It's been about six months since Diablo 3 was announced.  It's hard to believe we've been dreaming of Wizards, Barbarians, and Witch Doctors that long, isn't it?  The game is still a ways off, it seems, but the steady trickle of information keeps on coming.  1UP sat down with the director of Diablo 3, Jay Wilson, and talked about the development of the game.  Wilson commented that the combat in Diablo 3 was deeper than that of it's predecessor.

1UP: Can you elaborate on your "deeper combat" comment? What makes Diablo 3's combat deeper than its predecessors?

JW: Combat is as deep as the options the designers give themselves. Whenever you add a new capability to a monster -- potentially something that feels unbeatable -- it's more of an opportunity to expand the depth of your characters so they can respond to those threats. A good example would be if you look at Diablo 2: There were a couple of problems with just the power of the characters and the way they were made powerful. A player could run faster than any monster, so you could escape just about any threat. You had endless health and resource -- by resource, I mean mana -- because of potions. And you had the Town Portal, which could instantly get you out of any problem. Those were incredibly powerful mechanics to escape danger and were not class-specific. So every kind of class really had no need for anything like an escape skill or reactionary ability. They simply needed to attack, and if they ever got in over their heads, they simply ran away or drank potions. And it's the same response across the board.

So one of the things we focused on is that response -- 1) setting up scenarios where the players can't easily get out of danger without the use of class-specific skills, and 2) giving them really simple controls to use a broader range of skills without making the game that much more complex to play.

Coming from a co-op perspective, I find the last bit, which I italicized, quite interesting.  Perhaps we are looking at scenarios where a monster might be almost undefeatable with one class, or skill set, but are a cakewalk for another.  Sounds like working together with your friends will be even more effective and exciting in Diablo 3 than in the previous games!  The entire, lengthy interview is at the link below, and a few selected quotes are included after the break.

 

 

Read The Full Article: Diablo 3 Director Gives Info on Classes and Combat

I bet this would work fine on consoles.

I have high hopes this game will be ported to consoles after PC launch. Blizzard hinted that a lot of times

Would be awesome to see Diablo 3 on the consoles, im not much of a PC gamer these days so being able to play one of the best series of games of all time would be awesome.