Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Preview
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Westmarch might be the grimmest place I've visited in a videogame. Its grey streets are lined with the dead. Cold blue lanterns illuminate weathered cathedrals, cracked flagstones and half-collapsed statues of old heroes.
It's the first time that Blizzard have attempted a randomised city environment. Experiments with Diablo III's Caldeum bazaar didn't work out, but tech updates to Reaper of Souls let them slot detailed city streets into procedurally generated formations. I fought hordes of glowing spirits at a crossroads, and found an alleyway carpeted in mounds of corpses. In a small house I discovered a madman who'd decided to devote himself to Malthael in the hope that he might survive the cull. You can now transition between indoors and outdoors without a loading zone, giving the place a more coherent feel than many of Diablo III's vanilla environments. More than anything, the city reminds me of the darker regions of Diablo II.
Don't expect any sunshine and rainbows in Reaper of Souls' other areas, either. The Bloodmarsh is an old bog that hides '˜hints of ancient civilisations'. I'm more excited about the Pandemonium Fortress, an insane castle at the centre of '˜the scar of creation's birth'. It's a place suspended between heaven and hell that Diablo II players have visited very briefly in Act IV, which used to house the now-destroyed Worldstone. There'll be plenty to dig into here for Diablo lore fans.
Blizzard aren't showing those zones just yet, however. Instead I fought through a few blocks in their doomed city. Malthael's ghosts and Death Angels loiter on every corner, looking for souls to reap. They had a hard time reaping mine. I tried out Reaper of Souls' new class, the Crusader: a hulking mass of Teutonic iron armed with a flail, a shield and a fanatical love for reducing evildoers to mulch. He plays like the Paladin's brawnier brother. Where Diablo and Diablo II's knight class specialised in auras that could heal team-mates, the Crusader prefers dropping bolts of holy lightning, and sometimes his own armoured body, onto enemies' heads. Blizzard describe him as a '˜mid-range melee' class, but there's a bit of wizard in his DNA. Fist of the Heavens brings a pillar of smouldering energy down anywhere on the battlefield. Smaller bolts skitter out from the point of impact to shock nearby foes. Consecration sets the area around the Crusader on fire, which heals nearby allies and harms nearby enemies. Both are excellent setups for Falling Sword, a slow-recharge ability that turns the Crusader into a mobile artillery strike. He vanishes into the sky and crashes back to earth at your chosen point of impact. Weaker enemies in the dropzone are obliterated outright, the rest take massive damage.
It didn't take long to adjust to the Crusader's combat style. Of the skills available in the demo, few targeted just one enemy. I would circle an incoming mass of monsters to get them to clump up, zap this ball of creatures with Fist of the Heavens, scatter most of them with Falling Sword and then finish anyone left with Consecration. I'd occasionally hit a few creatures with the flail when they got close, but much of combat was about managing kill zones. I'd spread out multiple bolts to engage hordes of small enemies, and stack them onto one spot to take out generals or super-powered mobs. It's easy to imagine the Crusader serving as the central rock in a co-op group, throwing out righteous spells to thin enemy ranks and dive-bombing bosses with his explosive bellyflop.
