Diablo III Previews
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The most obvious change since Diablo II is also the first one you will forget about - the jump to a 3D rendering engine. Previous Diablo games have all stuck to two dimensional, pre-rendered sprite work for players, monsters and terrain. And while the new engine is fully three dimensional, with lavish colored lighting and high resolution textures, the hand painted style and fixed isometric camera angle immediately draw you back to the franchise's roots.And a bit from Joystiq's article:
Make no bones about it, this is truly a Diablo game. The conversation from 2D to 3D has not hindered or broken the game play experience in any way. With the new engine, however, comes some immediately noticeable new features and the most satisfying of those are the destructible environments. Every smash of a weapon or blast of a spell seems to send chunks of stonework crumbling or wooden planks splintering in every direction. Most doors you come across yield to a few quick blows, and there are often opportunities to drop large sections of scenery on throngs of unsuspecting foes.
Before we get ahead of ourself, here's the details on the interface. If you played Diablo, it'll look familiar to you. There's a minimap circle in the upper right corner which is more of a proper map and not the translucent mini/maximap from Diablo 2. The hotbar still lives at the bottom of the screen, and it has the familiar big red health sphere on the left, and the blue mana one on the right. In between you've got six numbered slots and three buttons that let you assign attacks/spells to the left mouse button and the right mouse button. The third button is for your tab key, and it'll cycle between whatever you have selected on it, and whatever is slotted in the right mouse button spot.
