Chest

Chests in Diablo games are objects in the game environment that the characters can interact with. This is generally not the same thing as a destructible object, as they also often contains items or gold.

Game Objects

Chests, barrels, dead bodies, and many other "clickable" type of objects are found throughout the dungeons and surface areas of Diablo III. These objects and containers function much as they did in the previous games in the series; once a player spots the object he or she points at it, and with a click the character proceeds to the object and opens it up. There are trapped objects in Diablo III, and the prizes found from said objects vary, much as they did in Diablo II.

Locked Chests, and Chest Quality

One feature from Diablo 2 that will not be returning in Diablo 3 is the locked chest. Bashiok explained why in September 2008. [1]

There have been a few discussions about chests, what they meant in the previous game, and what they'll mean in Diablo III. Currently there are no locked chests, and it's not something we're looking to reintroduce for now. We have discussed varying chest quality and types, adding randomness not only to the appearance of a chest but also the value of items it may drop or possibly specifically what types of items it's guaranteed to drop. Mix it up a bit and make finding a chest exciting, but make finding a special chest something even rarer and more exciting. It could certainly make exploring the entire floor of a dungeon more compelling before moving on.

Players often complained about the locked chests in Diablo II, since they didn't necessarily drop any more or better stuff, and having to carry keys was thus a nuisance without much redeeming value. The D3 Team seems to be removing this argument before it can even begin.

Bashiok addressed locked chests again in February, 2009. [2]

Having keys that are dropped for specific uses, that have more story and questing elements tied to them are definitely possible. In a general 'designery' way Leoric's crown was essentially a key used to unlock the boss fight in the BlizzCon demo. So I don't think it's out of the question to then have a literal key be used for more quest-centric chest unlocking purposes.

That's of course completely separate from the generic dropped keys and their ability to open randomly spawned 'locked' chests. We don't currently have keys and locked chests, but... we're not completely opposed to them either.

Something I posted about a long time ago, which were just ideas being thrown around internally, is the idea of having multiple tiers of chests with subsequently lower spawn rates, and subsequently increased chances for dropping better and better items. At that point keys sort of become this unnecessary burden, because you already had the amazing luck of having the rarest chest type in the game spawn, it's probably not all that cool to then also say "Now find a key for it!"