Diablo 1 is a landmark title in gaming history. Not only did it push the world into online interaction — it was one of the first ARPG’s that adopted a horror overtone. It challenged the complexities of fear and the ideals of religion. What kind of things can Diablo 4 learn from Diablo 1?
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Blizzard North is gone and so is the chances of another good diablo game, everyone who made diablo great left before the second games expansion and it shows.
Music!!! Story and characters. Athmosphere… everything!!!
Biggest thing to learn from Diablo 1 & 2? Blizzard North made these games great and the people at the main company have no fucking idea how to make a good arpg. Everyone who made this series great left before the expansion released for the second game, Blizzard just leech credit for something they had nothing to do with and weren't even willing to get behind fully with funding till it got huge.
D3 is awfully generic. I had fun playing it, but nothing more. I was not immersed and I was not involved. I didn't feel much progression. I just had some average fun with gameplay.
But D2 had it's fault too: playing as a barb was a (mostly) excellent improvement over the gameplay of D1. But who plays barb when you can AoE blast 30 ennemies at a time with a javazon, hammerdin, or elesorc ?
D2 was two games in one: you can play it slow paced like D1, but you can also play it in turbo mode. Players choosed turbo mode because of the rewards. It's the reward system that pushed the ARPG genra on the slippery slope of FASTER/STRONGER/FASTER/FASTER/FASTER!!!
You can't go back on the horror, on being invested, in taking time without a complete shift from the reward system. A reward system that has been 'blindly' praised for 15 years and that the industry thrives on because of the weakness of our human brain for slot machines.
So, no. D4 won't learn anything from D1. Because a paradigm shift in the reward system will never happen in a big company. Which means the objectively right decision is to make a generic ARPG again. Probably with more fluff&stuff. It will be fun. It will be successful. But that's about it.
tl:dr — OG Diablo is a fundamentally unique game in the series, not quite what most fans would like and expect, and it's unlikely Blizzard would take much from it in an attempt to revitalize the series.
I would definitely love to see Diablo 4 recapture the atmosphere of the original, and it would not surprise me to see them try after all the complaints 3 received in that regard. However, I have no expectation of them looking back to the original for matters of gameplay, because — and here I'll court controversy — Diablo 1 isn't really what people think about anymore when they think about the series, and the ARPG genre which it helped popularize bears less relation to it than some might think.
The original game is, for all intents and purposes, a roguelike with real-time battles. This becomes especially apparent if you play it solo, which — unlike every other game in the series — is what it was designed for. With experience, money, and items limited to what you could scrounge up in a relatively short playthrough with no farming, it was a game that encouraged slow, thoughtful dungeon-crawling and, rather than making optimized builds, staying flexible to take advantage of potentially powerful items that might drop. Warrior spending points on magic to learn a few spells or use a particularly powerful staff's spell charges? Depending on the monsters you run into (which were not the same in every game) and what equipment you randomly find, it might be well worth it! No need to worry about gimping your build, because the point was simply to win the game. No end-game considerations here, there was no Nightmare or Hell playthrough in single-player.
Diablo 2, which I'm sure everyone reading this has played and so needs no real breakdown, isn't a roguelike at all. It's a fast-paced romp of a game that essentially brings RPG progression to the popular arcade slaughterfest Gauntlet: Legends, which came out in-between D1 and D2. Diablo 2 isn't a game about taking it slow, managing finite resources, and fighting smart. It's a game about building over-powered characters and watching them blow up the screen! It's a fun game, but it's a different experience, and I think — because of these things — it sacrificed much of its horror atmosphere. It's hard to feel much dread when the game dedicates itself towards making you feel powerful! Truly, if Diablo 1 is a pulp fantasy story about mortal men (and women!) defeating a powerful demon with their wits, their bravery, and a bit of magical aid, Diablo 2 was a comic book about superheroes who wade into the armies of hell without a care, painting the heavens with the blood of their enemies! The power-fantasy raised to such a level where the legions of the damned were no longer to be feared, but pitied.
Every ARPG I've played since then has taken its lessons of Diablo 2, and it's hard to blame them; it's a style of gameplay that is well-suited to multiplayer, and it's what everybody now expects. Folks demand online multiplayer, they want endless replayability, they want fast-paced action and build-defined characters. And that's all fine and good, but you know, the original still offers an experience rather fresh, and I think enjoyable, and it would be nice to see more developers try and improve upon it. I doubt Blizzard are those developers.
(Did you actually read all of this? People on Youtube actually read to the end of long comments!?)
They will do the same as in Diablo 3, a shity game, with no personalization of the character, just optimization (because 75% of skills are just trash and you are never gonna us them, and when you get the tiers, you are forced to use the skills those tiers power up, it's idiotic). And of course, they will release it, get the cash and forget about it, as they have done with D3. They just want to do money, they are not interested at all in making a good game or having it periodically updated with new good content, just "hey, one more character, gimme you 15$, asshole, and keep playing rifts, rifts rifts, rifts, rifts, rifts, rifts, rifts, rifts, rifts, rifts, rifts, rifts, rifts, until you die of boredom"
Actually playing Path of exile, it's free and it's a billion times better than the aberration D3 is.
No…I am afraid it's too late for a rekindling from Diablo 1. Diablo 3 wasn't "bad" gameplay wise, per se`, it just didn't waste the players time to endlessly grind for things, unlike Diablo 2. Diablo 1 was just an inspiration from Christianity, and captured the wonderment of Hell itself. People these days have stepped away from Christianity, and the "super natural" imagination from Hell. People have to have "faith" in Christianity again, to fully appreciate what Diablo 1 was. People have even stepped away from the macabre of mutilation by the "super natural", and have stayed into the secular idea of violence; Blandness and humanization of mutilation. The developers would have to step back into the minds of killers, like: John W. Gacy, Robert Kuklinsky, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, Mao, Stalin, Hitler, et cetera, to really bring back the "Chilblain horror" of Hell. Bringing back just sick ideas, and amalgamate it. I guess it would drive a writer crazy though. Diablo 4 would need a HUGE inspiration. But I guess if you want to look for inspiration go look at "Bestgore" and look at all the mutilation those Brazilian gangs achieve, it's truly disgusting.
I guess my problem with d3 was the lack of difficulty. I died several times leveling in D2. It was literally impossible to die while leveling in D3
Played the shit out of Diable 1 and 2. I never bought three. I really should get it when it's on sale.
Honestly D1 and 2 weren't very good that's why their sales were garbage and D3 sales from last year alone dwarfed their total sales over the past 20 years combined. 3 improved pretty much every single aspect the first 2 had to offer and more. Which is why 3 still pulls in over 600k active players every season while 1 and 2 only have a combined total of around 3500 players. Face it, nostalgia makes it seem better than it was. Obviously alot better. D3 is on the list of top 10 best games ever made while 1 and 2 aren't even in the top 200 list.
I completely agree with this whole video. Games these days all need to be " FAST PACED HIGH OCTANE ACTION " But in reality, I'd love to play a slower paced more methodical "play smart" sorta game. Make the game harder by not adding "MORE MONSTERS" but instead making you weaker and the monsters fewer and harder to kill. A new age D1 would be amazing if done correctly.
I totally agree with the video author but 3 REASONS IT WONT HAPPEN:
1. It became very , very expensive to develop fancy games they want to maximize revenue = milk the biggest current audience Blizzard has and maybe expand it = WOW style+ Overwatch = childish neon color stuff
2. subtle things will be shred into pieces by the community active younger audience since they just lack the attention span for such things in games/design. [The majority of young/old people may be enjoying it but those "loud" people will possibly ruin it ]
3. Big parts of the original Staff who made Diablo 1 and StarCraft are gone and replaced by those generic out of "art shool" mainstream neon color bulky design "artwork" people [which infested the whole AAA game scene by the way "what you don't like neon colors and bulky muscles and bulky golden armor at LVL 1 ? go find a job elswhere than gaming sector buddy"]
I liked the classless system of D1. Mage with sword and board was my go to.
diablo is dead. i refuse to believe it will ever become good again.
I started with Diablo 1 when I was 13 and absolutely loved it. It was my first online RPG, since I couldn't fork out money for an Everquest subscription. Later, the improvements made when I transitioned to Diablo 2 were near-perfect. I remember that I still acknowledged back then that the original had the better atmosphere, and IMO crisper graphics. When gameplay of Diablo 3 finally came out near the end of the decade, I was disappointed. I played the demo and decided to skip it. I'm a huge Guild Wars fan, and its sequel was just around the corner anyway and seemed like a much better game at the time. I've gotten my ARPG fix from games like Torchlight II, Grim Dawn, Titan Quest, and Path of Exile ever since. I'll be getting Diablo 3 when it comes out on Switch though, because it'll be something my girlfriend and I can co-op in, and I suppose I'll treat it like an arcade grindfest rather than a true Diablo game. I'm uncertain how Blizzard will go about making Diablo 4… I feel like they have the power to make it like a modern-day Diablo 1, but they would consider such an endeavor to be a financial risk. Us more old-school gamers tend to only be catered to with indie titles, since we're a small niche in comparison to the vast majority of gamers now. Still, I'm hoping they take that risk.
Did they announce a new diablo?
Current Blizzard developers could take some notes from FromSoftware and their Souls games when talking about atmosphere, presentation and even playability depth.
Never trust Activision.
I'd rather fuck myself with knife than play d3 ever again.
how abour combining and remastering D1 and D2 into one modern game, same brooding mechanics, same darkest graphics, just modernised and combined. of course modrnisation i dont mean arcadisation and sweet neon hit-your-eyes colors
It's the same with the thief series. The complete darkness, tension, scary industrial sounds and silence…. Unbelievable but after thief gold and the metal age it got worse every game. Thief 3 was already way to easy, had to many useless features it didn't need und then came thief 4 and i cried… And went back to thief 2 after 20minutes of gameplay. It was no longer challenging, consisted of QuickTime events and stupid moves, features, leveling… Making a game flashy doesn't automatically make it good and it happened to many games… Tomb Raider, diablo, thief, bioshock, hitman and many more. I can't even find good games any more, that aren't more than 10years old
Diablo 4 can learn from game design concepts, like a game that's fun for developers will be fun for players, as long as it doesn't come across as a purely fabricated product. But the problem is devs enjoy a certain kind of game that the wider audience doesn't. Wider audience releases mean homogenized dumbed down play. Wider audiences don't want games that require that they get good in the way real gamers enjoy being challenged. I don't mean Dark Souls level of challenge — even I don't want that kind of challenge… yet. But at least make it challenging enough to be engaging instead of getting by purely on the sentimentality of the story. Blech. All the pieces of a game need to complement each other, not lack in one area to be replaced by what larger masses demonstrate that they want to the studios.
Or diablo 4 can learn a lot more from diablo 3, cause all of us TOTALLY love it, right?
..right?
You just nailed it RetroBros. I still have copy diablo 1, and occasionary playing it.
Diablo 1: legend
Diablo 2: fun to play
Diablo 3: meh..
Also no fucking skiltree please go home you're drunk.
Diablo 4 needs to be Dark souls but diablo.
apply everything as dark souls is, but make it diablo with diablo story. THat would make the best game of the year, just saying.
Really like the videos 🙂 Keep it up!
Blizzard is Dead. That company makes nothing I like. D3 was a fucking joke.
Diablo 1 was the best game i ever played!
Warcraft 2 was also a very nice game!'
Diablo 3 do have good skillpoint system… but the rest is shit… to much monsters to much numbers. to much colors… noone need this disney version of diablo!
It was a Diablo mixed with Hello Kitti!
SuperBro: No need to be polite /w Bli$$ard! This week is Bli$$con. TELL IT LIKE IT IS. This is our LAST CHANCE before everything becomes Unicorn!
maybe they can create Diablo 1 reforged. it is D1 with a D3 graphics. same sounds and cut scenes. well if they can upgrade the cut scene that"s an option.
Yeah, they should definitely bring back Christianity for so many reasons … First and foremost, it would be sincere, After they went for this "Christianity bad" approach although this this is what inspired and fuelled the game respectively to make it into what it was
I loved how dark d1 was they should go back to that instead of the kitty d3 shit
Keep the World Of Warcraft developers away from it! Don't need any of their SHIT!!!
you can wish all u want but diablo died with blizzard north and will never come back. at least we have d1 n d2.
The "pacing" and "darkness" points are spot on. Diablo 1 left a bigger impression than any others because of this. Diablo 2 was good, but wasn't as dark and the pacing was all over the place. Diablo 3 didn't even feel like Diablo, more like a Gauntlet game, too fast and too easy.
man diablo 1 had some amazing music. D1 and D2 are still the two best games of this type 20+ years later honestly. Many imitators but none have been a better overall game.
Diablo 1 was my favorite of the series. It scared my plenty back then.
my point is an error of D3, this is not borderlands 2, the villain SHOULD NOT be interacting and chating or moking the player, the villain should not even care of your existance and it should look down on you as a NORMAL DEVIL WOULD when looking at a human, but still… im seeing another D3 storytelling and WoW progression system where you go up to the trillions in stats… at this point it is even diablo? are we sure we are not playing MU?
D1 the best. Frightening music, reduced light radius, creepy sound effects. D2 is great too and a big improvement in terms of gameplay but it was the beginning of the end to an extent. From Act 1 to Act 4 still has some dark goth feeling but act 5 spawned what would later become D3: colour, epic adventure and Disney music.
D4? My expectations aren't that high.
Hello,
Belzebub/Tchernobogs are good gfx remade but with bad game rules. D2 rules inside D1 ??? BAD !!!
Mordro's The Hell 2 is begin just perfect but need some polishing …
Having offline mode.
And more importantly atmospehere and gameplay > loot.
But loot market can be monetised with live money, unlike gameplay or atmosphere. So ¯_(ツ)_/¯.