
	Publisher Blizzard Developer Blizzard North Platform PC Genre RPG Released 1996
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Diablo

The images are still evocative even today: the abandoned homes, the tree filled with decaying bodies of hanged men, the lone warrior contemplating his next move, and the demon screeching his defiance. When Blizzard North set out to create Diablo, they didn't go for the bright and shiny Tolkien-esque feel that had been de rigeur for RPGs since 1977. Instead, they went with a darker gothic sensibility, creating an almost claustrophobic atmosphere no matter where the player went to, filling the tiny little corner of a well detailed world with all manner of demons and undead. You were outnumbered, outmatched, and the price of failure would be your life only if you were very lucky.

The state of RPGs in the early-to-mid 1990s could charitably be described as anemic. The Gold Box Dungeons & Dragons games were out of print, Might & Magic hadn't had a new entry in some time, The Bard's Tale had effectively been abandoned as a series, and the most recent notable RPG had been from Bethesda awkwardly titled The Elder Scrolls: Arena. The flavor of the week for game developers was real-time strategy games, a genre that Blizzard certainly helped popularize with WarCraft II. But in 1996, Blizzard North gave the RPG genre a shot in the arm. They went back to the bare essentials of a computer RPG: big monsters, cool loot, and neat spells. At the same time, they created a distinctly different feel and tone, one that owed more to the writings of Michael Moorcock and John Milton than Tolkien. Diablo was the classic dungeon crawl reborn.

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Visually, Diablo has held up fairly well, though its very low resolution (640x480) does have a certain grainy quality on contemporary machines. The use of transparency on dungeon walls is no longer innovative but it is still very practical. You won't find any particle effects or anything like that here. Though the sprites were all based off 3D models, they are still sprites, with all of

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the benefits and limitations found therein. The spell effects are also 2D sprites, but still very well animated, and viscerally satisfying. Speaking of viscera, Diablo pulls no punches when it comes to the blood. Although several creatures may fall apart into a pile of bones or ash, several others will bleed profusely once you've delivered a fatal blow.

The soundtrack to Diablo remains one of the best collections of game music ever written. Although the themes cycle recognizably throughout much of the game, they rarely get boring. The fading dissonant piping in the Hell levels of the game is definitely moody and even a little unnerving, which is doubtlessly what the designers were shooting for. As for sound effects, there is a broad collection of grunts, groans, and death screams, as well as clashing metal, firing bow strings, and arcane energies released during spells. In this regard, those sound effects do get boring after a while. Diablo's voice work is excellent in terms of vocal quality but hit-and-miss in terms of the writing quality. Some characters are played fairly straight, others are wildly over the top, occasionally reaching that "so cheesy and bad, it's good" quality. The quips that the player's character utters after successfully completing a quest would be perfect for Bruce Campbell. You won't find any big name voice actors here, but the cast is quite good overall.

In terms of gameplay, Diablo is still pretty simple, maybe even a little too simple in light of the refinements that came out in Diablo II. The left mouse button is used to move and attack, the right mouse button is used for spells. You can't hold down the mouse button to continue attacking but must constantly click it. The player's backpack is smaller and gold takes up space. A lot of space if you happen to have a lot of gold. There is no alternate weapon slot, so if there are two particularly cool weapons that you feel are useful, you're going to have to sacrifice some carrying capacity and be prepared to run fast and far in order to switch out your weapons or equipment. With all that being said, there are some aspects of Diablo that make it better than the sequel, in my opinion. The first is the open nature of the spell system. As long as you had mana, and as long as you knew the spell, you could cast anything. Some might argue that this makes the three character classes irrelevant. I argue that it allows a level of customization. Some spells, such as healing or Town Portal, are useful regardless of class. Others, such as Holy Bolt and Fireball, give the melee based Warrior a much needed ranged capacity, while Fire Wall helps the ranged Rogue whittle down large mobs easily. How much more interesting would Diablo II have been if there had been some "off-class" skills and spells available to the character classes there? Another area where Diablo shines is in the way quests are handled. While the final quest to beat Diablo is a constant, and the first quest is invariably against The Butcher, everything in between usually has a couple of alternatives, making each run through unique. Yes, the quests in Diablo II make for a better story, but they are constant, there are never any surprises once you run through the game the first time. By the same token, the maps in Diablo are a little more enjoyable because of the way that they tie into the quests. Run through once and you might have to go into a cave to purify the town's water supply. Run through again and you might have entered King Leoric's tomb. Where's that kind of special side quest in Diablo II?

Although long in the tooth, and hampered by design decisions that could only come about from the first title in a series, Diablo still plays like a champion RPG. Its unique atmosphere and near infinite replayability make it fun to load up when you're craving a quick fix of dungeon crawling.

Axel Cushing

(September 4, 2006)


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