A lot has changed since the halcyon days of Diablo 2. Back then, the grind was everything, with RPGs requiring you to put in hours upon hours to reach the highest levels and acquire the finest loot. These days, the experience tends to be a little quicker and more immediately rewarding. David Brevik, co-creator of Diablo, thinks the shift in design philosophy has been for the worse, across role-playing games of many stripes.
Diablo 2 set a new standard for action-RPGs when it came out in 2000. The alluring world-building and strategic combat and dungeon-crawling created a journey so satisfying, it’s still attracting players 25 years on. Brevik, lead programmer on the first Diablo and project and design lead on Diablo 2, believes this is partly down to modern releases straying from the pacing and nuance of what his team created.
“I think that ARPGs in general have started to lean into this: kill swaths of enemies all over the place extremely quickly,” he tells VideoGamer. “Your build is killing all sorts of stuff so you could get more drops, you can level up, so you can like, and the screen is littered with stuff you don’t care about.”
He doesn’t see the attraction in “killing screen-fulls of things instantly and mowing stuff down” – in fact, he finds it “kind of silly”. He’s referencing a push towards rewarding players earlier through combat with waves of enemies, resulting in quicker skill ascension and better items. It’s a shift you can really feel when you dip back into the first two Diablo games, where encounters were generally rarer.
Brevik notes that he’s found this in MMORPGs as well. “How fast can you level? How fast can you kill everything? It’s all about speed and things like that, but, in reality, I just think that makes a kind of a worse experience. And I tend to shy away from that direction,” he says.
There’s merit to this school of thought, but looking at a modern MMO such as Final Fantasy 14, streamlining how long it takes to go from setting up your character to whacking things with your weapon lowers the barrier of entry somewhat. Adventuring and fighting monsters are often the things players look forward to most, and giving them a hearty dose of those elements early can make sure they’re invested.
Nonetheless, Brevik thinks it’s devaluing new PC games. “When you’re shortening that journey and making it kind of ridiculous, you’ve cheapened the entire experience, in my opinion,” he adds.
Of course, the great thing is you can enjoy games of both classic and contemporary philosophies at your leisure. Diablo 3 and 4 are available, and Diablo 2 got a shiny remaster in 2021 that makes it just as easy to boot up the old PC game, so everybody wins!
Speaking of, check out our guide on Diablo 4 Season 8 to learn when that may arrive, and we have a list of the best games like Diablo if you’re in search of your next all-consuming challenge.
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