《暗黑破坏神3》GC 2008 Jay Wilson与Eurogamer的会谈记录

翻译：charliell @ 游侠

QUOTE:
Eurogamer: You've come fairly recently from outside Blizzard to work on a quintessential Blizzard game. Is that intimidating?
Jay Wilson:  Yes, it was very intimidating. It's funny, when I first arrived, they had somebody they were trying to hire and he was really nervous about it, he wasn't sure if he was good enough to be working at Blizzard. And they were like: if we're trying to hire him, of course he's good enough. If you knew their interview process you would know that he must be.
       For me, when I first interviewed with Blizzard, I was just trying to get information about how Blizzard worked. I wasn't actually trying to get a job, because I didn't think they would hire me. So yeah, it was intimidating to come in and work there and take over something like Diablo which is so precious to me. On the other hand, I would have hated to see somebody else take it over and not do it right, or I would have hated to see it not get made. So it felt like this weird sense of, almost, responsibility - like I needed to go do it because maybe somebody else wouldn't.

 

Eurogamer: 你不久前才来到暴雪开发这样一个经典的游戏，你有压力么？
Jay Wilson:  当然，压力非常大。我第一次到暴雪的时候碰到了一件有趣的事，他们正在面试一个应聘者。这个应聘者很紧张，他不确定自己是否足够优秀从而能够在暴雪工作。而面试官给我的感觉是：如果我们雇用了他，那么他当然是非常优秀的。如果你知道面试的过程，你就会明白的确是那样。
        当我第一次去暴雪，我只是想了解下暴雪是如何运作的。我并不是去求职的，因为我觉得他们不会雇用我。所以当我加入了暴雪，在那儿工作并且接手了暗黑3的开发后，我感到这个机会对我来说太珍贵了，同时我也感到了巨大的压力。另一方面，我不愿看到别人接手暗黑3并且把它弄砸了，当然，我更不愿看到的是没有开发暗黑3。因此我隐约地感到一种责任感，似乎我应该去开发暗黑3，因为可能别人不会去做这件事情。

 

QUOTE:

Eurogamer: You're a fan of the Diablo games?
Jay Wilson:  As my wife likes to joke, Diablo was always said in hushed tones in my house. I remember seeing the first ad for Diablo on the back of the Warcraft II CD and thinking 'what is that?', and wanting to play it so bad. I was at day one for Diablo and Diablo II and [Diablo II expansion] Lord of Destruction, and I took days off of work for each one of them. At this point I think I've taken pretty much every class to Hell difficulty in Diablo II, and a few of them I've capped out. I only did one Hardcore character and I lost her, it was a Sorceress. I was grieving. Couldn't do it again, it was so painful.

 

Eurogamer: 你是暗黑系列的粉丝么？
Jay Wilson:  我妻子经常开玩笑说，在家里我总是以温柔的语气讨论暗黑。我记得第一次在魔兽2的CD背面看到了暗黑的广告，我就在想：这是什么游戏？当时我迫不及待地想玩一玩。第一天我先把暗黑、暗黑2和毁灭之王粗略地试玩了一遍，后来又花了不少时间仔细地玩了每个游戏。目前我把暗黑2每个职业都玩到了地狱难度，其中几个职业已通关。我唯一花心血的专家级角色是一个女巫，不过她挂了= =。我很伤心，无法重来让我很痛苦。

 

QUOTE:

Eurogamer: Notwithstanding your affection for them, was there stuff about those games that you wanted to fix?
Jay Wilson:  Uh-huh, yeah, there are a lot of things, and I think a lot of those are evident in what we showed at WWI. I look at the Diablo series as an interesting mix of an action game and a role-playing game; and I felt that as a role-playing game, it really sold itself short. What it did right was the addiction, the drops.
       But as an action game, we really felt that it lacked some things. You have a character class that has endless health, endless resource, they can run faster than almost anything in the world. When you combine speed with endless power and endless health, really, the only way you can challenge that player is to kill them. And you see that with Diablo II - you'll be running through the game having a great time and all of a sudden something will walk up and just step on you. That's the only time the game ever feels challenging. But that's also the time when you're most likely to lose the player, with such harsh penalties. So a lot of our focus has been, can we set the game up so that we can have a higher barometer of challenge for the player without making the early game hard?
       So we rein that [health] system in, and having basically a little bit more challenge to recover health means that we don't need to make the monsters as grueling - which is a good thing, but also means that a monster that can pin you down or slow you down or trap you in some way is suddenly way more threatening, even if he doesn't do as much damage. We've tried to get away from damage as the big scary thing; we've tried to get towards restricted movement, and having a health system that actually plays into placement, where you're standing makes a difference. That really opens things up.

 

Eurogamer: 抛开你对游戏的感情，暗黑系列有哪些地方是你觉得需要改进的？
Jay Wilson:  有很多，其中有些地方在我们WWI的演示中体现得很明显。我认为暗黑系列是动作游戏和角色扮演游戏的一个有趣的结合；一个角色扮演游戏的生命力是短暂的，这类游戏的亮点是容易让人痴迷以及丰富的物品掉落。
       而作为动作游戏，我们真切地感受到它缺少些什么。游戏里的角色拥有无限的生命值，无限的能力，他们比世界上几乎所有的东西都跑得快。当把游戏角色的速度与他们的能力以及生命值相结合，能挑战玩家的方式就只剩下杀死这些角色了。在暗黑2里，你可能在游戏里一直一帆风顺，突然一个怪物出现了，并且把你的角色‘踩扁’了。这是游戏中唯一有挑战性的瞬间，同时面对如此严峻的形势，这也是你的角色最容易挂的时候。所以我们比较关注的是，我们是否能够在避免让游戏初期很困难的前提下提高游戏难度，让其更有挑战性呢？
       因此，我们引入了生命回复系统，并且提高了一些生命回复的难度，这样我们就不用把怪物设计得过于强大。这是件好事，同时这也意味着即使一个怪物的攻击力不高，它却能用更突然、更具威胁的方式来困住你，或是让你减速。我们不刻意强调怪物的伤害；我们尝试限制玩家的行动，并且加入生命回复系统，使得战斗有所不同。这一系列的设计使得游戏的自由度更高。