I samband med 2008 års utannonsering av Diablo 3 fick vi stifta bekantskap med en Siegebreaker Assault Beast, vars signum var att han i gameplay-filmen som visades bet av huvudet på en intet ont anande barbarian (1:45 in i videon nedan). Bashiok bekräftar att animationer av det här slaget, åtminstone för stunden, kommer att utelämns i Diablo 3 pga dess komplexa implementation.

Unfortunately we never managed to get these implemented. They were a really cool idea, but a pretty huge amount of work. The one we showed of the siegebreaker was a scripted sequence we set up specifically for that video. It was never implemented, and never actually worked without someone sitting there typing in a bunch of commands to get it all to fire off properly. It’s still something we’d like to do, though. 

All things considered there are just higher priority tasks sometimes. We’d love, for example, to have the monk display his weapons during all of his skill animations. But it’s an enormous animation and effects investment to get it done, and we have to weigh all of these things against other features and polish. A lot of the skills we could improve have multiple animation sets, multiplied twice for each gender, and then multiplied by each weapon type he can equip. That can be 40 or more unique animations, and then there’s a full FX pass, approvals, QA testing, etc. etc. and that’d just be for 1 skill.

We have our wish lists, but it’s a balancing act of resources. Ideally our choices when balancing go toward setting realistic limitations, and producing the best game possible.