Bashiok's forum posts/May 2009

May 28, 2009 - Baldness and lore
When asked about the reason for Fallen's change in hairstyle, Bashiok jokingly replied:

Do you want a lore reason or an actual reason? Source

After the deaths of the Fallen champions Bishibosh, Rakanishu, and Colenzo, the Fallen ceremoniously removed their top knots in their honor. Over the years the remembrance of the old heroes waned, new hair styles emerged, and the majority of the Fallen imps now sport mohawks which symbolize undivided unity and strength.

The real reason for any sort of change is purely artistic. Source


 * Q u o t e:
 * no way, you just made that up

All lore is just someone sitting around and making stuff up. Granted I'm not one of the writers for the game, and what I stated isn't going to be held as canon, but there's also the fact that it doesn't matter why their hair styles changed. But I think it's as good a reason as any. Source

May 22, 2009 - Fallen fitting into the game
Bashiok addressed concerns about how the Fallen fit into Diablo III:

The fallen are definitely our 'goofiest' demons. I sort of see them as the comedy relief of the Diablo franchise. Except you get to stab them.

They're small impish guys, mischievous, not very brave, little voices that talk really fast and seem to only be able to recount the names of other fallen. They're goofy looking, sort of oddly shaped, tubby little guys running on short little legs. They're about as far as we want to push any sort of silliness in the game though. But for that, they're perfect. I don't think anyone ever took the Fallen very serious. They shouldn't be, they're little annoying imps.

If we push to that extreme too much though then the game's not taken seriously enough, and if anything this is a dark and very serious game. But, at the same time, you want some breaks. We don't want to constantly bombard the player with the grotesque or else that too sort of loses some of its punch.

Of course, and I'm quoting our associate producer Nathan on this, "The Overseer rolls seven popped collars deep." So there's still definitely some bad-assery to be had with the Fallen. Source

May 22, 2009 - Animation
Bashiok responded to an outraged poster that lamented about the choppy animation of the Fallen Shaman seen on the official site:

Hahah, well that just earns you a ban for so many reasons ... but I'll still address it. Why? I don't know, it's still a valid observation. And the outrage made me giggle.

So yeah, you can see that clipping issue pretty well on the model close up. The shaman was given a dagger fairly recently. From my old avatar you can see the previous model (sans dagger). The dagger was added, along with some slight model tweaks and re-texturing, to give the shaman a bit more of an edge (pah dum chhhh!). Toughen him up a little. The clipping, obviously something we try to avoid at all times when animating and building the item sets and models, in this case is practically unnoticeable at game-cam distance.

We're not building models, textures, and environments for these types of close up shots. In these updates we grit our teeth and bear it, because it's cool for you guys to be able to see this stuff.

In closing, I'm more than willing to provide reasoning and discuss observations, just don't be a jerk about it. Source.