Once upon a time, Blizzard was one of the kings of the video game industry. It was a small studio comprising of passionate nerds who made games they’d want to play. Quality was their mantra. Every release wasn’t just a new game for their fans, it was an event that rocked the gaming landscape! Every single game they made was nothing short of a masterpiece!
Which made their fall all the more heartbreaking.
Being a Blizzard fan has been a brutal test of loyalty over the last few years. Basically everything they’ve done has been a big slap to the consumer’s face. Gone are the days of putting quality first. Abandoned are the times where the games were made simply for the passion of making games. Now, Blizzard is run by businessmen and shareholders, not talented and caring artists.
We could go on and on for days about their mistakes. Warcraft 3: Reforged, adding microtransactions into WoW: Classic against their promises, the anti-consumer microtransactions of Diablo Immortal and Diablo 4, the brutal pay-to-win monetization of Hearthstone, the utter abandonment of Heroes of the Storm, the list goes on and on and on! It’s a bad sign when the complete neglect of Starcraft is considered a good thing by the fanbase!
For once, however, we’re not talking about the company’s many mistakes. Today, we’re rewinding the clock back to the glory days. The question: was the Blizzard of old truly as incredible as we remember? Or has the passage of time tarnished their legacy as badly as the company itself has?
Stay a while and listen! Today, we’re playing the game that all but invented the ARPG: Diablo!
*Disclosure: while I did sink some time into vanilla Diablo, most of my playtime was spent with the Belzebub mod. This project adds modern quality of life improvements, such as an auto-save system and dungeon resets, as well as adding new playable classes into the game. If you’re looking to play Diablo 1, I’d highly recommend doing so with this mod; it makes many changes, but it retains the heart and soul that makes this game so damn good.
Diablo’s opening cutscene immediately sets a grim and dark tone. Corpses hang from a dead tree. A crow feasts on the eyes of a corpse. Diving into the darkness of the cathedral, the music kicks up, and we meet the forces of Hell. All culminating in the appearance of our titular villain, who lets out a haunting, demonic shriek that fades into the title screen.
Right away, Diablo shows its age. This game is nearly thirty years old, and hoo boy can you feel it! Those models and animations are most definitely from 1996!
But what transcends the decay of time isn’t technical prowess. It’s style. And Diablo has got that in droves! Its dark gothic style still holds up!
Unlike the average RPG, Diablo doesn’t hit you with an extensive character creator. No in-depth stat allocation or choosing a backstory. Pick your character, choose your name, then bam! You’re in the game. No tutorials, no exposition, nothing. Barely three clicks in and you’re playing. Just how it should be.
For this playthrough, I’ll be taking the role of the Warrior. His name: Jernard Blain.
Yes, I am very clever with my names. Please, please, hold your applause.
Now set with a totally original name, Jernard steps back into his hometown of Tristram. Only things aren’t as he left it. Most of the populace was lured into the Cathedral by the Archbishop Lazarus and sacrificed to Diablo and his minions in a bloody slaughter. Those few that survived remain trapped, as mysterious dark riders patrol the outskirts of the village, killing or enslaving those who try to escape. Everyone is trapped in the lion’s den, and soon, the predator will wake.
The atmosphere in Tristram is possibly the best in any game I’ve ever played! Though it is your only safe haven, you never quite feel at ease here. The town is cloaked in an eternal twilight, standing on the cusp between light and darkness. Speaking to the townsfolk, you learn that demons emerge at night. Knowing that, the setting sun only increases the tension; it feels as Diablo and his minions could rise from the cathedral and slaughter the helpless denizens at any moment. This effect is further amplified by the music; few tracks in gaming can claim to be even half as iconic or memorable as the Tristram theme!
Within Tristram, you’ll meet the eight remaining residents who will aide you on your quest. They are:
- Deckard Cain the Elder
- Griswold the Blacksmith
- Pepin the Healer
- Farnham the Drunk
- Ogden the Tavern Owner
- Gillian the Barmaid
- Wirt the Peg-Legged Boy
- Adria the Witch
Each of these eight characters provides you with different information, quests, or services. Cain helps you identify items. Griswold buys your unused gear and repairs your equipment. Pepin heals you and sells potions. Adria provides you with magical items and helps restore your mana. Be sure to check in with them frequently; you’ll need them if you want to clear the labyrinth.
Heading towards the cathedral, Jernard stumbles across a wounded man who only just barely escaped the death trap below. The dying knight informs him of Lazarus’ betrayal and warns of a powerful, brutal demon called the Butcher. With his dying breath, he begs Jernard to avenge him, a promise the Warrior makes without even a second of hesitation.
Out of curiosity – and a bit of fear – I headed back into Tristram to chat a bit more with the villagers. To my surprise, a new dialogue choice had opened up with all of them regarding the Butcher. Every single person has something to say about the demon, from those who had suffered its wrath to those who had only heard dark rumors of it. Through this, Jernard learned that Wirt lost his leg to the Butcher before being saved by Griswold, while Farnham has fallen into his alcoholism because of his traumatic meeting with the demon.
The residents of Tristram are my favorite part of this game, hands down. They always have something to say, whether it’s about a quest, the demons, or each other. Every single one of them has a decent amount of depth, and their voice performances are surprisingly solid for a 1996 PC game! If you’re gonna play Diablo, I implore you to talk to everyone as frequently as you can. If you do, you’ll unravel an incredibly dark and intriguing story.
“But the story is only told through text crawls!” I hear you objecting. “That’s boring!” To that, I raise this point: close your eyes. No, I’m not joking. Close your eyes and listen. Treat dialogue scenes like an audiobook. It’s a great way to unwind and catch your breath after a run through the labyrinth.
Or you could ignore them completely and just go kill things. The entire story of Diablo 1 is completely optional. If you just want to play the game, you absolutely can!
Speaking of which, there is no use delaying any longer. It’s time for Jernard to delve into the cathedral.
If you’ve played an ARPG, then you know the drill. Click on an enemy to attack and watch it die. Collect loot and move on to the next level. If you level up, put your extra points into one of your four stats and become stronger. Rinse, repeat, victory.
What makes Diablo 1 so interesting is that you can use just about every piece of loot you find, regardless of your character’s class. Sure, it makes the classes feel a bit homogeneous; the only real difference between them are their sprites and voices. But it allows you to make some really fun and interesting – if unviable – combinations. Fairly early on, I decided to become what I liked to call an Arcane Knight, so I spread Jernard’s points across Strength and Magic so he could use swords, shields, and spells. That way, I could use magic against ranged enemies and go toe-to-toe with tougher enemies with melee.
However, not every item you find will be worthwhile. Such as the Sword of Dyslexia I found, which did pitiful damage and reduced my Dexterity stat. Worse yet, Griswold saw the piece of junk for what it was and didn’t pay me a single gold piece for it! All I got for my trouble was a pat on the back!
Surprisingly enough, this didn’t frustrate me at all. In fact, strange as it might sound, I love the fact that some loot is worthless! It makes finding good items all the more satisfying! Remember, ARPGs are all about gambles. Fighting enemies and hoping for the best drops. Without negative consequences, where’s the satisfaction in the positive ones?
The first floor of the Cathedral is hardly a challenge. Every enemy dies in one or two hits, and they do basically no damage. Admittedly, this inflated my head a little bit. Heading down to Level 2, I was fully confident that all foes awaiting me would fall to my blade. Jernard had become all but certain that Diablo would fall to his blade.
Until he appeared.
Meet one of the most terrifying enemies in video game history: the Butcher.
There is no jumpscare. No musical sting. Just a room soaked in blood, filled with naked mutilated bodies, and a single line of dialogue. Yet that was more than enough to make the Butcher truly terrifying! I’m not afraid to admit I freaked the fuck out when he came running at me. Yes, me, a twenty-four year old man in 2023, panicked like a little girl playing a game from 1996!
The Butcher knocked my ego down to size real fuckin’ quick! This dude hits you fast and hard! Jernard learned the hard way why Diablo 1 is so difficult: hit stun. Try to fight back? Get stunned and interrupted. Try to run away? Hit stun pulls you back! I was utterly helpless, trapped as the demon hacked me to pieces in five seconds flat! Fighting the Butcher made one thing abundantly clear: Diablo was not a game that would pull its punches!
But when I finally slew this big red bastard? Holy shit, the feeling of satisfaction was indescribable! And the loot! Oh my god, the dopamine hit was insane! Picking up his cleaver and taking it for myself, I realized that this is what it must feel like to be a crackhead!
From floor 1 all the way to 16, this is the core loop of Diablo. Run into a brutal challenge, overcome it, and get a potentially awesome reward. Diablo calls the Cathedral his lair, I call it a dopamine factory! It’s still addictive and fun to play, even twenty-seven years later!
Don’t get me wrong, it definitely shows its age. There is no sprint button, so you’ll be moving real god damn slow from start to finish. But again, I kind of love that. Sure, it makes traversal in the downtime really boring, but it in combat, it forces you to be careful! Enemies in Diablo don’t mess around; if you get surrounded, even the weakest trash mobs can slaughter you! This isn’t like any of the sequels, where you can rush in and slaughter hordes of demons as fast as possible. You’ve got to be careful when choosing your battles, lest you accidentally step into a bullet-hell shooter and die.
*Disclosure #2: part of the Belzebub mod allows you to increase your movement speed in town, so I never had to suffer the long walk between NPCs. If you’re playing without it, you’re in for quite the hike. I swear, half my time in vanilla Diablo was spent simply walking from NPC to NPC.
What few issues are in this game really aren’t a big deal to me. Yes it’s slow, the graphics are dated, and with the outdated save system, you can hard-lock your game if you aren’t careful. Frustrating, yes. But I equate those issues to technical limitations of the time. Blizzard North did what they could with what they had.
While it is definitely dated, I think Diablo 1 is still a masterpiece. You can still have fun with it, even to this day, and playing with the Belzebub mod only smooths away the rough edges! There’s a clear passion and heart to it that still shines through all these years later, a soul that has been solely lacking from modern Blizzard titles.
This game defined the ARPG genre for years. Three and a half years, to be specific. It’s telling, I think, that the only game that could surpass it was its own sequel.
But that is a story for another day.
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