‘Diablo III’ On Consoles Not Compromised

Diablo III on consoles has not been compromised.

Gameplay for Diablo III on the PlayStation 3 was revealed at PAX East, and according to Chris Carter of Destructoid, the Blizzard action RPG hasn’t been downgraded at all.

Diablo was a simple dungeon crawler back in the day, taking the elements of RPG gaming a step further and forcing them into full real-time. It incorporated dungeon crawling into a 3/4 perspective, using items you found or picked up off dead bodies to arm yourself, and encouraged online play, as some weapons and armor didn’t exist without the internet connection.

Diablo II was a breakthrough for RPG dungeon crawlers everywhere, incorporating an easier system of item management and rewarding hardcore players with access to the “cow level.” If you saw the cow warriors, you either made the portal online or happened to luck out with someone else making it. The game was so popular it inspired hackers to invent new armor and weapons at the risk of being banned from Battle.net.

Much like StarCraft was back on the N64, Diablo III has been ported to the PlayStation 3, and eventually the PlayStation 4. And unlike StarCraft 64, Diablo III doesn’t appear to be bogged down with processor limits.

As far as inventory sharing, Diablo III seems to have dropped the sharing system from Diablo II, in that you can’t just trade between two characters now. Everything is dropped freely so anyone can pick it up. Watch out, as the “beggars” will probably rob you if you don’t guard it before your intended player can pick it up.

Matthew Berger, Senior Level Designer for Blizzard, commented on the transition of Diablo III from PC to console, “It’s basically the same. Same XP gain, same enemies. The only tweak we made is since the screen is a little more zoomed in, we slightly changed enemy wave spawns. Boss battles were also changed, in a fun way to accommodate consoles. We did not need to compromise this version in any way”

However, there will be no Battle.net cloud support for saves, so you’ll have to bring your saves on a memory unit to transfer them to a friend’s PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4 console.

Are you excited that Diablo III didn’t need to be compromised for consoles?