Thousand Pounder is a special boss monster, seen in the WWI 2008 gameplay movie and a few related screenshots. It's not known if he's one particular individual out of a whole class of big, fat, dual-wielding, tattooed, demons, or if he's a special, one-of-a-kind demon. He's not an act boss or a major quest boss though, that much was made clear in the panels at the WWI event.

Summoning Ritual

Thousand Pounder is summoned up in a scripted event. The Barbarian in the gameplay demo is running through the dungeon, when he comes upon a circle of five Dark Cultists channeling their energy to call up a demon. At first there are three pale-skinned youths dancing in the circle. They explode one by one, and then from their blood and flesh the demon is conjured.

Youths dance, then are sacrificed to call forth Thousand Pounder.

While the Barbarian watches, lights began to glow and the Thousand Pounder takes form. First his bones appear, then muscles, then skin over the top, until with a final explosion that sends the Cultists flying, Thousand Pounder bursts into life.

Bones form, then are covered by muscle.

Once he's ready to rumble, Thousand Pounder moves slowly, but with tremendous power, and deals heavy damage with his two large maces. When his health drops below about 50%, he kicks into a turbo mode. At that point his tattoos begin to glow red and he moves much more quickly. When he is defeated his death animation is basically the summoning animation in reverse; his skin sloughs off, then his muscles, before his bones clatter to the ground.

The D3 Team on Thousand Pounder

Rage mode activated.

Thousand Pounder was discussed in the WWI Denizens of Diablo panel.

The other way we emphasize monster character and personality is to look at the monster on whole. How do they get on screen and die? He's going to be on screen in a cool way, so we went to the the Thousand Pounder here. He's all bout hell. He's summoned from it literally piece by piece. When he gets on screen we figured he should be made and big. Express anger. Part of his gameplay is that he gets really mad when he's almost dead. Throws a huge temper tantrum and this changes how he plays and how the player has to play against him. When he's enraged we changed how he looked; made his tattoos glow, gave him new attack animations and special effects. When he dies they animation is somewhat a reverse of how he came on screen. We did this to show of the whole idea that he's from hell.

Media

See screenshots and concept art for Thousand Pounder in the Image Gallery.

Part of a concept art image featuring five Thousand Pounders.