Diablo (

1997

)

There's nothing more pathetic than seeing the long slow descent of a once great game developer into incompetence and irrelevance. My younger readers who only know Blizzard as the developers behind loot-box riddled, live service trash like Hearthstone [2014], Heroes of the Storm [2015], Overwatch [2016], and Diablo: Immortal [2021] may be surprised to learn that once, not so long ago, Blizzard was a byword for quality. Indeed, during the 1990s and early 2000s seeing the Blizzard logo on a game all but guaranteed greatness. This was a company the scraped entire, nearly-completed games like Starcraft: Ghost because they failed to live up to their impossibly high standards. Indeed, some of my earliest gaming loves were Blizzard games in the form of Starcraft [1996] and Warcraft III [2002] that I played on my mom's iMac. So it brings me a deeply personal sense of disappointment to see just how far the once great company has fallen.

Lately, the company has been in the news because of a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by the state of California. While a cursory examination of the document shows that at least some of the charges are exaggerations if not outright fabrications (the whole “Crosby” room thing deserves a write-up of its own), I do not doubt that at least some of the abuses detailed in the lawsuit are true. You simply can't put this many male feminists in one company without compromising the safety of your female employees; it really should be an OSHA violation. Yet even if Blizzard were cleared on all charges and it turned out that their employees were guilty of nothing worse than rude language and obscene hand gestures, the company would still be a shell of its former glory. Even if no rapists and sex-fiends are strolling the halls of Blizzard Entertainment, there are plenty of lousy game developers there. Indeed, the company's recent output would have been unthinkable to the 1990s Blizzard I grew up with.

Looking back there were warning signs along the road, from the way the company invented the live service blight with World of Warcraft [2004], to the auction house debacle with Diablo III [2012], to the fact that Starcraft II was split up into three separate installments rather than released all at once. Yet in each case, the games were of high enough quality that fans were willing to overlook the obvious cash grabs. Unfortunately, all the money they raked in with did not seem to guarantee quality, and as time went on Blizzard's games only got worse and worse. Recent offerings have ranged from lackluster to downright piss-poor. The debacle that was Warcraft III: Reforged [2020] makes this abundantly clear. There Blizzard not only managed to screw up what should have been a minor graphical overhaul for their nearly 20-year-old game, they broke key features for the classic version. Not only can the company not make a game like Warcraft III [2002] anymore, they can't even be trusted to maintain it!

So, as Blizzard continues their decade-long implosion I figured now was as good a time as any to look back to a time before the developer was turned into a husk of their former glory. Let's start with the famous Blizzard game from the 1990s that launched one of their most beloved franchises and inspired an entire genre of rip-offs: Diablo. To be fair, this is a rather odd place to start the trip back into the company's glory years, as, despite the self-evident influence and quality of the game, it still feels more than a little rough around the edges. Unlike Starcraft [1996] which was built on the framework of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans [1994] and Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness [1995], Diablo is an experimental game with no obvious precursor in Blizzard's roster. Still, Diablo is a damn fine game if you can look past its glaring flaws and frequently repetitive gameplay.

The game takes place in a gothic fantasy world where Diablo, one of three exiled rulers of hell (called collectively the Prime Evils), has been awakened by his mortal servants and is trying to manifest on the material plane. For the moment he's still trapped in the sub-sub basement of the local cathedral but with each passing day, he grows stronger and more capable of crawling out of the pit to establish hell on earth. The player takes on the role of a traveling adventurer who has to traverse through the levels of the dungeon until they can find Diablo at the bottom and put an end to the monster once and for all.

The player can choose to play as either a warrior, rogue, or sorcerer; an almost meaningless choice. The only significant differences between the class are one starting skill and initial stat distributions. Obviously, picking the sorcerer will give you a better basis for playing as a magic-user but nothing is stopping you from picking the warrior and funneling the stat increases on each level up into your magic skill. Likewise, with a high enough strength stat, any class can equip a sword and shield and wade into melee combat with the forces of hell. This has the advantage of making you fully able to customize your character for your play style but has the distinct downside of making all three characters feel interchangeable. Personally, I would have preferred a harsher distinction between the three classes, to allow for multiple playthroughs that each felt unique. Evidentially the team at Blizzard agreed because in Diablo II [2000] they added additional classes and took greater pains to give each a distinct feel.

The combat is all in real-time, with the player pointing and clicking on enemies they want to attack and using the left mouse button to cast spells. Each level of the dungeon is divided up into a series of chambers and corridors and filled with hordes of monsters to clear out. It is hardly the most engaging system and will compare unfavorably to other isometric RPGs that follow the traditional turn-based combat system like Fallout [1997] or Baulder's Gate [1998], but there is a certain charm in the rushed frenetic combat of Diablo, at least at first. As the game wears on the limited options for approaching combat, especially for players who are not going for a spell-caster build, combat begins to become more of a slog. With my Rogue I found myself cautiously advancing, drawing one or two monsters out of a horde with a few well-placed arrows and then beating a tactical retreat picking off the monsters the followed me out. Repeat a few dozen times until I either ran out of healing potions or cleared the entire floor. As a result, even though Diablo is a relatively short game (around 8 hours from start to finish), it began to wear out its welcome towards the end.

The world is, at least by RPG standards, minuscule. Outside of the dungeon, there's only a single town with a handful of NPCs who stay rooted into their designated spots. Each townsfolk is fully voiced, but most of the voice actors are trying way too hard (the witch who lives on the town's outskirts is an especially egregious example). These townspeople provide basic services like selling healing/mana potions, identifying magical items, selling weapons and armor, and feeding you information about the various side-quests. A baffling amount of resources is funneled into the last service, as each NPC has something to say about every quest in the game, which is an odd decision as in most cases it's all superfluous. The quests in Diablo are extremely simple and mostly revolve around retrieving specific items from the dungeon or killing certain monsters.

The options for your arsenal and spellbook are also sadly limited. All the loot in the dungeon is randomly generated, aside from a few unique quest-related items, and you can only learn new spells by finding the corresponding spell-book. Sure, you can also buy gear from the shops in town but they are similarly limited in their stock and it's entirely possible that they just won't have anything good, or even anything that you can use with your current build. Towards the end of my playthrough, I had thousands upon thousands of gold and was just hoping for a chance to spend it on an upgraded bow. A larger list of items for sale wouldn't have gone amiss. It would also be nice to add the option to enchant items you find in the dungeon with specific abilities or at the very least upgrade the magical gear you find. Indeed, more loot period would have been a significant improvement as there were a frustratingly large number of chests I opened that contained nothing at all.

I know I'm being rather hard on Diablo, but the game remains impressive if for no other reason than the way it cultivates the atmospherics of the dungeon. From the filthy catacombs to the lava-filled caverns, to the fiery depths of hell each stage has its unique look and feel. Moreover, each region of the dungeon boasts an absolutely banging track that combines elements of gothic horror with heavy metal. I'd liken it to Super Metroid [1994], where all the deficiencies in gameplay are momentarily erased when you're crawling through the dank ruins, peering through the gloom with flickering torchlight, and wondering what foul monster lurks in the mysterious depths. Diablo makes it easy to be swept away in the moment.

It also has a slightly addictive gameplay loop, that compensates for its simplistic nature. I found myself gladly wiling away the hours clearing out rooms, collecting treasure, and periodically retreating the surface to hock it in exchange for more gold I'd never spend. Blizzard's future career as the preeminent manufacture of over-priced Skinner boxes likely began here, so I can't fully endorse Diablo's gameplay loop. Sure, it's an enjoyable practice when the developer is simply trying to engage their players rather than wring every last cent out of them, but I can't help but see the road to hell leading off from this point.