The prevailing "wisdom" seems to be that things are just too damned bright and, I suppose, happy. Gamers want their Hellbeasts drenched in shadows! 'Cause everybody knows that when you can't see the creature, it's that much more scary! Okay, here are a couple of things to consider. First, that darkness-as-scary indicator really only works well in the movies, where the protagonist has no idea what he's up against. Once the monster has stepped into the light, it becomes a known quantity -- it's no less dangerous, but now it can be acted against.

In a game like Diablo 3, however, every monster is meant to be a target. So it has to have some sort of visible form. What's more, part of the thrill of combat is seeing the creatures die -- whether sliced in half, scorched by a spell, or beaten to a pulp, you want to be able to see what's going on.

Second, have you taken a look at some of the world's deadliest critters? Go look at a poison dart frog, or a lionfish, or a coral snake, or any number of stinging insects. It's frequently seen that many of the beasts we should rightly be afraid of are brightly-colored, as if Nature is showing us her own warning sign. Why shouldn't our fantasy creatures exhibit the same looks?

If we're going to talk about the coloration of Diablo 3's landscape, where I hear that someone had once spotted a (shudders) rainbow, then I would have to say that for one thing, there's a huge difference between beauty and the merely twee, and it's not colors that defines it. Don't you want to preserve a setting that's so lush and gorgeous that the thought of the minions of darkness overrunning it and reducing it all to char and ash motivates you to fight all the harder? If you walked amongst fiery ruins and smoking fissures all the time, how would you distinguish that from Hell itself? Would a bleak brown palette really suit things that much more?

Listen: it's good to expand what you think you like to include the new and different. That's how we grow as human beings. Maybe it would help to think of Blizzard as choosing not to go with the staid, overused method of delineating Hell, but instead redefining what evil and horror can be by showcasing this bold new direction. Anyone can provide rivers of blood, and cloak everything in deep shadows -- a lot of bad art design can be hidden that way. But it takes true ability to give you something you think is safe and suddenly turn that into a moment of terror. Sometimes things will shamble into the light and show you something you'll wish you'd never seen. And when you realize that -- when you know it's too late, and that you'll never be able to forget what you've seen -- you'll realize that it's light, not darkness, that's the most frightening thing of all.