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Diablo III is headed to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, and Blizzard say they’re recreating the game’s UI and controls from the ground up, in order to make them work with a gamepad. In addition to making certain things easier, this also involves adding new features to the game that they feel console players would expect.
“When you flick the right stick, your character actually performs a sort of dodge move that is unique to the console,” says Josh Mosqueira, Lead Console Designer on Diablo III.
“And we added that thing first because PlayStation players are going to have this expectation that, ‘as a console game, I should be able to do that. I should be able to have this cool sort of dodge mechanic.’ And we wanted to give them that.”
Diablo III’s controls for console have been reworked to give the game more of an action feel, Blizzard say. Using a controller to move your character around makes the game feel more “intimate” and different from using a mouse. They also took into account that, unlike PC players, players on console sit a good distance away from their TVs, and this factored into their control decisions as well.
Blizzard also plan to use the touchpad on the PlayStation 4’s Dualshock 4 controller in some manner.
“What we didn’t want to do is simplify the experience,” Mosqueira clarifies. “Because at the end of the day, Diablo’s awesome because of all the different items you can get and all the different powers those items have, so we didn’t want to sacrifice that.”
