Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Pandemonium Preview and Skill Videos
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The smattering of buzz-inducing content for Reaper of Souls continues to reach the official Diablo III website, with the latest batch including a detailed overview of Pandemonium and several level 61 class skill videos. Since the Pandemonium entry goes into design details, I'll quote from that:
External zones are always the most challenging, but Pandemonium takes this to an entirely new level. Both the battlefields and the Fortress itself needed to encompass the feelings of being ancient and infinite without losing players in a way that would distract from gameplay. In particular, our designers carefully avoided the perception of being displaced or wandering in outer space. The challenge was in ensuring a sense of grandeur that could house colossal enemies, evoke the excitement of the unexplored, and still sell the basic idea of plumbing the depths of a massive, ancient fortress.
This sort of dungeon delving is hardly new to the Diablo franchise, let alone in Act V. Pandemonium Fortress needed to be different from the Ruins of Corvus in the Blood Marsh or Bastion's Keep at the edge of Arreat Crater. Instead of finding an earthly construct, you'll find this eerie keep maintains the notion of a militant garrison while distinctly lacking the trappings of what one would expect from a human site.
Getting into the perfect balance of extra planar and relatable took fare more than the thoughts of an individual. In speaking to Lead Level Designer Dave Adams, he shared some insight on "ideation days," a process that the design team utilized in exploring this space. "We break up into groups and try and create single scene events that take place on 240 foot by 240 foot tiles. Seeing what each group comes up with and how different those ideas can be is really amazing. We often use this to steer the direction on an area. We had a lot of awesome events that came out of that, and you'll experience them in the game."
