The Legacy of Diablo
July 1, 2008 16:06
It's finally official. Diablo III is coming. Blizzard announced the latest entry in their mega-successful franchise over the weekend to attendees of the Blizzard World Wide Invitational and PC gamers have been buzzing about the news ever since. With all this attention on the new game I thought now would be a good time to look back at the original Diablo and the effects such a simple game idea had on the PC gaming RPG arena.
Before the release of Diablo in 1997, PC RPGs fit a particular mold. They were designed to duplicate the mechanics of table-top Dungeons & Dragons for a single-player computer game experience. The heavies in the industry were the Ultima series from Richard Garriott and Origin, the Wizardry series from Sir-Tech and The Bard's Tale series from Interplay and Electronic Arts. Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI), a company known for strategy and wargames, acquired the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons license from TSR in 1987 and the following year released Pools of Radiance, the first of many official AD&D games known as the "gold box" series. These games were fantastic but ultimately somewhat slow and ponderous affairs with lots of lingo and statistics; obstacles to anyone looking to try a computer role-playing game without previous table-top experience.
The games changed over time becoming more sophisticated but the pace stayed much the same. RPGs were about slow and strategic combat with a few enemies at a time. Games like Betrayal at Krondor and The Elder Scrolls: Arena (precursor to fan favorites Daggerfall and Oblivion) were successful but retained the barrier to outsiders looking in preventing them from becoming breakthrough titles. PC RPGs were a lot to get your head around as a first-time gamer. Diablo changed all that.
Screenshot from Diablo circa 1997.
The designers at Blizzard Entertainment are masters at taking established ideas and improving them to near perfection. They may not ever reinvent the wheel but they do manage to make it rounder somehow. In making Diablo Blizzard threw out many of the conventions of PC RPGs and replaced them with speed and hordes of monsters. Character creation was distilled down to a choice of three classes: warrior, rogue and sorcerer. These three encompassed most of the major play styles of all RPGs - melee, ranged and magic with stealth being the exception - but tossed aside the limitations normally associated with each class. Warriors could use magic and sorcerers could use all weapons but the classes excelled at a particular type of combat.
The combat and control of the character was also streamlined. You clicked the mouse to move and you clicked the mouse to attack. It was that simple. The result was a fast-paced game full of endless monsters, dungeon crawling and an enormous variety of loot. Blizzard was able to introduce a whole new audience to role-playing conventions like leveling, stats and loot by hiding them inside a straight-forward action game that evoked Gauntlet. Diablo was easy for anyone to pick up and play but hard to put down.
Like Gauntlet, Diablo also included cooperative multiplayer, a feature not normally associated with role-playing games. Not only could you descend into the demon-infested labyrinth beneath the town of Tristram to stomp through piles of monsters by yourself, you could take your friends with you. The addictive hack-and-slash gameplay and the multiplayer support made Diablo an instant classic and both a financial and critical success. In a time when sales of RPG games were slowing, Diablo reminded everyone it was a viable genre.
Where there is success there are imitators and after the release of Diablo we saw a slew of "me, too" games enter the market bearing a striking resemblance to Blizzard's newest intellectual property. None of them saw the same success as Diablo but it gave PC RPG fans a larger library from which to choose their games. While there were many that were a complete waste of time, there were quite a few gems to be found in the post-Diablo PC RPG marketplace.
Screenshot from Diablo II circa 2000.
The year after Diablo came out we got Fallout. The next year we got Baldur's Gate. The following year was Fallout 2, then Planescape: Torment, then Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, then Deus Ex, then Icewind Dale until finally in 2000 Diablo II came out. At this point RPGs were booming on the PC and everyone wanted a piece. With Diablo as their springboard many gamers were able to settle into turn-based action in Fallout and controlling a party in Baldur's Gate. These games didn't play like Diablo but their conventions were familiar now. Leveling, statistics and loot were no longer barriers to entry and instead became desired features.
We haven't seen a Diablo game since the Lord of Destruction expansion to Diablo II was released in 2001, but the influence can be seen everywhere from Chris Taylor's Dungeon Siege in 2002 to Iron Lore's Titan Quest in 2006. It's rare that a game comes along to create a genre but that's exactly what happened in early 1997 when Diablo hit store shelves. By distilling the RPG experience down to the key ingredients of move, kill, loot, repeat, Blizzard captured lightning in a bottle. From the look of it Diablo III will be more of the same. And I can't wait.
Related Articles and Videos
| HOME |
