Blizzard Entertainment: Hi we have Leonard Boyarski here from the Diablo 3 team, we’re just going to give you a quick overview of the Followers feature that we’re talking about today and then we’ll have time for questions afterwards.

AusGamers: Okay, great.

Leonard Boyarski: How’s it going?

AusGamers: Hi Leonard, how are you?

Leonard: Good! So the Followers is something that we’re really excited to talk to you about today, they add a lot of depth to the game. Not only in their skill-sets but also in the stories they bring to the game and the depth they allow us to get into in some of the storytelling.



There’s three different Followers that you can pick up over the course of the game: there’s the scoundrel, his name is Lyndon. He hails from the town of King’s Port and he was a member of the Thieves Guild who has recently been disgraced and is somewhat on the run from them.

The next one is the Templar, his name is Kormac. He’s a member of the Templar order and they’re searching for a set of holy tomes that were stolen by the Archbishop Lazerus way before Diablo 1 time. The last one is the Enchantress, Irena, and her past is shrouded in mystery. She follows this enigmatic figure named the Prophet, who you really don’t find out much about until you’re part-way through the game and you’ve had her for a while. You don’t know where she’s from or what her actual story is -- that’s something that unfolds over the course of the game.

The cool thing about these followers -- besides their story and personalities -- is that you can play them a couple of different ways. Using the Templar as an example; you can use him to taunt enemies, you can use him in front of you to take damage for you, but you also have his healing capability. If I’m a barbarian, I don’t need a Templar out there taking damage for me, so I’m going to spec him out to be more of a heal-guy, or a magic kind of guy or whatever.

So when I’m picking my skills for these guys, I can pick and choose to customise them to my gameplay style. Even beyond that customise ability, we really wanted it to be a challenge for you to pick which one of these guys you want based on not only their skill-sets but their personalities because hopefully they’re engaging enough.

We’ve put a tonne of work into their voice-talent and the number of lines they have to talk to you about stuff, to really bring them to life and add a lot to the experience of the world.



AusGamers: So they’re basically an evolution of Diablo 2’s mercenaries right?

Leonard: Yeah. Hirelings we used to call them.

AusGamers: So obviously their narrative component is a lot deeper. How else have you guys driven players to want to hire at least one of these guys in particular, or all of them in as many playthroughs as possible.

Leonard: Well the way that it works is, when you’re going through the game on the main story-arc, you run into them going through their part of the story. They’re basically adventurers on a parallel path to your own. So you find them and interact with them as part of your main story-arc, so you can’t avoid them. Whether you hire them or continue on without them is completely up to you.

AusGamers: So they’re not integral to the main story-arc. You can ignore them if you want?

Leonard: Well you have to play their little introduction, because that’s on the main story-arc, but after that you could just never talk to them again if you don’t want to.

AusGamers: What was the decision for you guys behind adding them to the main story-arc? Was it just to flesh out more of the actual game world?

Leonard: Yeah. When we went through the process of building this game, we looked for places to add more depth to the world and more storytelling ability. Diablo is such a fast-paced game that it’s really a challenge to find ways to deliver story.

We don’t have long conversations. We do have a lot of lore books, which are very successful because you can listen to them as you’re running around. So another way we found that was very successful was having these characters with you and having them talk about what’s going on with the player and really engage in the player. They each have a different take about what’s going on in the world, and their background’s help flesh out the world as a living place.

So we feel that it really helps deepen your experience in the game, but if that’s not your cup of tea, you’re not going to have a horrible game because you don’t want to take them.



AusGamers: What was the decision behind only having three followers, because it seems like a small number. Given that you’re utilising them to flesh out the lore more, a higher number might have been helpful. Did you guys have a higher number to begin with?

Leonard: No we were always planning on three. The reason we went with three -- at least from a story standpoint -- is because we put so much into them. Each one has so much to bring to the game in terms of their personality and story. They’re fully voiced, we put a lot of work into casting, recording and developing them and making sure that they were really polished. So having three in there that not only have different stories but also focus on different aspects of gameplay, felt like a really good number to us.

One of the things with Diablo that you always have to try and balance is that you want to have a good selection of things to choose from but you don’t want to overwhelm the player. You can only use one follower at a time, so if you had too many followers to choose from, it could become overwhelming and you might not want to deal with it.

AusGamers: How do each of their skill-sets compliment the various character classes that you’ve already revealed for the game? And in terms of the AI, do they dynamically react to the way that you’re playing? Obviously it’s not an overtly deep game in terms of combat tactics or recourse, but how have you differentiated their play-styles to work with the different player character classes?

Leonard: Well that’s somewhat up to you by the way you spec them out. If you give the Enchantress a thing called energy bomb -- which is one of my favourite things that she does -- she’ll cease that when the player gets down to a certain percent of health because it’s this big bomb that goes off. She automatically does that when you get down to a certain amount of health.

If you’ve specced out the Templar to be somebody that does more healing type things -- backing you up more than up-front fighting -- that’s just how he reacts to the world.

AusGamers: In terms of adventuring with them. How long can they stay with you in the game?

Leonard: For the whole game. You could choose to play with one of them or you can switch up between them. While they’re back in town, they level up with you, so you don’t have to go level up one if you haven’t played with them for a while.



AusGamers: Now it’s been a while since you guys have spoken about Diablo 3, so why reveal the Followers just now? Are you ramping up? There’re rumours that you’re closer to finishing the main game than a lot of people thought you might be.

Leonard: I don’t know where people think we are, but we’re just plugging away on it; trying to make it the best possible game that it can be. So this just seemed like a good time to reveal the Followers, because -- and I keep going back to this -- we’re really proud of the story behind them and the amount of work we put into making them come alive as characters.

AusGamers: So in terms of the content of the finished game, are you guys basically complete there and just balancing everything now?

Leonard: I’m not really going to answer that just now. I’ll just say, keep your eyes open over the next couple of weeks and you’ll have a better idea of where we’re at.

AusGamers: Okay, fair enough. So which of the Followers is your personal favourite?

Leonard: Ah that’d be tough. I think I’d lean a little towards the Scoundrel, because he’s the funniest. He definitely has a dark humour to him and has some really funny lines. But it’s tough because it really depends what character I’m playing.

AusGamers: How do you go about managing the Followers. Can you drop and re-hire them at any point?

Leonard: Yeah, you have to go back to town to re-hire them. The cool thing about them is that they don’t really die in combat, they just go unconscious for a while. So you don’t have to go back to town if they fall. They just kind of pop back up and start fighting again.

AusGamers: And what sort of rewards will the players get for actually following through with the narrative for each of them?

Leonard: Just a deeper, better storyline I think, and the fact that they help with your gameplay and with your combat.



AusGamers: Okay, I don’t know if I’m going to get much more information out of you that I’d like today [laughs], but they sound fantastic, I can’t wait to see the trailer. So I guess we’ll leave it there, unless you’ve got something to tell me that you haven’t told anyone else yet?

Leonard: Not that I can think of [laughs].

AusGamers: Okay then, thanks for that Leonard. Bring on that trailer and bring on some more information, we’re really champing at the bit for this game.

Leonard: That’s great, thanks a lot.