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Diablo - 20 years later

Electryon

Savant
Joined
Jun 3, 2015
Messages
191
Location
Stuck on Axeoth
It helps that Diablo built on real themes/symbols like crosses and pentagrams, the trappings of a church/mausoleum/etc. The sequels went off into gibberish territory with shit like a giant insect nest, various animal people, lots of completely not spooky outdoor areas, and way way too many NPCs instead of a tight group of clearly tortured people without a shred of hope. Hard to feel the weight of hell when some dude is outright gleeful because you found a fucking trinket for his collection.

Act I of Diablo 2 retains the right feel, as do the dungeon areas of all chapters. But you're right about areas like the desert and especially the jungle areas of Act 3. They aren't fun, they are simply annoying and no, they don't really fit. Pygmy mobs with blowdarts are without question the most annoying enemy type in any RPG game, and you face endless waves of them in a unappealing forest area for most of the chapter. Another odd choice was the shift in music (by Matt Uleman, which makes it even more bizarre) to go away from the industrial terror of the first game and the first 4 acts to a over the top epic score for Lord of Destruction that is simply jarring if you play the game straight through.

Diablo 2 is a better game in many ways, but it doesn't hold a candle in atmosphere. There is and was a genuine sense of terror, especially if you played it as a young kid experiencing it all for the first time. It's cliche to say it, but the Butcher really DID almost cause me to have a heart attack when I first encountered him.
 

Neanderthal

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2015
Messages
3,626
Location
Granbretan
I'll just go ahead and leave this here



Makes me remember when I were playing this ages ago, working two jobs at time an hardly kipping so I were speeding me titties off just to keep eyes open, on verge o hallucinatin shit and addicted to Diablo, bad shit. One time i'd just got Arkane's Valour, sneaking around trying to find fuckin hidden who were creeping around in shadows, this music blarin out from me headphones, bedroom in dark an screen just consuming me eyes. Then me old dog stuck is wet nose against me leg. I near ad a fuckin coronary an shit mesen I were that fuckin surprised, time i'd turned back to game I were dead.

I put it away for a bit after that, got some shuteye instead.
 
Joined
Dec 28, 2012
Messages
6,657
Location
Rape
The intro had me spooked as a kid. Was like 7 when I played it, or 8, got it 1-2 years after release. I had played nothing of the sort before so it got me hooked for a while before I got bored and went back to strategy games.
 

Lujo

Augur
Joined
Mar 3, 2014
Messages
242
Played it as a 7 year old at relase. It has impossible ambience and, well, it was difficult. We didn't think of it as an RPG where I was living but an isometric arcade game made to kinda look like an RPG. It's up there with the original Aliens vs. Predator shooter in terms of ambience like you've never seen before (and probably since).

Diablo II was quite a dissapointment. Much much later me and a bunch of guys played diablo 1 in the college dorm lan a lot, just for fun with an extra difficulty mod. There was plenty of newer stuff available (god knows), but since it's all mindless clicking you might as well go for the one with actual ambience and style.
 

Axe Father

Savant
Joined
Feb 10, 2015
Messages
102
I liked Diablo because its a game that is greater than the sum of its parts. The gameplay leaves plenty to be desired, but I'm a very "right-brained" person as the myth goes, so the incredible attention to detail that you guys have pointed out helped the game creep into my heart. I particularly liked the way your character would make comments to himself as he progresses through the dungeon (a feature that I felt enhanced the mood of Thief, too), and I really got into the vibe of the game. It went a long way towards helping me feel less like a troglodyte furiously hammering left click and more like a small hamlet's would-be savior against the unfailing forces of Hell.

I'd be lying if I said that I judge games foremost on the gameplay content. That "right-brain" aspect means that a few of my favourites are games with mediocre gameplay but what I find to be excellent art direction, music, and sound design. To give an example in another genre, Tiberian Sun is one of my favourite RTS games entirely because of the unit designs coupled with music that perfectly captures the world as depicted by the game. It is mechanically inferior to much more refined and balanced games, but I prefer it all the same.

Partly on topic, it bums me out to see Blizzard erase the magic of their worlds and meld them into this terribly generic Nu-Blizzard style. Like Diablo, Starcraft also got hit with this shit. The original game was clearly influenced by great films like Apocalypse Now and Aliens, and it had a nice bleak but darkly humorous feel that really helped sell rednecks fighting aliens in space. The people responsible for bringing the intro to Brood War to the screen better have left the company in the twelve years it took to make a sequel, cause I'd hate to see passion so clearly erased from people that can make things like that.
 

Electryon

Savant
Joined
Jun 3, 2015
Messages
191
Location
Stuck on Axeoth
Partly on topic, it bums me out to see Blizzard erase the magic of their worlds and meld them into this terribly generic Nu-Blizzard style. Like Diablo, Starcraft also got hit with this shit. The original game was clearly influenced by great films like Apocalypse Now and Aliens, and it had a nice bleak but darkly humorous feel that really helped sell rednecks fighting aliens in space. The people responsible for bringing the intro to Brood War to the screen better have left the company in the twelve years it took to make a sequel, cause I'd hate to see passion so clearly erased from people that can make things like that.

Blizzard didn't make a bad game in their core set of series until relatively recently. While Warcraft: Orcs and Humans is so close to Dune 2 as to be almost criminal (you gotta wonder how the people who made that game feel about Blizzard becoming the giant they have on their backs), you can't argue with it's implementation. 2 was even better, though oddly enough had even less story. 3 was probably the most original one of the bunch (for once it was them getting ripped off, in the case of Heroes of M&M 5 later on). In later years Warcraft 3 has become nothing much more than a time-lost primer for WoW (and you'll notice that when Warcraft 3's story arc finished during Wrath of the Lich King, a substantial number of players simply felt they had accomplished what they set out to do and never returned).

The first two Diablo games remain the pinnacle of their genre (and it's a pretty shitty genre). I much preferred the clones that implemented decent story elements and or different ideas than the straight up loot slot machines. The original Starcraft is clearly superior to the modern version, and somehow manged the feat of balancing the 3 races almost perfectly, and, along with Warcraft 3, essentially invented (or allowed the rise) of E-sports, for good or ill.
 

Electryon

Savant
Joined
Jun 3, 2015
Messages
191
Location
Stuck on Axeoth
With the HD mod it is better in every way then D2 and D3.

Trimis de pe al meu Galaxy Nexus folosind Tapatalk

HD mod is very good, though in my estimation more for the ease of running it on modern systems and the restoration of content (Unfinished Business if you will). I haven't ever gotten far enough to get into crafting or the new items and difficulty modes, but I'd assume they are of good quality. The 3 "new" classes are simply minor variations on the original 3 and don't seem all that meaningful, but then again, you don't have to play them. I still wouldn't recommend playing the game any other way, if only to see some quests that really flesh out the story and to get it running hassle-free.
 

Grampy_Bone

Arcane
Joined
Jan 25, 2016
Messages
3,640
Location
Wandering the world randomly in search of maps
My friends and I thought it was repetitive and it destroyed your mouse. You had to restart the game about halfway through or you wouldn't be leveled enough to survive the final boss. The classes were barely distinct. I do recall really enjoying the background story and lore in the manual.

At the time, everyone I knew was playing Warcraft 2 on Kali. Diablo hardly made a blip. It's hard to say the game 'revolutionized' anything because gaming communities were more isolated back then. Internet forums weren't really a thing.

Baldur's Gate and Diablo 2 were bigger deals. In fact i'd say Diablo 2 might be the single most influential RPG since Wizardry, Rogue, and Ultima. Why? The damned, thrice-cursed skill tree system. That godawful garbage mechanic is a darkest blight on the face of gaming after escort missions and forced stealth sequences.
 

Electryon

Savant
Joined
Jun 3, 2015
Messages
191
Location
Stuck on Axeoth
My friends and I thought it was repetitive and it destroyed your mouse. You had to restart the game about halfway through or you wouldn't be leveled enough to survive the final boss. The classes were barely distinct. I do recall really enjoying the background story and lore in the manual.

Blizzard's early game manuals were actually really, really good. Some nice, distinct art by Metzen, and it's not like it was any more ridiculous from a story perspective than any other game out there. In fact, you don't get the full experience of those games (and most games from that time or before) UNLESS you devour the manual. They were meant to be read not just for instruction, but perspective. When I was 10 or 11 years old, I probably spent as much time reading game manuals as I did actually playing the games.

At the time, everyone I knew was playing Warcraft 2 on Kali. Diablo hardly made a blip. It's hard to say the game 'revolutionized' anything because gaming communities were more isolated back then. Internet forums weren't really a thing.

I don't think it's fair to say Diablo 1 revolutionized things either, no more so than their other games did. Coming from someone who's household only had Macs though, there weren't alot of RPGs to choose from. There were alot of ads for first person shooters, RTS, and graphical adventure games, but damn if I can remember while flipping through all my dad's Mac magazines (and he got tons of them) if I can recall more than 5 RPGs during that time period being advertised. The only two that immediately spring to mind are Dungeon Master II and Stonekeep. So Diablo was the first true RPG I ever got to play. I know we had it, I remember getting scared by the Butcher, I'm reasonably sure I eventually beat him, but this was an era where we got internet access by dialing into the local school computer lab because my dad was a teacher. I didn't know what I was doing, I doubt I ever made it past the 4th level of the dungeon.

Baldur's Gate and Diablo 2 were bigger deals. In fact i'd say Diablo 2 might be the single most influential RPG since Wizardry, Rogue, and Ultima. Why? The damned, thrice-cursed skill tree system. That godawful garbage mechanic is a darkest blight on the face of gaming after escort missions and forced stealth sequences.

Without question it was a bigger deal, mainly because in the ensuing time period the internet itself had become more accessible. As for the skill tree....sure, we can blame it for the abominations you see in games like Sword Coast Legends and Torchlight 2, but Diablo 2's skill tree, taken on it's own, is probably still the best one ever done. And you'll talk to hordes of WoW fans who would like to have their skill trees back rather than what they've been handed recently. Skill trees aren't THAT far off the reservation from assigning skill points. They can be taken way too far, Diablo 2 got things right in that regard.
 

Skall

Learned
Joined
Dec 28, 2015
Messages
86
http://www.significant-bits.com/night-with-devil

I first checked it out via a PC Gamer demo CD and loved it; for the longest time I assumed it burned the save game to the CD somehow since it played directly off the CD-ROM. Anyway, great presentation and fun, easy multiplayer. I know it's fashionable to look down on it compared to its contemporary CRPGs like Fallout, but Diablo was always honest about itself (unlike, say, the Mass Effect series) so I never held its trash mobs or whatever against it.
 

Stormcrowfleet

Aeon & Star Interactive
Developer
Joined
Sep 23, 2009
Messages
1,020
I just installed The Hell and played a lot. This mod is the best mod I have ever played in any games. It add better pacing, more horror, more challenge, new enemies, new items, new graphics, new mechanics, new inventory management, new classes, etc. etc. It is fantastic.

Of course it does not make Diablo something else than Diablo, but I doubt very much that I'll play the vanilla Diablo from now on. The only problem is that for some reason I have no music; this sucks.
 

Akratus

Self-loathing fascist drunken misogynist asshole
Patron
Joined
May 7, 2013
Messages
0
Location
The Netherlands
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
2c3f69f74f.jpg


Senpai freakin noticed me.
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,161
Diablo's atmosphere had a huge role in popularizing the game. Back when i first played it i had no idea what the genre was about and pretty much brute forced my way to the end without having a clear idea of what i was doing. But man did the game sucked me in nonetheless. That's one of the things modern games are really shit at, whether we are talking about AAA dorito trash or pixelated or cartoony indie shit.
 

Akratus

Self-loathing fascist drunken misogynist asshole
Patron
Joined
May 7, 2013
Messages
0
Location
The Netherlands
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Diablo's atmosphere had a huge role in popularizing the game. Back when i first played it i had no idea what the genre was about and pretty much brute forced my way to the end without having a clear idea of what i was doing. But man did the game sucked me in nonetheless. That's one of the things modern games are really shit at, whether we are talking about AAA dorito trash or pixelated or cartoony indie shit.
Too true. It's sad that a japanese developer is better at doing western fantasy atmosphere nowadays than pretty much any western developer. Meaning From Software.
 

Ivan

Arcane
Joined
Jun 22, 2013
Messages
7,473
Location
California
That's one of the things modern games are really shit at, whether we are talking about AAA dorito trash or pixelated or cartoony indie shit.

I feel ya. Dark Souls + Bloodborne have scratched that itch for me too.
 

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