Diablo was never supposed to be real-time. Since it was originally conceived by Condor, later known as Blizzard North, Diablo was intended to be an RPG in turn that borrowed heavily from the tradition of roguelikes. It was Blizzard, who resembled the success of WarCraft II: The Tides of Darkness, who suggested that Condor could turn it into a real-time dungeon crawler.
“We’ve been fighting the transition for a long time,” Condor founder Max Schaefer told GameSpot in a 2002 retrospective. “The amount of time we fought over it was absolutely ridiculous, as it only took us three hours to mock the game in real time.”
Blizzard, of course, got their sense to create a new genre in the process. Some old school RPG fans have embraced the idea of a real-time dungeon crawler, but many more fans have been attracted by the pinata-like outdoor explosions and clever use of roguelike mechanics, which allows progress to be randomized just enough to make the game effective. make endless. Diablo and its successor sold millions of units, confirming it as one of Blizzard’s most important franchises.
“Blizzard wants Diablo, the series that once inspired Destiny … to be their new Destiny. Time is truly a flat circle.”
Its history since then is indicative of the old tug of war that once took place between the two Blizzards. Blizzard North closed in 2005, and the chief developers – including chief designer David Brevik – left after the founding of Flagship Studios. When Diablo 3 was finally released in 2012, it was considered a disaster, with Brevik among its critics. Eventually, Blizzard managed to fix the ship with a popular expansion and a successful console transition, but the top management chose to switch to Diablo IV, and allegedly pulled a second expansion in the process.
Despite this checkered history, Blizzard is more invested than ever in Diablo. There are currently no less than three Diablo games in development: a mobile game originally intended for Chinese audiences, the previously announced sequel, and now a remaster of Diablo II, which remains the most successful entry to date. is. These are three more games than the weak StarCraft, which recently ended an active development on StarCraft II.
Why is Diablo such a big part of Blizzard’s future? Consider these quotes from Kotaku’s 2018 report on Diablo IV, then codenamed Fenris, published shortly after Blizzard’s disastrous Diablo: Immortals unveiled:
Another pillar of Fenris is to make Diablo more social by getting inspiration from Destiny to add what a current Blizzard developer calls ‘lightweight MMO elements’, further leveraging Blizzard’s massive online success for multiplayer in the past. Previous Diablo games have offered city centers full of computer-controlled quests and vendors – imagine being able to meet and group other players while exploring the hubs? And what if you could step in to take dungeons with them, like Destiny’s strikes or World Of Warcraft’s cases?
“The question that is still being asked is, ‘If there is going to be a’ strike ‘equivalent, where you are forced into a very story-oriented, well-designed level of a dungeon, what does it look like in Diablo?” says one person familiar with the project. “What if we had another core dablo game that happened to have a bunch of people on the map doing other cool things?”
Yes, Blizzard wants Diablo, the series that once inspired Destiny with its outdoor mechanics … their new Destiny. Time is truly a flat circle.
This is an opportunistic move by Blizzard, but not a very surprising move. For those who have not followed the prosperity of Blizzard over the past few years, this was not the best time for the once invincible publisher. At the end of 2018, Blizzard turned unexpectedly and started placing a premium on the cost savings. Rumors have surfaced that Blizzard is doubling established franchises as they place new emphasis on mobile development. Internally, Blizzard moved away from the ethos that would define ‘most of their best years’, choosing instead to pick out as many games as possible. Along with the three Diablo games mentioned above, Blizzard is also working on Overwatch 2, with additional mobile games also in development.
While no one is really saying it out loud, there is speculation that Activision is tightening up Blizzard’s leash and is anxiously looking for additional revenue generators. They seem to be an ideal candidate on Diablo, with its sustained endgame and loyal fanbase.
“You know, when I came back to Blizzard about five years ago after having some time, Diablo was one of the opportunities we looked at in incubation, and there were so many cool things we could do with it,” he said. Blizzard senior said. Vice President Allen Adham recently told me in an interview I conducted on behalf of The Washington Post. ‘There’s just so much love for the franchise, inside Blizzard and with our player base; they were all just such obvious ideas, they naturally just so fell out of the sky. ‘
It’s no wonder Blizzard goes out of their way to nurture fans for years by returning to the darker and edger look of the original games. When the development on Diablo II: Resurrected did not go well, Blizzard moved the development to a completely different team while bringing in Vicarious Visions – the studio behind the very successful Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 & 2. developer. If there is one franchise that Blizzard does not want to waste, it is Diablo.
Blizzard officially announced Diablo IV in 2019, confirming that it will have a shared open world component that requires it to always be online. When launched, it will complete the process that began when Diablo’s Borderlands crept in to create the “looter shooter” genre, paving the way for Destiny, The Division 2 and a number of other ongoing online games driven by the power of loot. The only surprise is that Blizzard prefers to keep the old isometric perspective rather than move to a more accessible third-party point of view – a possibility that was reportedly actively discussed as recently as a few years ago.
If there’s anything positive about it – apart from the fact that Diablo II: Resurrected actually looks very good – it’s that Blizzard does not intend to dull the mechanics. If anything, it’s the other way around and it’s somewhere between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 in terms of complexity. Diablo IV apparently takes an indication of the hugely successful Path of Exile and contains what looks like a large and impressive skill tree that was developed in part with feedback from the fans. It also introduces new statistics and reconsiders the rarity of articles. After Diablo III was successfully rescued from the abyss, it appears that Blizzard’s response is “deeper and more”.
This is the right approach if Blizzard wants Diablo IV to have any form of endurance. After all, Blizzard North and Blizzard South were both similar: Diablo’s real-time dungeon crawling brought it to the masses, but the great degree of depth and flexibility introduced by Brevik and the company made it popular for years. The genre owes much to Diablo’s most popular innovations, from objects to color code (though Brevik will tell you that the idea was inspired in part by Angband). Even skill trees, originally a strategic game setting, owe their status to Diablo as a distinctive RPG element. When World Of Warcraft was released in 2004, it made no secret that it lifted much of Diablo’s design, including the color code loot.
World Of Warcraft remains Blizzard’s most popular game, and because WoW Classic is still thriving, there’s no reason to assume it’s going to disappear anytime soon. But with StarCraft on hiatus and Overwatch currently declining, Blizzard needs a range that can take it forward. Diablo seems to be that series more than ever.