A fan named Steyaertr has revived the Art Controversy by taking a bunch of clips from the 2008 Wizard’s, 2009 Monk’s, and 2010 Demon Hunter’s gameplay videos and run them through some filters to give them that dark, gothic, oversaturated, hard-to-see art style that first appeared in a bunch of fan-made shots shortly after Diablo III’s release.

Steyaetr’s video is 20 minutes long. The first 3.5 minutes is a narrated introduction to the old Art Controversy, with a mention of the recently-leaked Bliz North D3 screenshots, The creator gives his thoughts on the art design and talks about his methods and the purpose behind making this new video. Here’s a quote from what he says:

I rendered some gameplay clips that were on YouTube through some filters and some aftereffects to try and create the same dark and saturated parts of the fan screenshots…. I’m not trying to make a point her towards Blizzard. Or to criticize the current art style of the game because I think it looks awesome. And I’m definitely eager to start playing it. This video was made by me just for fun and curiosity about how it could look if it was all dark and grim.

And here’s his video. Thanks to FriskyDingo for the tip.

As many of you probably remember, another fan did exactly the same thing back back in 2008. Then it was a guy named Sozou who took the original WWI 2008 gameplay movie and ran it through some filters to darken it up. Most fans were fairly impressed by it at the time, but it seemed less interesting a year+ later, after we’d seen a lot more of D3, and the early look had been improved in various ways.

It’s too soon to say how Steyaetr’s new effort will age, but it doesn’t really impress me now. Too dark and too over-saturated; it’s not a bad color scheme, but I don’t think it would be real playable. All of the comments Jay Wilson and others made about the initial Art Controversy images seem very applicable to this.

References: