faetal on 7/8/2012 at 12:51
Quote Posted by nicked
Sounds like you took Torchlight a bit too seriously. For me, the art style just helped sell the impression that it was only a notch more serious than Dungeon Keeper.
Not really. Everything else about it in terms of mood, music and story were relatively dark and broody, it is just the visuals which kept me torn between the two. As I've said - I'm happy to play non-serious / campy / cartoony games if it is all tied together as such. I just seem to be sensitive to mismatches. I don't think this makes me more discerning or clever or anything like that, just a factor which detracts from my enjoyment of certain games.
EDIT: Also, for me, Dungeon Keeper had lots of non-serious aspects - it was permeated with non-serious stuff. The over-baked narrator and his description of the towns and heroes, the imp slapping, farting demons etc... Torchlight had campy visuals and that's it - everything else was basically a decent, streamlined Diablo clone. I wanted to love it.
DDL on 7/8/2012 at 14:37
A pet dog you can turn into a giant spider by feeding it spiderfish (which you catch yourself), and that you can send to town to sell stuff for you?
A robot that gives out quests?
I dunno, I never saw it as anything even close to serious. Diablo goes out of its way to be all grimdark, whereas Torchlight is closer to say...darkstone in campy dungeongrind funz.
Mind you, I've played a reasonable number of dungeongrind diablo clones (because I am a sad sad man), so perhaps I just have a slightly broader spectrum of comparisons?
Jason Moyer on 7/8/2012 at 14:51
The only "serious" Diablo clone that I've enjoyed was Titan Quest, and that still tended to be relatively silly. I hated the Diablo games, and didn't really give the genre another try until the Torchlight demo, which was fantastic. Then someone suggested I try Titan Quest, which was also fantastic. Since then I've tried every similar game imaginable (including revisiting both Diablos) and they all suck enormous horse cock other than Nox and Borderlands.
Thirith on 7/8/2012 at 14:57
Quote Posted by DDL
Diablo goes out of its way to be all grimdark...
I'm not sure that's entirely accurate, or perhaps "grimdark" is too vague a term. I've usually seen it used for po-faced grim'n'gritty media that take themselves very seriously -
Diablo may not be ironic, but it is placed firmly in the realm of pulp fantasy and knowingly so. Dark, yes, but grim? Mock-grim, perhaps, or camp-grim, but definitely not the kind of grim that takes itself too seriously IMO.
faetal on 7/8/2012 at 17:53
I'm only talking about my personal feelings on it, which are largely reflexive rather than conscious. I'm by no means saying that these are flaws in the games.
I also enjoy Titan Quest, which I have on perma-install.
june gloom on 7/8/2012 at 18:50
Diablo is absolutely grimdark, though, with no sense of irony whatsoever. For many that was the whole point of Diablo -- why do you think people blew up over those early D3 screens? There's nothing inherently wrong with grimdark, it's just a style.
Torchlight, for reference, would more accurately be called grimbright.
Sg3 on 8/8/2012 at 07:02
Quote Posted by Thirith
going for something more stylised is a risk. I just hope they won't lose too many sales because of this
Not to sound like a spiteful sourpuss, but I rather hope that they do lose sales over it. Why? Because, if they don't, then the message is clear: cartoon-ish sells. If the game sells well despite (or because of) the silly character visuals, then Arkane will doubtless make more games with
TF2-style charmodels, and I do not want that at all. I wish that Arkane would make another wonderful game like
Arx Fatalis, without ruining it with immersion-killing visuals (
Dishonored) or mediocre combat systems (
Dark Messiah). Really, I'm starting to think that
Arx was a happy accident.
Quote Posted by dethtoll
Diablo is absolutely grimdark, though, with no sense of irony whatsoever.
The original
Diablo was very grimdark, with almost no tongue-in-cheek about it (despite the warrior's wisecracks and some of the other characters' lines), but
Diablo II took a large step away from that, both with visuals and with themes. For example, the zombies in the first game made pretty much the sort of noise you'd expect a walking corpse to make, but in the second game, the zombies actually said, "Braaaaaiiins." The art style in the sequel was also, although much more technically advanced, a big step away from realism and toward the realm of cartoon. Also, the environments tended to be brighter. In general, Blizzard made the game much more kid-friendly than the first one, and any "dark" elements tended to be much less seriously done than the first game. Example: no horribly mutilated naked corpses hanging on the walls in the second one, as there were in the first.
Diablo II's horror elements were much more tame; if
Diablo was like an R-rated movie,
Diablo II was PG at most. (This is, by the way, why I liked the first game but disliked the second one.)
SubJeff on 8/8/2012 at 07:21
So you hope they lose sales because they're not following the crowd and going for grimly real, because they've chosen a style instead of a cookie cutter approach.
How enlightened.
june gloom on 8/8/2012 at 09:27
Yeah man what the actual fuck?
DDL on 8/8/2012 at 11:35
Also, Dark Messiah had "mediocre combat"? Really?
I always thought it was a fairly 'meh' game, massively massively enhanced by having some of the most engaging and weighty-feeling first-person combat ever.
