Diablo 3 will have "way more quest content overall than Diablo 2, period"

Blizzard have been talking about how the huge amounts of randomisation will help Diablo 3 to stand out from the crowd of action RPGs. Diablo 3's randomly generated dungeons will host randomly assigned quests, and monsters you fight in these dungeons will have changing power sets, meaning you can run the same dungeon over and over again, and still encounter plenty of variety. On top of that, Diablo 3's runes system is set to bring an enormous amount of customisation to the game's skill trees, meaning character development will be even more complex and addictive than it was in Diablo 2.

Speaking to Atomic Gamer , Lead Content Designer Kevin Martens gave his thoughts on how randomisation will keep Diablo 3 fresh. "So the fact that we have random dungeons, random monsters, random loops, pretty much random everything. Every time you go around a corner in a dungeon, you don't know if you're going to see a brand new quest that you've never seen before. You might see the same monster, but with totally new powers. You might see a totally different monster."

"We've added way more quests, more variety of quests. We've randomized the quests, and have these sort of quests that are self contained. For example, if you enter a dungeon in Diablo III, there might be somebody standing at the entrance, like a treasure hunter, saying, “Hey, I heard stories about the Idol of Rygnar is hidden somewhere in this dungeon. Help me find it and you can share in the reward.” Then you go through the dungeon and protect this guy. Then you'll find the idol and you'll get the reward. People will turn on you…you're never quite sure what is going to happen. We're adding all those random elements all over the world. There is way more quest content overall than Diablo 2, period.

"That aspect of it is one of the things that Diablo is most well-known for, and I think that we do that better than anyone. I think that's the feather in our cap."

Martens went on to talk about the levels of customisation the runes system will allow. Runes can be applied to the game's abilities to give them wildly different effects.

"You can take a witchdoctor power called “Plague of Toads“, and turn you into a giant toad. It literally swallows the enemy and spits out the gold inside of them and so on. So the customization is extraordinarily huge. It's astonishingly re-playable."

Sadly there's still no release date for Diablo 3, though Blizzard are aiming to get it out this year . Hopefully we'll learn more about the game at E3. Until then, there's plenty of screens and info on the official Diablo 3 site .

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.