BlizzCon 2013 – Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Preview Panel Transcript

Linn: Alright. Thank you Kevin. So before we start working on the Forgotten Battlefields. First thing we did is to brainstorm with the artists.

And I’m going to show you a few of those brainstorms now. This first one, is what we really like about is the dark atmosphere that it had, and we like the idea of this river of souls born from this dark sinister looking orb.

Alright this is the next one. This is the [EDIT]. The core of the Pandemonium. We really thought that this image did a great job of depicting the nexus between heaven and hell.

Right, like the otherworldly feeling of this shot, one challenge we had on Diablo, though, is it sometimes things feels too futuristic though we thought on this shot that the massive stone, floating war-torn structure will help ground the image.

Alright, this one is a much more traditional rendering of a battlefield with ancient titans in the background. We knew, though, that if we added these giant remains to the battlefield it would really give the environment a sense of epic scale.

Alright, Ok. This is one of the prototypes that we do. These are awesome, these are fantastic because they allow us to add monsters to them, they allow us to add mighty equipment. We look at when we’re building a level, when you look close you see that this one was chip bash together in about a day with existing the existing Zoltun Kulle art assets, we like this one because we felt like it felt like a building graveyard.

Alright, now it is warps. We warp way ahead to the first shot you’re going to see of in Pandemonium. This is where you are going to start your journey. As you can see we took some things from the brainstorm, we took the floating ideas, we took the otherworldly ideas, and we added it to the level.

Alright, now we’ve reached the heart of the level. You can see that we’ve added some primitive angelic architecture up in the left hand corners surrounding one of our new hazards for the zone. Zaven is going to talk about that in a second.

Ok, so the level is slowly ripping apart over the eons. If you look close when the video starts, again, we’ve added the dead demons, the huge petrified demons to the edges of the level to give it that the epic sense of scale.

Alright, Now we’ve reached the climax of the level. The Fortress wall, the entrance is in front of us now. Malthael’s domain is behind those walls; and this is where you’re going to have to fight your way in. So fight! Now we’re going to give is to Zaven to talk about the gameplay of the level.