Blizzard has made no secret about the fact that they enjoy gruesome imagery and lots of blood and explosions in Diablo 3. Cartoonish gore and violence, but still violence. They think the trick to keeping it acceptable is in how they present the material.

Jay Wilson spoke on that in an interview from Blizzcon, August 2009. [http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/08/diablo-iii/]

[[Pentagrams]], [[cross]]es, and other traditional Diablo-style holy symbols are not present in Diablo III, and have also been [[retcon]]ned out of ''World of Warcraft'' in recent expansions. This is an intentional design choice by the developers; in addition to helping them avoid potential controversy, they feel that removing symbols from existing real world religions will help them make their games more original and self-contained.

This change has created a lot of controversy, with fans objecting to the change on aesthetic, symbolic, and "gutless corporate weasel" grounds. [[Bashiok]] addressed this issue at length in October, 2010.[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/diablo-iii-should-have-pentagrams/]