Diablo should never have been in real time. Originally conceived by Condor, later known as Blizzard North, Diablo was intended to be a turn-based RPG that borrowed heavily from the tradition of roguelikes. It was Blizzard, along with the success of WarCraft II: The Tides of Darkness, that suggested that Condor turn it into a real-time point-and-click dungeon crawler.
“We’ve been fighting that transition for a long time,” Condor founder Max Schaefer told GameSpot in a retrospective 2002. “The amount of time we had on it was completely ridiculous as it only took us about three hours to mock the game in real time.”
Blizzard naturally got their way and in the process created what amounted to a new genre. Some old-school RPG fans opposed the idea of a real-time dungeon crawler, but many more fans were drawn to the pinata-like exterior explosions and clever use of roguelike mechanics, which randomized progress just enough to make the game effective make endless. Diablo and its sequel went on to sell millions of units, making it one of Blizzard’s premier franchises.
“Blizzard wants Diablo, the series that once inspired Destiny… to be their new Destiny. Time is really a flat circle.”
History since then marks the ancient tug of war that once took place between the two blizzards. Blizzard North closed in 2005, with the main developers – including chief designer David Brevik – leaving to found Flagship Studios. When Diablo 3 was finally released in 2012, it was considered a disaster, with Brevik among the critics. Blizzard eventually managed to rectify the ship with a popular expansion and a successful console transition, but upper management chose to move on to Diablo IV and reportedly pull the plug on a second expansion in the process.
Still, despite this eventful history, Blizzard is investing more than ever in Diablo. No fewer than three Diablo games are currently in development: a mobile game originally conceived for the Chinese audience, the previously announced sequel, and now a remaster of Diablo II, which remains the most successful entry to date . That’s three more games than poor StarCraft, which recently saw active development on StarCraft II end.
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 revealed:
Another pillar of Fenris is to make Diablo more social, drawing inspiration from Destiny to add what one current Blizzard developer called “light MMO elements,” building on Blizzard’s previous massive online multiplayer success. Previous Diablo games had hub cities filled with computer-controlled scavenger hunters and sellers – imagine meeting and grouping other players while exploring those hubs? And what if you could go out and take dungeons from them, kind of like Destiny’s strikes or World Of Warcraft’s copies?
“The question that has been asked over and over is, ‘If there is a’ strike ‘equivalent, forcing you to a very story-focused, well-designed level of dungeon, what does that look like in Diablo?” said one person familiar with the project. “What if we still had a Diablo core game that happened to have a lot of people on the map doing other cool stuff?”
Yes, Blizzard wants Diablo, the series that once inspired Destiny with its loot-based mechanics… become their new Destiny. Time really is a flat circle.
It’s an opportunistic move by Blizzard, but not particularly surprising. For those who haven’t followed Blizzard’s fortunes over the years, it hasn’t been the best of times for the once invincible publisher. At the end of 2018, Blizzard turned around unexpectedly and started giving a premium on cost savings. Rumors started circulating that Blizzard was doubling down on established franchises while putting a new emphasis on mobile development. Internally, Blizzard moved away from the ‘we’ll ship it when it’s done’ ethos that defined most of their prime years, choosing to focus on releasing 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 confirmed to be in development.
While no one is really saying it out loud, the speculation centered around Activision tightening Blizzard’s belt, causing them to anxiously seek out additional revenue generators. They seem to have settled on Diablo, with his persistent endgame and loyal fan base, as an ideal candidate.
“You know, when I returned to Blizzard about five years ago after taking some time off, Diablo was one of the opportunities we looked at during the incubation, and there were so many cool things we could do with it,” Blizzard senior Vice President Allen Adham recently told me in an interview I conducted on behalf of The Washington Post. “There is just so much love for that franchise, both within Blizzard and our player base; they were all such obvious ideas, they just naturally fell from heaven, so to speak. ”
It’s no wonder Blizzard is doing everything it can to accommodate longtime fans by returning to the darker and sharper look of the original games. When development on Diablo II: Resurrected didn’t go well, Blizzard went so far as to shift development to a completely different team and Vicarious Visions – the studio behind the hugely successful Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 & 2 – as co-developer. If there’s one franchise that Blizzard doesn’t want to screw up, it’s Diablo.
Blizzard officially announced Diablo IV in 2019, confirming that it will have a shared open-world component that requires it to be always online. When launched, it will complete the process that began when Diablo’s Borderlands cribbed to create the ‘looter shooter’ genre, paving the way for Destiny, The Division 2 and a host of other persistent online games powered by the power of loot. The only surprise is that Blizzard is choosing to keep the old isometric perspective rather than shift to a more accessible third-person perspective – a possibility that was reportedly only actively discussed a few years ago.
If anything positive can be gleaned from all of this – aside from the fact that Diablo II: Resurrected looks really good – it’s that Blizzard doesn’t seem intent on weakening the mechanics. If anything, it goes the other way, somewhere between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 in terms of complexity. Apparently based on the extremely successful Path of Exile, Diablo IV offers what looks like a large and impressive skill tree developed in part with feedback from fans. It also introduces new stats and rethinks the rarity of items. After successfully rescuing Diablo III from the abyss, it seems Blizzard’s response is “deeper and more.”
This is the correct approach if Blizzard wants Diablo IV to have some staying power. After all, Blizzard North and Blizzard South were both right: Diablo’s real-time dungeon crawl brought it to the masses, but the high degree of depth and flexibility introduced by Brevik and his company made it popular in the years to come. The genre owes many of its most popular innovations to Diablo, from socketed items to color-coded loot (although Brevik will tell you the idea was inspired in part by Angband). Even skill trees, originally a fixture for strategy games, owe their status as a signature RPG element to Diablo. When World Of Warcraft was released in 2004, it made no secret that it lifted much of its design from Diablo, including that color-coded loot.
World Of Warcraft remains Blizzard’s most popular game, and with WoW Classic continuing to thrive, there’s no reason to believe it will be going away anytime soon. But with StarCraft on hiatus and Overwatch currently on the decline, Blizzard urgently needs a series that can move it forward. Diablo seems to be that series more than ever.