Games Thirst – Amazing Life
Ultimate Evil Edition for Sony’s console.
Diablo III was a success for Blizzard, having sold over 14 million copies on all platforms, and we already know it’ll go next-gen. However, PS4′s version is getting special treatment.
What Blizzard dubbed the Ultimate Evil Edition is coming to the PlayStation 4, and will feature exclusive functions like TouchPad integration, and “powerful social features”, alongside the Reaper of Souls expansion and all its new offerings, like the level cap increase to 70 and the new Paladin-like class, the Crusader.
In an interview with IGN at BlizzCon, senior producer Julia Humphreys gave us an insight of how the console team managed to take advantage of the PlayStation 4′s controller and social features.
“The DualShock 4 definitely has some really cool features on it. A small one is the Light Bar. I know that seems like ‘okay, whatever, that’s cool,’ but one of the nice things is we can color code it to the player colors in the game. We found it’s actually already really useful. If you’ve been playing and someone walks away from the table and comes back, they’re like, ‘which one is mine? Oh, I’m the blue one.’ It’s a small thing, but very cool.”
The user interface and controls won’t change compared to the PS3 version of the game, but the team is still experimenting with features that utilize the DualShock 4′s touchpad and some extra components.
“We’ve been playing around with the touch pad. What the touch pad can be really useful for and really cool for are kind of shortcutting things that you do over and over again. Or maybe even giving you the opportunity to do things that we just didn’t have buttons for. One of the things we’re investigating right now is we could it for emotes in the game. That’s been a popular request from people, because we have emotes on PC but don’t have any way to have them really on the PS3, so with the touchpad we can have a little shortcut menu for emotes.”
The PlayStation 4′s built-in Share button and the brand new PSN social features allow the team to think of creative ways to interact with your friends.
“That’s definitely one of the things we really want to focus on for the PS4 version, new ways that we can incorporate social aspects into the adventures.”
Specifically, those features include Player Mail, Player Gifts, and something called Avenger Kills.
“Player Mail is pretty much what it sounds like. You can mail an item to a friend on your friends list, so it’s pretty straightforward. Player Gifts are kind of a cool twist on that. So, let’s say you’re out adventuring in the world and you get a Legendary item that drops. There’s a small chance that a second Legendary would spawn off of that. So, let’s say you and I are playing, it would say ‘gift for [your friend] has dropped,’ and so once I click on it, it would just go straight to your mailbox. And once you open it, it will roll for your class. It’s kind of a way to help share your adventures even if you aren’t online at the same time.”
Avenger Kills, though, is something new; it allows you to take revenge on monsters that killed your friends.
“Let’s say you’re out playing in the world and a lowly white monster manages to get that last killing blow on you. There’s a chance that that monster will level up and then a portal will open and the monster will jump through. And then maybe later on when I’m playing in my game, a portal may open up and the monster will come through and I’ll get a message like ‘[your friend]’s killer is now hunting you.’ And I have a chance to then take vengeance for this monster that killed you. It’ll be now a unique monster that has affixes and is much more powerful and when loot drops, of course, I’ll be able to get mine, but that I can send some back to you. It’s just kind of a fun way to help connect games.”
When asked if these could come to the PC version, Humphreys said that “this is something that’s kind of part of the PS4 platform, so that’s why we started looking at it. Like any of our features, then the PC team would take a look to see if that makes sense for the game and for their audience.”
The team also confirmed the game will run at 1080p and 60fps on the PlayStation 4. Given all the praise for the reworked console version of the game, making it the definitive version, I’m thinking of picking this up for the PS4. Are you?
