"I Sense A Soul In Search Of Answers!"

"Hmmm.... nah, just 27 Health Potions and a Scroll Of Town Portal today, thanks!"

Having just tried out the new Diablo: Immortal, I really got a craving for a GOOD Diablo game. So, after uninstalling Immortal, I started thinking: Sure, I could play the pretty decent HD overhaul of Diablo II, but...I never actually completely finished Diablo. The OG Diablo. And hey... maybe there's something in there I missed. Maybe I will find something in the last parts of the story that actually hadn't been spoiled for me, all these years. Plus, Its a Classic, right? You HAVE to love it, right? Only One Way To Find Out! 

Diablo: Hellfire is a somewhat contentious DLC(read more about that issue here) created by Synergistic Software, and released, somewhat begrudgingly, by Blizzard North.

That is, The OG Rockstars, Blizzard North:

It serves simultaneously as both a set of bugfixes and quality of life improvements, and a new area to hunt demons in. Except, they're not demons. They're... BUGS? Squiddies? Again, the new content part of it is contentious, and I believe I may fall in line with Blizzard North's issues with it. But for me, it served in my mind, as DLC content I had never tried, in yet another game I really enjoyed, but never quite finished.

Since 1996.

THIS WOULD NOT DO.

So off I went, installing Diablo: Hellfire and a few tweaks to get as much screen resolution as possible, which was worth it: You really can make that old chestnut look a bit better with just a little work. The way I used was a mod called DevilutionX, check it out here

My impressions, from notes I took while playing the game, will be a bit skewed. I AM playing this game 26 years after it was released. The perspective can get a bit out of whack with all that. I have consumed easily 4-500 different games in that time. All of which had the benefit of technological advances in software in general, at their disposal. I tried to take that into account when turning a critical eye, but also to not be TOO partial to it in comparison to today's predatory Micro-Transactions, Lootboxes, overpriced DLC and buggy releases: Most of those weaknesses didn't exist when this was released, and I shouldn't pat it on the back for not doing that, specifically.

With all that in mind, let's get Rollin'!

The Original Diablo starts with a fairly Legendary cinematic. A Warrior returning from the battlefield to Loved Ones Lost. Subtle and not so subtle indications of despair and disgust at the horrors before him. Resolution to root it out and destroy it. Promises of legendary treasures, and dark secrets to be uncovered. Not only a very solid opening effort, but groundbreaking pre-rendered graphics for its time.

-OG Diablo, even more than any of the slew of sequels and imitators that came after it, feels like a fairly traditional, Old School Dungeons and Dragons paper game, made digital.  Its a D&D night, automated, simplified and sped up. One of the elements that most plays into that traditional D&D feel is the interrupt mechanic, where either your attacks or spells can be interrupted and stopped, because you got attacked by a faster attacking enemy first. It's not your DPS vs their DPS: It's a bit more realistic than that. It's your DPS, if you can land your shots before getting whacked, vs their DPS, but only if you don't hit them first. Such a minor change in game mechanics makes for MUCH more exciting gameplay. It's a lot more nerve wracking to enter a new area knowing that your latest, greatest Sword Of Cutting Torch may suddenly have a DPS of ZERO if the enemies attack faster than you. Especially if you stumble into a room where 20 of them surround you quickly:

Yup that's me. Right there! UNDERNEATH THE BLAZING INFERNO!

-Everywhere you look in the game, you see nothing terribly fancy in terms of features, but everything is VERY intuitive. Very little explanation is necessary for how to do anything. You just jump in. Games were simpler back then, sure, but you can definitely see Brevin's vision of 'streamline. simplify. speed up.' in a session of this game. You are in the game and Whackin Skeletons quickly and easily.

-Story beats are an interesting exercise in good and bad. The voice acting wasn't something you got all that often back then. Forget development budget concerns, back in these days LACK OF DISK SPACE or RAM was a much bigger concern. There were no BEAST GAMING RIGS then. The technology did not allow for such a thing. It worked, and you were just happy that it worked. But despite very good voice acting, the decision was made to put every word on screen as well, in GIANT FONT:

WHY ARE YOU YELLING, YOU'RE A FOOT FROM ME!

A curious design decision, but you also wonder, back in these days, if the consideration was - does this user even have a Sound Card? (That was a relatively Fancy New Thing back then)

-Regular feedback in every fight is simple, streamlined - *TING!* for a blocked attack, 'UGH!'' for an enemy attack that tells you to check that health globe, because THAT one really hurt. Little individualized screams for the monsters when hit. Blood splatter, monster drop, loot drop, repeat. Simple. And still addictive in 2022.... That's impressive.

-Very much fewer drops than in more recent games in this genre, even the Diablo sequels, it seems. The drop rate is lower, and truly random; killing a NAMED elite doesn't guarantee a unique or even rare item. Killing off only a few rooms of baddies, burning off all my health potions or filling my inventory with mostly unusable drops, have to Town Portal back to town, identifying items, selling dropped gear, buying more potions and another Town Portal scroll got TEDIOUS pretty darn fast. Not only does the loop not change much, it reoccurs seemingly too often to enjoy the dungeon crawling as much as I would have liked. Yes, I am picking up everything that drops. I'm a HOARDER/MULE in this kind of game. That may sound crazy. BUT, it did earn me the money for the only serious improvement loop I am finding, halfway through the game - saving up gold and buying the ever wildly increasing weapons and armor from the Smithy. His Premium Items are very high end, and keeps scaling with the characters' level. It seemed really weird that the drops are not keeping me progressing, but the Smithy instead. I suspect that this first instance of what David called 'The Loot Lottery' system was a bit hard to predict or control, so Premium Item Smithy is the safety net to keep leveling the gear JUST ENOUGH and NOT TOO MUCH to meet the challenge of higher tier enemies as you go. Even with that as a sort of drawback to the Loot Lottery system, I still found it Punch The Sky exciting once I could afford the Armor Of The Jaguar:

-Controls were definitely quite rough. For its time, obviously not bad at all. Back then, as detailed in the Ars Technica video below, these games were turn based. Real-time was a revolutionary idea, so controlling this new feature was not to be polished just quite yet. But also obviously a downside to the game. There is no 'move', only 'attack-move', so any scenario where you need to chip away at a large group of enemies involved a lot of walking past them or around them because your character is MOVING to the very blocky, large zone 3d grid area it thinks you want to MOVE TO, instead of attacking where you wanted. Also, if you want to hold your ground,just standing still and fighting is tough. If the guy you are hacking falls, your next spam-click will move you to his spot, which might not be where you want to be. A good way to embed you in the enemy and get you surrounded quickly, especially combined with the interrupt mechanics previously mentioned. Meantime you are getting pummeled, especially by the ranged enemies. The AI is clearly (and cleverly) setup to maneuver you into a killbox and pummel you from all sides. But the combination of pretty innovative AI and pretty limited controls, CAN and WILL get you killed in instances where you really didn't do much wrong. In addition,ranged enemies are pretty cheap. They will run from you indefinitely trying to kite you and maintain range, and in a game like this where running after an enemy into new territory can quickly be SUICIDE, its frustrating. The spawner seems to really like to group fast-attackers with ranged backup, and the combo is very tough for the Warrior I am playing. My counter?

DOOR CHEESE. A big ass block of LONGHORN ULTRA SHARP DOOR CHEESE:

-Funnel them through the door, 1 at a time. Screw it, it makes the game more realistic. Screw it, my Warrior is not here to Look Heroic(Noone's Watching But The Undead!), and he hopefully isn't here to die....again. He's here to Fight Dirty And Win, Damnit. Simple strategy to adapt with, but still pretty difficult overall..Then again, it keeps it interesting when you could walk around the corner into a nearly indefensible group of enemies, at any time. That's less the problem, than the given solution: In the Catacombs I am just chugging potions despite having invested the highest percentage of level up bonuses into Vitality, and having grinded my way to Armor Of The Jaguar from the weaponsmith, which is very high end for this point in the game. I am very rarely getting weapons, shield or armor that improves my build much at all.

What I really need? Armor that just keeps feeding me a Steady Drip IV of Health Potions:

But...DO I HAVE ENOUGH HEALTH POTIONS?!?!?!?

-It's a remarkable reminder of how music SAVES games. Without the music, it would be MUCH different; more dry, tense, frustrating. A completely different game. Maybe something like an early Souls-Like. Instead the music makes it feel like a Celtic fairy tale; a Medieval nightmare about Demons and Foul Sorcery.

--Also a remarkable reminder of how you SHOULD go to the effort to MAKE what does not already exist, at least long enough to demo it and see if it works. There is a video attached to this article that's an interview Ars Technica did with David Brevik, part of their War Stories series - which is a series that is just... motivational, inspirational, outstanding. I should do an article just on the War Stories concept. It is SUCH a joy. In it, he describes the process overall, but the keystone of the whole affair was an idea pitched by the group to turn their more typical Turn Based RPG game into a Real-Time action game. He was HEAVILY against the idea: "This was the line in the sand for me". But, he built a proof of concept, and demo'd it, after losing a vote. And it was immediately obvious that what seemed like a bad idea, when put in practice, was monumental improvement that brought tons of excitement to the project....his team was working on something that would INNOVATE, not just ITERATE, at its core. And of course this wasn't the only major step forward for the genre. The randomized loot system and randomized level design system was REVOLUTIONARY and that one element IS The Spirit, The Stuff of Diablo, for most gamers. The random chance of finding something very unusual or rare or having a very rare drop, combined with never really knowing WHAT you will face, is THE JUICE in the series. Then revolving that: Your new toys, to take on new and worse baddies. You dive back in, better armed, again and again:

Yeah I hadn't fought anything yet. Or half the potions would be gone.

In the later levels, some real TEDIUM sets in. Theres no new monster tricks to adapt to, no novel level changes, no puzzles or thinking mans game(with the exception of the very last level where you have to discern how to make some magic plates on the ground work). Essentially, the last 6 levels of a 16 level game feel same-y, but thats not the kicker. The real kicker is how often the game resorts to surprise tactics and ZERG swarming you. I mean how many times can 20 enemies pile out of ONE CORNER of a TINY ASS ROOM like its a CLOWN CAR, to overwhelm you? The tactics start to get pretty obvious, and feel a bit cheap. Check out --The Rolling With Video-- to see some good examples of that. How many times can the ranged enemies run 2-3 rooms away while you chase them, aggroing 40 new enemies along the way, and their buddies get free shots at you? How many times can you get overwhelmed despite 100 gear upgrades, and you are chugging potions and burning through your hotbar like you have NO protection at all? The system is wonderful because it's random. It can also crash and burn pretty hard, because it's random. Like a marriage, you take the bad with the good.

And Diablo, she can look pretty FUGLY in the morning sometimes.

-The OG Diablo dungeon levels were clearly a bit fluffed up. And actually, it was generally OK, because you needed some extra space to level up/gear up for dealing with The Main Man at the end. In fact, in a weird way, its kind of ENCOURAGING to see it. If a Legendary Great Game has some fairly obvious flaws and parts that aren't as much fun as they are tedious, it tells me that making a great game does not come with a Requirement Of Perfection. It's more about building a few really solid gameplay loops, that people will enjoy and settle into. Those rose colored glasses will gloss over the more laborious parts of your effort, so long as the intentions are good. If that's a confusing take, remember, I don't just experience the games from a gamer's perspective, but from a potential game developers' perspective. I'm as interested in those design decisions, as I am with how fun it is to play.

Thematics and Endgame:

-So, I am currently on what I call a Finish Line Gaming Campaign. I got sick of looking at the ridiculous amount of titles in my Steam library, so many unplayed, but WAY more sick of the amount of games I describe as 'Yeah I loved that game, still haven't finished it yet'. I seriously needed to finish more games. And the first thing I learned when returning to some classics I never finished, was just how much DIFFERENT the theme and experience of a game changes, when you finish it. It seems to me that the theme, the actual point of the game, is never more clearly explained than it is in the ending. So, without knowing the ending, you don't really know the game.

So let's talk Themes, Endgame, and Endings for Diablo. Warning! Spoilers for a 26 year old game here! Avert your eyes!

Diablo is a very dark game. If you were ever confused why people said Diablo III wasn't dark enough, it's probably because you haven't played Diablo. It set an expectation for dark, gritty realism. The theme is not just of a demon invasion in a town of people COMPLETELY unequipped to handle such a thing, but of a town where the Medieval way of life was poor, cold, and brutal before anyone had ever seen a demon. This town is full of folks with very low expectations for life, and very difficult real world problems that haunted them before the supernatural ones took priority. There is coldness, there is sadness, there are the deaths of children:

DAMN.

And the best you can do, is to dive into the dungeons to slay those demons responsible, whilst ignoring the demons above that the town has always dealt with, long before Diablo rose. The ending just deepens the darkness, in my eyes. It is gritty and realistic and a BOLD, good game design decision, but definitely not a happy ending:

Having returned to his hometown to find his loved ones dead, and fighting through legions of horrors to the very end, the hero slays Diablo and removes the cursed stone from its head, only to plunge it into his own.

To carry that burden, so that others don't have to.

Eschewing any laurels, he wanders away from those he saved in Tristram, into the East.

Always......Into The East.