Split-Screen :: The Game-Geek’s Daily Read

by Ravi Sinha

Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo was released in 1997, and featured 3 character classes, non-restrictive character development, and… well, like Doom, you had your weapons/spells and your chaotic hell-spawn. What else was there to understand?

Forget mini-quests, NPC party members, branching story-lines, sub-classes and turn-based Dungeons and Dragons rule-sets. Simply slaughter as many enemies as you could, all in an attempt to quell the ultimate evil, Diablo himself.

Co-op play over LAN was available and the stark contrast of single player was compensated by a buddy’s presence. The atmosphere PC gamers felt was similar to how console gamers felt when playing any Final Fight or Streets of Rage. The enemies doubled, but then, so did the fun.

Diablo was quickly the premier hack-and-slash fix for the PC. There were things that a Nox or a Throne of Darkness did, providing better graphics and more features, yet they never gained the same fan-devotion, the same demonic addiction, the pitifully chronic clickathons that defined Diablo.

Three years after it’s release, a famous game developer once stated that the three elements that defined an addictive game were story, gameplay and level design. Each existed on its own but was carried forward by the others. They played out in an endless cycle, with a gamer’s hunger for completing an intense, aggressive level satiated by a compelling story development and vice versa. Make no mistake: According to this formula, Diablo was the digital crack of PC gaming. However, 11 years down the line, we keep telling ourselves that the gameplay was monotonous, the story uncomplicated and straightforward, and the level design explicitly lucid. What, then, made Diablo such a compelling habit?

Meanwhile, the game itself was already creating its fair share of enemies amongst the die-hard RPGers when it took action and role-playing, two diametrically opposite, “ne’er the twine shalt meet”, eastside versus westside, and merged them together. “Diablo is a disgrace to RPGs,” they said. “We didn’t create an RPG. We created Diablo!” responded Blizzard in kind.

In 2001, Blizzard released Diablo 2, and despite leaving the “hack-slash-loot-levelup-repeat”scheme of gameplay untouched, fans were given even more meat for their mincing block. Five character classes, tons of new abilities, the Cube crafting system, wider character customisation freedom, randomly generated dungeons and — the clincher for most — free multiplayer over Blizzard’s Battle.net servers. This was all it took, no joke, to ruin relationships, careers and academic pursuits. Diablo 2 rightly became the first ever PC game to sell 1 million units in the shortest period ever (a record since surpassed by Blizzard’s own World of Warcraft).

All of this was the result of several months of publicity blitzkrieg, orchestrated through almost daily screenshot, character class, items, enemy and level updates. Just a few months later, the success was followed by Lord of Destruction, an expansion pack that added a brand new quest in a frozen wasteland, a new foe, Baal, two more new classes, and more than 200 new items to craft and combine. Critically-acclaimed, commercially successful, and universally recognisable, the Diablo name was associated with both fun-filled pleasure and horrifying compulsive addiction.

The question still remained though: Why? Why was it so addictive? The randomly generated dungeons and free multiplayer of the second title offered some explanation (they were the reasons people kept coming back to the game), but what was it with the core gameplay? What was it with hacking pixellated skeletons and ghouls across a mundane, twisted landscape of hellish red and gray that snared us, using our own sanction to turn us into victims of a hapless cycle of digital murder?

It’s been eight years and two months. It’s now the age of multi-processor consoles, high-definition television, broadband gaming, motion- and touch-sensitive games, and… er, the PSP. On June 28th at the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational in Paris, Diablo 3. A shocking announcement, yet one not preceded by any mysterious ticking clocks on websites or mischievous hints at previous events. If there was any sign that the marketing of the name had changed, that was it. Since then, no avalanche of details, no obsessive releasing of screenshots. Just simple, plain updates and details about the game.

Since then, the furore over the game has, not surprisingly, been diverse. When is the game coming out? How is Diablo back? Is that really Diablo? Will the game stay true to the spirit of Diablo? What was the spirit of Diablo to begin with? Will it expand upon its core gameplay? What is up with those new screens? Why is the game more colourful than the original games (are those muthaf**kin’ rainbows?)? Why didn’t Blizzard make this game darker? Will this Diablo be as addictive as the others? Is this a Diablo game at all, or a new step for the franchise?

My memories of Diablo don’t reach very far back, but with the announcement and the new look, it felt like a shabby butcher briefly stepped out and a master fencer returned in his place. As far as the colour controversy goes, producer Keith Lee had this to say,

“One of the things that we considered when we were working on the visuals for Diablo 3 is the fact that color is your friend. We feel that color actually helps to create a lot of highlights in the game so that there is contrast. A great analogy is like in Lord of the Rings — not everything is dark. It allows you to see what a creepy dungeon can be like but if everything is dark it doesn’t allow you to have a lot of contrast. Diablo and Diablo 2 are darker, and I think that [sic] the one of the main reasons why is the fact that…you’re basically in a dungeon the whole time. And in… Diablo 3, you’ll be exploring outdoors, you’ll be in dungeons, you’ll be experiencing so many different areas. We want to bring as much variety as we can when you’re playing the game so that you’re excited to check out new environments. We don’t want everything to look the same…”

Of course, those behind the “new and improved” pics of the developer’s screenshots may disagree. Nonetheless, in an interview with MTV Multiplayer’s Tracy John, lead designer Jay Wilson judged fan mock-ups very objectively.

“The key thing to remember here is that [these have been] Photoshopped. This isn’t created by the engine. Though it looks really cool, it’s almost impossible to do in a 3D engine because you can’t have lighting that smart and run on systems that are reasonable. If we could do that, we probably would in a few of the dungeons.”

Long story short: gameplay wins out over desaturated palettes.

Over the din clogging up the Net, granted there are several other important questions to be answered. However, one of the most relevant questions no one seems to be asking stems from the earlier unanswered query on what made the series so addictive.

And that relevant, all-important, unasked, but fortunately, not to left unanswered question is: Does the gaming industry need a Diablo game?

Yes.

But you already knew that, even if you’re not fully aware of the reason behind it. For all the complaining of the game undergoing a transformation, much like where World of Warcraft deviated from the original Warcraft lexicon to become its own game; for all the complaining that Diablo 3 should be just like the originals, mirroring their gameplay exactly; for all the complaining that Sanctuary should look less like a civilization that had enjoyed 20 years of peace and prosperity in the absence of any evil and more like something of Planescape Torment with even less colour and saturation, one fact cannot be denied.

Diablo is as synonymous with gaming as Mario or Sonic.

Diablo was addictive and fun because it was easy to get into and challenged you without frusutrating you. It was easy to master, and applying that mastery of your skills was the key to winning. The total freedom you had over you character wasn’t for kicks; it was the designer’s way of saying this game is not just Diablo but it’s your Diablo and you can play it any which way you want and still be good, or win, or have fun. In this age of high-tech gaming, with games venturing into new fields of gameplay exploration, we need a game like Diablo 3 that is easy to get into, that relates to our past memories of the game, and that can draw us by the mood that defined the series. We need a game through which we can not only relieve our memories of what made it fun, but do so in a way that is peppered with small touches. Touches like the Havok technology, the full 3D look, the system-friendly requirements, the tact of enemies to use the environments to their advantage that add to the core gameplay rather than take away from it.

Blizzard is walking a very fine line. It must produce a game that properly understands not only what gamers in this day and age really need but what they really deserve. Can it do so, and still define the curve rather than stay ahead of it, just like 11 years ago?

However, that’s another question for another day. And that is the day of Diablo 3’s release.