You may not be surprised (especially ’cause you’ve probably already seen it) but the passing has been delayed to an ambiguous date of “spring” as revealed on the Xbox show, “Sentuamessage.” Besides wondering if that was an official show, my first reaction wasn’t really of overwhelming dissapointment. As I watched the footage of presumably more New Orleans streets spotted with the living dead, overturned cars, and four survivors sprawing bullets everywhere, I felt not even a twinge of excitement. Let me tell you that I’d probably accept a cage match for anyone that would begrudge Valve the title of one of the best game producers ever before I further my reflection of my non-reaction.

You see, to me, Left 4 Dead 2 represents a rarity in this day and age for me, if not the majority of folks, where game buying is hyper-informed. You and I don’t buy Crappy Castle Adventure because teh webz told us from two hundered sources that the crappy in the title applied to more than just the Castle that you visit in-game. I queried, and the collective gave me a green light. I even played the demo. But I played the game for like a week. Shame on me, you say, for buying a game that you didn’t end up caring about after so much research. Touche. A well earned touche. But I can still say something about the hindsight of all this…

Blizzard has just revealed the female equivalent of the witchdoctor class in Diablo III.

Nothing out of the ordinary I suppose. However, there is something that I noticed straight away that you might also spot. When you head over to the female witch doctor page, you’ll see the GIF of the in game model that’ll be used. I thought the proportions of the model were interesting to say the least.

The character is more or less “pear shaped”, the hips of the character being larger than the stereotyped female heroine compared to the upper body. This is important on a number of levels, most of which the average reader could surmise. Beyond that, though, is that even when looking at the concept art and the GIF of the in game model the realistic proportions of the character imply a heightened realism of the game world.

I’m really glad to see that there isn’t any kind of warped proportions coming through in this reimagining of sorts. The world of Diablo seems to be one of the most persistent game worlds I’ve seen, which is curious, since the game doesn’t have too much depth to speak of. Does this mean that every design choice, every visual aspect, even the body proportions of the characters, imply the themes and state of a world, even to a higher degree than the actual written content? I think very much so. I’m interested to watch the design of the game coalesce over the next couple of months… or years, as the case may be.