Destructible

Destructible is a term the parts of the environment that can be destroyed by spells or other attacks by player characters. These include things like tables, chairs, doorways, and stair railings.

Use of Destructibles

These objects can be blasted to try to find gold or items hidden in them, or just for fun. More interesting are the various booby traps found in the dungeons; walls propped up on wooden supports, chandeliers connected to fraying ropes, or other such accidents waiting to happen. When these types of environmental objects are broken, intentionally or accidentally, they will crash to the ground, dealing damage to anything they land on.

A chunk of stone railing goes flying.

Destructibles are very common; there are things to be broken in every room in the subterranean dungeons, though most of these are just decorative objects like chairs and tables. The larger, trap-like destructibles aren't as common and those are not always easy to see in advance, when they can best be used to damage enemies. It's not clear how fully destructibles will be integrated into outdoor environments; none are seen in the outdoor scenes from the WWI 2008 Paris gameplay movie (June), though the grass underfoot is burned and crushed by various spells.

Destructibles can damage your character as well as the monsters; in testing on the BlizzCon 2008 demo build (October) players who knocked over a wall on their own heads were damaged and stunned, while the nearby skeletons were killed outright.

The design and implementation of destructibles were discussed in the D3 Lore and Environmental Art Panel from the WWI in Paris (June 2008). The following quote comes from a rough transcript of that event:

Big thing we wanted to bring into environments of D3. Make them feel more alive. Destructibles! How we use environment with selective destruction to your advantage. Use it to kill monsters with collapsing walls, or just for bonus fun visuals. Ultimately, how much breakable stuff we include comes down to fun. There's no scientific formula; it's just very cool to break stuff. That's what we go after; how much before it become overwhelming? Lot of it, lot of fun to go around stomping stuff.

Fan Reaction

Jay Wilson commented on destructibles in a press conference from BlizzCon 2008. During that session Jay was asked about fan reactions to the game, and he listed two things fans were really excited about; Wall of Zombies and environmental destructibles. Jay added that one of the reasons Blizzard liked to show their games so early was that it let the design team fine tune and tailor things by the fan reactions -- a response that makes the addition of more and better destructibles seem inevitable. Of course, they choose the most intelligent fan reactions to make changes; In the art controversy, they didn't put much attention to fans screaming for less colour, but they did promise a slower fade-out time of monsters.

Media

Destructibles are hard to capture or discern in still screenshots. They are best seen in motion, and demonstrations of them virtually fill the various Diablo III gameplay movies. Check out this brief YouTube clip of a few destructible highlights, for example.