Diablo Retrospective

After firing up Blizzard’s original Diablo once again, IGN provides us with a retrospective overview of the classic action RPG.

Diablo is a sixteen-stage dungeon that stretches from just beneath to crust to the Inferno, where Diablo resides. The game seems, at first, like a fairly straightforward dungeon crawler where you kill monsters to earn experience, level up, and then descend down to kill more monsters. Eventually, you fight your way to Diablo’s lair and do battle with the physical manifestation of this devil.

But Blizzard’s talent for creating games with unparalleled replay value is revealed during your second play through of Diablo. The game uses a random generator to redraw the dungeons with each play so each stab at Diablo is unique, so don’t think you can retrace your steps and just power down to another epic fight. Quests are also randomly assigned with each play, with only the need to execute Lazarus as a constant between all visits to Diablo’s dungeons. Plus, the monster load in each stage is pulled from a massive stable of creatures, preserving some creatures for later attempts. You may need to actually play the game several times to see all of Diablo’s minions.

But what really snared players in Diablo’s net is the same thing that keeps so many gamers glued to World of Warcraft: Loot. There are thousands of generated items found in the dungeons and in no specific order. As you quest, you encounter basic potions and weapons, but from time to time, you uncover a rare item such as the Zodiac gear. The real grails are the unique items such as the Hellslayer battle axe and the magical Constricting Ring. Showing such finds off in multiplayer became a point of pride with many players over Battle Net, but the system was eventually tainted by item duping.