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[IMG News]

1UP.com has published a new article exploring the impact of Blizzard Entertainment's release of the original Diablo. The article's author suggested that the action RPG saved the role playing game genre because "by 1995, the computer role-playing game was dying." The piece also includes a variety of interesting anecdotes about Diablo.

While this new Diablo project intrigued Blizzard executives -- the basic idea of descending a dungeon to hit skeletons and demons had its appeal -- they suggested one significant alteration. Bolstered by the reception to Warcraft, Blizzard advised changing Diablo's combat system from a turn-based one to a real-time one. Funnily enough, Condor co-founder Max Schaefer admitted to Gamespot that the developer initially resisted the suggestion. "We fought that transition for a long time [...] The amount of time we argued about it was totally ridiculous, considering it only took us about three hours to mock the game up in real time," Schaefer stated. He elaborated how a realtime combat system would make Diablo feel too much like an action game, but he concluded, "once we started to play in real-time, it became very apparent we were wrong.[...] We just played it in real time and said, 'OK, right then, this is how it's going to work.'"

For the full article click over to the link below.

Return to Full Article - InsideMacGames News

[Thain Esh Kelch]

I'd rather say that Baldurs Gate did the job...

[UniversalWolf]

Nice revisionist history.

In 1995 the cRPG was dying?  Fallout 1 came out in 1997.  Last I heard that was a kinda successful cRPG, considering I can still walk into Wal-Mart and buy it off the shelf 15 years later.

[badger2d]

Diablo didn't save a genre. It began a genre.

[Sargiel]

Thain Esh Kelch, on 27 January 2012 - 11:17 AM, said:

I'd rather say that Baldurs Gate did the job...

Totally agree.. And there's been lots of articles written which agree with this. At the time it blew everything else out of the water and really brought CRPG's to the game playing population at large.

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Also, the RPG elements in Diablo isn't such a major part, as the new action genre it defined. It could very well have survived without skills points, and then you have almost no RPG elements left.

[Tesseract]

Diablo is more of a real-time roguelike. Though as the news post itself indicates, it would be called an Action RPG today, because progression = RPG apparently.

In the end, Diablo was just a really good game, and all it really proves is that people want to buy really good games. If its success convinced publishers to invest in RPGs, great, but that doesn't mean it was logical.

[Frost]

Tesseract, on 11 May 2012 - 11:25 AM, said:

Diablo is more of a real-time roguelike. Though as the news post itself indicates, it would be called an Action RPG today, because progression = RPG apparently.

Heh, that's the how I saw Diablo as well. Rogue but with really, really nice graphics and effects. (For example, my guy didn't look like @ the whole time)

I always thought it was supposed to be an RPG because you could swap out equipment and level up and it was a fantasy setting. Not very much, if any, RP to that G though. Unless you count Deckard Cain saying something every few hours of gameplay.

If anything "saved" the CRPG, it was Fallout.