For many longtime fans, Blizzard's Diablo III announcement was one of the brightest moments in the history of gaming.  Shortly after, those same fans expressed outrage at the game's new look, which appeared to be much brighter than previous Diablo titles.  Early screen shots of III may look appealing to the untrained eye, but many diehard Blizzard fans will tell you that it's lost that dark, gritty feel.  Some have even taken matters into their hands by photoshopping the released images to show Blizzard just how it should be done.

Well, Diablo III designer Jay Wilson has put gamers in their place in a recent talk with MTV Multiplayer, during which he addresses these doctored images and why they won't work in the game.  These are some examples of the fan renderings versus Blizzard's originals, accompanied by Wilson's commentary:

"The key thing to remember here is that this has been Photoshopped. This isn’t created by the engine. Though it looks really cool, it’s almost impossible to do in a 3D engine because you can’t have lighting that smart and run on systems that are reasonable. If we could do that, we probably would in a few of the dungeons.

Now in terms of the actual texturing, this texturing, where they grayed out everything and it’s very flat and the monsters are all kind of a similar tone — that does not play well. It’s very boring to run through more than a couple of times, and it’s very difficult to tell creatures apart and pop them out of the environment. So those things don’t really work for us. A lot of the lighting stuff I think is very cool, but it’s also not very doable for us."

 "A lot of this change is adding noise to the screen. If [the characters] weren’t centered on the screen — like find the witch doctor. Especially think about him as a friend [in co-op play]. Standing over there, you can’t even tell the difference between him and the zombie. And that’s another player, and when you can’t tell the player apart from the creature, that’s horrible.

You’ve got to think that there’s potentially up to seven other people in addition to yourself, and several dozen monsters. All that noise just translates into unplayable, especially when this starts moving. This texturing was actually very similar to one of our previous art styles. But when you started moving and the whole screen just kind of shimmers, you can’t really tell anything that’s going on."

Even more images and analysis can be found in the interview, and he remains quite adament about the team's design decision.

In the end, Wilson said they really wanted to capture Diablo's over-the-top visuals while providing variety to keep players interested.  He admits that it's a simple game, meaning these creatures and vibrant color schemes all work together to make the environments more immersive.  Without color, everything begins to look homogeneous, and players might lose that sense of progress.

"I think one of the things that these lack is if you stuck every one of these re-done shots right next to each other you would not be able to tell that they’re in different areas. One of the things that’s key to “Diablo II” — and I’ve gone through and done timing on it — it changes environments every 15 minutes, and every 45 minutes they give you an environment that looks completely different than one you’ve ever seen before. And when they change environments, the contrast is huge...

...So that’s one of the reasons why we really felt we had to do this. We had to move to an art style that had a lot more variety in it and was capable of a lot more."

Wilson supports their work despite petitions against Diablo III's current aesthetic, and he remains confident in the game.