Diablo III

Diablo III is an upcoming dark fantasy/horror-themed action role-playing game in development by Blizzard, making it the third installment in the Diablo franchise. The game, which features elements of the hack and slash and dungeon crawl genres, was first announced on June 28, 2008, at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Paris, France.

The game takes place in Sanctuary, the dark fantasy world of the Diablo series. This world was saved twenty years prior by a handful of unnamed heroes in Diablo II, heroes who, having survived the onslaught brought by the armies of the Burning Hells, have gone mad from their ordeals. It is up to a new generation of heroes to face the forces of evil threatening the world of Sanctuary.

Players will have the opportunity to explore familiar settings such as Tristram.The only confirmed NPCs are Deckard Cain, who has appeared in both of the previous games, and his niece, Leah, a new character who accompanies the hero in quests from time to time. The plot will revolve around two surviving Lesser Evils, Azmodan and Belial, and an artifact known as the Black Soulstone. Diablo's world map is composed primarily of two main continents with several small islands in the Northwest region. The world of Sanctuary has been dramatically changed by the events of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, for the destruction of the World Stone underneath Mount Arreat has reshaped the world's geography.

Diablo III is similar in style to its predecessor, Diablo II. The proprietary engine will incorporate Blizzard's custom in-house physics, a change from the original usage of Havok's physics engine, and feature destructible environments with an in-game damage effect. The developers are aiming to make the game run on a wide range of systems, and have stated that DirectX 10 will not be required. Diablo III will use a custom 3D game engine in order to present an overhead view to the player, in a somewhat similar way to the isometric view used in previous games in the series. Enemies will utilize the 3D environment as well, in ways such as crawling up the side of a wall from the depths into the combat area.

As in Diablo II, multiplayer games will be possible using Blizzard's Battle.net service, with many of the new features developed for StarCraft II also available in Diablo III. Players will be able to drop in and out of sessions of co-operative play with others.
An enhanced quest system, a random level generator, and a random encounter generator are slated for use in order to ensure the game provides different experiences when replayed. Overall, the game will include both static and randomly generated levels. Additionally, there will be class-specific quests to go along with the main storyline quests. Blizzard originally planned to have in-game cutscenes, but decided these would divert from the gameplay and decided against them. Three new armor pieces will be available: shoulder plates, arm-guards and leggings.

Unlike previous iterations, gold can be picked up merely by touching it, rather than having to manually pick it up. One of the new features intended to speed gameplay is that health orbs drop from enemies, replacing the need to have a potion bar, which itself is replaced by a skill bar that allows a player to assign quick bar buttons to skills and spells; previously, players could only assign two skills (one for each mouse button) and had to swap skills with the keyboard or mousewheel. Players can still assign specific attacks to mouse buttons.
Skill runes, another new feature, are skill-modifying items that are randomly dropped by monsters and used across all classes. Rather than changing equippable items as inDiablo II, they are instead attached to skills, often completely changing the gameplay of each skill. Skill runes also have the ability to make one particular spell in each class more powerful, and give the player options as to how the rune will enhance a particular spell. For example, investing skill runes on the wizard's "lightning" can allow the players to make the lightning jump onto additional enemies, or, alternatively, adding the runes with explosion effect blows the enemy up and causes damage to the surrounding area.

Development on Diablo III began in 2001 when Blizzard North was still in operation. The original artistic design differed from that shown at Blizzard Worldwide Invitational 2008 demonstration, and had undergone three revisions before reaching the standards felt necessary by the team behind Diablo III.

Diablo III's lead designer is Jay Wilson, a former Relic Entertainment designer credited with work on Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and Company of Heroes as well as Blood II: The Chosen for Monolith Productions. Its lead world designer is Leonard Boyarsky, one of the six co-creators of Fallout.
The game is being planned for a simultaneous release on both Windows and Mac OS X platforms. Blizzard is considering a concept design for consoles, reportedly even hiring staff for a console version, while stating this concept will not affect PC/Macintosh release dates. The project’s lead designer Josh Mosqueira said that Blizzard is "very, very serious about bringing the Diablo 3 experience to the console". It was also revealed that the game would require a constant internet connection to play, even for single-player mode.

Russell Brower composed the music for Diablo III. When composing for the orchestra, he tried to respect the Wagnerian style from the expansion to the second game in the series, Lord of Destruction. The Overture is considered the main theme of the game and it has been performed by the Eminence Symphony Orchestra. A similar composition was used in the cinematic teaser trailer of the game. The Tristram theme from the first Diablo videogame, also used in the second game, is present in Diablo IIIwith few changes.