 3 has to contend with the invariable disappointment of fans of
the series, too. Combine this with around a decade of development time and
people are well within remit to slate the hell out of the finished product here.
Except, technically, this isn’t a finished product: content patches are going
to make a strong impact on people’s experiences over time. So much so that, in
a year, Diablo 3 won’t really be the same game; its functionality will have
been shifted, increased and further refined.
I think many players know to expect this shifting
experience, which makes the breadth of negativity at the moment kind of odd.
Or, rather, the lack of breadth: it can’t have escaped people’s notice that
there is very little discussion around theming, narrative and art design here
(beyond WoW comparisons and ‘I wish it was darker’). These are the aspects of
the game which aren’t going anywhere unless Blizzard releases some sort of
‘Characterisation/Originality Patch’. I’m
trying to take into account the disproportionate focus that mechanical
discussion tends to attract, but even still the disregard is plain. And the
reason for this, I think, is also my biggest issue with Diablo 3. Many western
Fantasy titles (and the worlds they build and inhabit) have come to suffer from
an absurd amount of homogeneity; the over-arching ‘Not Middle Earth’ convention
is ubiquitous, and its comfortable familiarity is too often the front for lazy and
cliché-ridden story-telling. Diablo 3 distinguishes itself somewhat by way of
its ‘Heaven vs. Hell’ slant, but despite this leg up it plays as though it is
striving for the crown conservative story-telling. On the whole there is a fantastic
inoffensiveness in Blizzard’s simplistic approach and lack of risk-taking. The
more any given area is elaborated upon the more hackneyed and unoriginal it seems
to become. Whether it was a wilful decision on Blizzard’s part to craft
something so generic doesn’t really matter: you would have to pick through this
game with a comb to find the slightest modicum of subverted convention.
The comfortableness of a world so much like all the other
worlds we’re used to makes it easy to suspend disbelief and just march forwards.
This ultimately impacts the difficulty
of critiquing specific aspects. The twist between Acts 3 and 4, for instance, is
remarkably heavy-handed, but I would hate to give the impression that the plot
was particularly subtle elsewhere. Likewise it is difficult to pick on the
dizzying lack of imagination with regards to boss design when the entire world
is just another Western Fantasy realm wrapped in clichés. The choice to have
every antagonist update the player with periodic rampage-tweets, too, does
nothing but underline the ridiculously generic depiction, however it would be
careless to imply that characterisation is particularly decent elsewhere. It is
very difficult to dive into a particular aspect here without feeling like I’m
excusing everything that surrounds it. Suffice to say the expression ‘by-the-numbers’
was made for Diablo 3.
Okay, that all sounds pretty bad. To me the best parts of
Sanctuary, as a world, were the parts I barely heard about; exposition through tiny
scraps of dialogue about far-away times and places that actually leaves room
for imagination. This comes in the form of piecemeal information about the
different classes’ homelands, and from the supporting ‘mercenary’ characters:
the Enchantress’s lost time, the Scoundrel’s relationship with his brother and
the Templar’s dubious ‘Order’; these were all neat details that didn’t have to
bear presentation in the game proper. The kind of un-seen minutiae that help
Sanctuary not seem like the giant corridor that the gameplay gives the
impression of.
The rapidity of the game can’t be denied, either: it is
streamlined in such a way as to make misunderstanding almost impossible, and
does so without clumsy tooltips or clunky tutorials. I’d wager this massive disparity between professional
critics and users is owed, at least in part, to how critics will
necessarily favour games like this. Diablo 3 is engineered to appeal to them:
it is simple, narrow and quick; the five classes are extremely distinct and—though
very ‘etch-a-sketch’ in customisability— have a decent range of skills. Moreover
it’s so compact, and steps away from convention so infrequently, as to push the
player towards focussing on the clearly-refined gameplay; the stuff that holds
it together is just taken at face-value. There is little to no point in trying
to roam free of the main quest, too, so reviewers can guiltlessly push through
to the endgame within a couple of days and have done with it.
Maybe this all makes more sense in the context of Blizzard’s
conservative stint in recent years: Starcraft 2’s strongest trait was how it
streamlined so many conventional aspects of RTS games into something tight and
satisfying, but at the same time the degree of variance and the boundaries of
skill-cap were both reined in significantly from Brood War. The last thing Blizzard
did that could be considered innovative was sand all of the rough edges along
conventional MMORPG models with World of Warcraft. I’m beginning to see a
pattern. It feels bizarre that this is the company that invented (however
inadvertently) the MOBA paradigm. But maybe this is the crux of what Blizzard
excels at now: highly streamlined gameplay alongside thematic content so
generic as to demean the form’s ability to tell stories.
Everything sounds kind of gloomy at the moment, but it isn’t
all terrible: on its own merits Diablo 3 might have been seen as an
extraordinarily tight throwback to dungeon-crawlers that falls victim to its
own hubris in the endgame. Except ‘on its own merits’ has little meaning with a
game that relies so much on being a sequel as Diablo 3. However you look at it,
though, the implementation of the Real-Money Auction House was the unprecedented
aspect here. Whether it helps the game or hinders it is a matter of much debate.
As many angles as there are to the discussion, I simply feel I would prefer to play
a game than to feel compelled to also play a market.
To bring the wheel full circle and look out from this folly
of frustration; I still feel like I don’t know if Diablo 3 is a Good GameTM.
Some will find it immensely fun even as they rattle off their qualms, but I am
not one of those people. I don’t think Blizzard has any excuse for making
something so reductive when they are in such a remarkably privileged position;
this game was going to sell well regardless of how lowest-common-denominator Blizzard made it. It’s not as though they took risks in the gameplay to make up for
this short-fall, either; it is significantly more like Diablo 2 than 2 was like
1. A lot of reviewers like to bottom-line their view with ‘Is it
worth your money?’ If you are enticed by the gameplay shots and have the cash to spare then you can probably get your money's worth in terms of play time. But this question conveniently sidesteps all of the far less
well-off developers who actually try to innovate and make unique experiences, and also ignores the fact that we shouldn't feel compelled to vote with our money when half the game is sharp and the other half is blunt. I think time’s going to tell on this: will anyone
care enough to spread their ire in a decade? I have a hard time
imagining Diablo 3 being looked back on as ‘overrated’.
