Last summer I went to war with those Diablo superfans who threatened to do anything and everything under the sun because they didn’t like the artistic direction that Diablo III was going in.

And I won.

But one of the people whom we have yet to hear from was original Diablo producer Bill Roper. That was until VideoGamer had the chance to speak with the Blizzard North alum and ask him about what he thinks of the new look.

Not surprisingly, Roper doesn’t think it feels like Diablo.

I think that one of the things that we always tried to get across was that Diablo was Gothic fantasy and I think there was just a need that was put in there from the visuals that I didn’t necessarily get. I got it from the architecture and to a degree from the character design but not the feeling of the world. I can’t say that I dislike it. I didn’t look at it and go, oh my God that’s horrible. But I looked at it and went, it’s not really… to me as a player it just didn’t really ring with Diablo.

I’ve noticed that a lot of the knee-jerk reaction to Roper’s comments boils down to “Oh, what does he know? He made Hellgate: London” (read: Kotaku). Yeah, he is. And it sucked. But he’s also responsible for Warcraft, Warcraft II, Warcraft III, Starcraft, Diablo and Diablo II, not to mention he’s also working on Champions Online for Cryptic Studios which is looking to be a damn fine online game (take it from me, I’m a beta tester) so y’all can shut the hell up.

All I can simply say is that while I don’t agree with the man, he did create the franchise. So I think he’s allowed his views.

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