三次推倒重来，决定D3艺术风格的要素

今天我遇到Jay Wilson，暴雪D3主设计师，的时候，我用了两个短小的词开始了我们的谈话。

“艺术风格”

我不用再多说什么，当然这是因为Wilson已经明白了我的意思。“这很复杂”，他说。“这在网上是争议的焦点，但是大体上，我们所得到的回馈还是正面的。尽管我们已经收到了请愿书，而在论坛上一些人闹得也挺凶，但是那实在就是些“吱吱作响的轮胎”罢了。”

“当然了，对于核心部分我们并没有任何犹疑。我也许会对那些不喜欢这艺术风格的人说，定下艺术风格是最难的事。”

但是也有一种更为谨慎折中的办法，Wilson解释道：

我们现在所见到的是D3的第三次推倒重来后的作品。像很多其他开发所做的抉定一样，艺术风格是取决于游戏性的。

“Diablo是一款人们能玩上成百个小时的游戏，而这其中的回报之一就是风格迥异的环境。”人们回顾Diablo的前作，会有不同的回忆。“有人会记住第一场景的地下城……但是很可能忘记了第一场景的绿草地带，以及第二场景的宫殿、沙漠等等……”

事实上，Wilson说整个团队起初定下的基调是一个非常“褪色灰暗”的世界。“我们在辨别物体上遇到了各种各样的问题……战斗也不是很好，而世界环境也很快就看上去雷同了。当我们玩着那个版本的时候，我们都不喜欢它，不觉得那很有趣。”

Diablo2，用Wilson的话说，实际上是“非常饱满光亮”的。

那么那些抱怨该怎么办呢，Diablo3难道会在类型和环境上都“和WoW很相像”吗？

“在我们所有的游戏里都充满了一个哲学，从事实来看，是一个放之四海而皆准的哲学……所以有可能人们会把它们拿出来比较，”Wilson说，“我们的哲学之一就是我们的艺术家觉得如果只是使用写实主义，而不为游戏设计一套独特的视觉效果、只会按常理出牌那就不是独树一帜的暴雪公司了，若是那样，他们宁可选择罢工。”

色彩的选择，他说，提高了物体之间的区分度，也提醒玩家时刻注意保持远离怪物。这样的哲学思想贯穿了暴雪的所有游戏。“如果你传承着这些规则，那么游戏之间总有可能产生一些相似之处。”

“有什么比和大获成功的WoW相比更为糟糕的呢？我们当然从所有我们的自己的游戏里学习到了不少东西，”Wilson说道，“我们不会说“我们不想做那些别的游戏已经做过的东西”——这些都是BLZ的，我们都是一家人。WoW从Diablo2里获得了不少灵感……如果我们觉得那是一个明知得选择，我们也会从它身上捕捉灵感。我们并不怎么在意两者间究竟是不是很相似。重要的是，那究竟能不能让游戏性得到提升？这种思路往往会通向成功。”

然而也确实在有些情况下，共享灵感的办法行不通——WoW游戏主管Jeffrey Kaplan说过整个团队都小心不要把WoW里墓地的墓碑做得太哥特化——那些风格是属于Diablo的！

“Diablo可以做到很多WoW没有做到的东西，”Kaplan说。“有些我们不能做的暴力画面可以在Diablo3里实现；如果我们在WoW里加入Diablo3的一些元素，那么我们会被要求提高年龄限制。毕竟它们是更加黑暗的场景。”

换句话说，Wilson说道，暴雪的团队不会因为一个想法不是全新的而摒弃它。“如果我们仅仅因为要保持它不像WoW而降低了游戏性，那绝对是个糟糕的选择。我们从不认为，人们玩游戏时，会对这是不是个不同的游戏有什么疑问。”

这些我们现在所见到的初步的风格，Wilson说，仅仅是游戏最早期的一部分。“我们试图让整个世界的状况看上去更糟糕…这是我们叙述手法的一部分。当游戏画面愈发黑暗，周遭物体比如火刑柱也将会愈来愈高。”

“如果你开始于末日之境，然后再面对更加末日的场面，那将不会给玩家留下多少深刻的映像。”（译者：这算是一个暗示？）

Art direction.

I didn't need to say any more, of course, because Wilson already knew about the fan-fit I was referring to. "It's a complex issue," he said. "It's been a big issue online, but for the most part, the response we've gotten has been very positive. We've got petitions, a few people on forums [who are] very loud, but it's really more of the 'squeaky wheel' syndrome."

"Certainly, internally there's no doubt. I would tell people who don't like the art style that probably, getting the art style was the hardest thing."

But there's a careful method to all of it, Wilson explained:

Wilson said that what we see now is the third iteration on the Diablo III design. As with many of the decisions the developer makes, much of the art design issue was based in gameplay principles.

"Diablo is a game you play for, hopefully, hundreds of hours, and one of the rewards is a variety of different-looking environments." People looking back on old Diablo, he said, may have a selective memory. "People remember the Act I dungeons... but they kind of conveniently forget the green fields of Act I, and all of Act II... and it's palaces, its bright deserts."

Actually, Wilson said the team originally shot for a "very desaturated, very dark" gameworld. "We had all kinds of problems with identification of units... combat wasn't very good, and the worlds got homogeneous very quickly. As we played through it, we didn't like it, or think it was very much fun."

Diablo II, said Wilson, was actually "very saturated, very bright."

What about the complaint, then, that Diablo III may be "too much like WoW" in style and vibe?

"There's a philosophy that goes across all of our games, and that philosophy stays true from game to game... so it probably draws some comparisons," Wilson said. "One philosophy is that our artists feel like if they're just using photorealism, not creating a unique look for the game, not stylizing so that it's uniquely Blizzard, then they're not doing their jobs."

Color choices, he said, promote telling units apart and telling players apart from monsters, philosophies that cross all of Blizzard's titles. "If you do follow those rules, there's going to be some similarities."

And what's so bad about drawing some comparisons to the hugely-successful WoW, anyway? "We definitely learn from all our games," said Wilson. "We don't say, 'oh, we don't want to do anything those games did' — it's all Blizzard, we're all a family. WoW pulled stuff from Diablo II... if we think it's a smart choice, we try to pull stuff from them. We don't really worry about whether it's different. What matters is, does it make the gameplay better? That always wins."

There are some cases, though, where the sharing of art philosophy doesn't always work — WoW game director Jeffrey Kaplan said that the team takes care not to make the gravestones in WoW's pivotal cemeteries too Gothic-looking — those tombstones belong in Diablo.

"Diablo can do a lot of things WoW can't even do," Kaplan said. "We can't do the level of violence that they can do in Diablo III; we would lose our rating if we do the things that Diablo III does. They have a much darker vibe."

In other words, said Wilson, the Blizzard team won't pass over a good idea just because it's not brand-new. "If we're actually making the game worse with no other reason than to be different from WoW, then it's a bad choice. We don't think, when people play, that they'll have any problem telling that it's a different game."

The preliminary art we've seen so far, Wilson said, is from early on in the game. "We want to generate the feeling of everything getting worse... it's part of our narrative. It makes the more gloomy part of the game a place where the stakes get higher."

"If you start out at the apocalypse, and then move to more apocalypse, it's not going to have much of an impression on players."

本帖由狐狸猫发布于BLIZZARDCN/NGACN，原贴：
http://kotaku.com/5031732/art-apocalypse-blizzards-wilson-talks-diablo-iii-design-decisions