Visceral Gameplay
Justin Love gave the audience a real treat by giving it a look at the three announced classes in action and the art direction D3 uses.
As a side note: I did not feel in any way that D3's look is too 'cartoonish' or 'light'. It definitely has a gloomy, dark feel to it but I'll cover that more later.
Barbarian
The Barbarian is a physical juggernaut and will be required to use his physical attributes to accomplish his attacks. Devs have, however, added the "Ancestral Connection" where he gets some mystical powers and skills from the Ancients of D2 fame.
Witch Doctor
The Witch Doctor is the quintessential voodoo king with all the magic and ickiness that that embodies. He will summon zombies to be sure. But his zombies won't be the same ones that he's trying to kill. Nope, not this guy. He will have the ability to summon zombie dogs and build zombie walls. He'll turn bats into fiery missiles and create swarms of creatures to eat his opponents.
Wizard
Two words for the Wizard: LIGHT SHOW.
The wizard draws on the arcane powers of the universe and harnesses the elements to do her bidding. We got a look at Blizzard where huge blobs of snow fall and freeze bad guys and, most cool of all, Tornado. The tornadoes swirls around her (we saw 3 at a time) with blazes of red, blue and purple whirling within.
Monster Deaths
One of the greatest things in D2 was the custom design for monster deaths. This tradition is continued in D3 and taken a step further. There are physical force deaths, damage flavored deaths, critical death and EXPLODING deaths. There are hand-crafted deaths, skill driven deaths. We got a look at an acid spell that literally melted the foes into ugly puddles of goo.
Rare monsters will...EXPLODE and have their own unique and unusual deaths.
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All in all this panel was a lot of fun. Fans were definitely into it and there was a LOT of applause for EXPLOSIONS and RESPEC. And, honestly, what more can a Diablo 3 fan want?
Stay tuned for more later today!
