To answer this, I want to shift gears away from Diablo for a moment, and look at another game, one that was released a mere four days before. Speaking with Polygon, he said that “having a dad bod Necro or an emaciated Druid didn’t really play into the class fantasy,” and the question I might throw back at him is: Why not?
Image: Blizzard Entertainment via Sliver of Time/YouTubeĬlass fantasy is a reasonable enough construct from a design standpoint, we should be going into the process asking ourselves, “How should this feel?” However, Fergusson’s claims that body type and class fantasy are inextricably tied feel disingenuous. As it turned out, this was justified: Writing in December of last year about a preview build of the game, Polygon’s Mike McWhertor observed that while the character creator had numerous options for body paint, hairstyles, and jewelry, “hat players won’t find is a wide variety of body types.”ĭiablo franchise head Rod Fergusson claimed that this is because body type is closely tied, in Blizzard’s eyes, to “class fantasy,” a somewhat amorphous modern term for how the gestalt experience of playing a character - their mechanics, aesthetics, and so forth - should “feel.” In Diablo terms, the “class fantasy” of playing a Barbarian might be about feeling powerful, strong, or indestructible, whereas a Rogue’s might entail feeling as if you’re fast, cunning, and untouchable. When Diablo 4 art director John Mueller claimed in 2021 that the game would have “the most inclusive experience we’ve ever made with a Diablo game,” let’s just say I tempered my expectations considerably. Other times, it’s the complete absence of fatness: World of Warcraft players had to wait nearly 15 years for a playable race that wasn’t a wasp-waisted supermodel, a muscle bro, or a Literal Anthro Cow. Look at Roadhog’s… well, everything in Overwatch. Priscilla Ashvane and Harlan Sweete in Battle for Azeroth encapsulate the “fat and greedy glutton” villain trope. Sometimes it’s a matter of leaning too hard on irritating fat character tropes: Chen in Heroes of the Storm, for example, can master the martial arts but can’t find a shirt that fits him. Blizzard Entertainment does not have the best track record when it comes to fat characters.
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