And heaven will shudder ... Diablo: looking back

Original author: KOSTA ANDREADIS
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What will be discussed in the article? The past and present of Blizzard are in person, from beginning to end, from the creation of the concept of Diablo I to the rapid development of Diablo III.



“I literally grew up on Diablo, it was an incredibly amazing and fun time spent with the brothers at the game. I remember later, after the release of Diablo II, I was completely blown away. Hours, days and weeks in the game ... I played all summer without a break. It was something stunning! ” So recalls the game Rob Foote (Rob Foote), a leading game producer of the Diablo III development team. For the past 17 years, he has worked at Blizzard. The legendary Diablo was the reason why he applied for a job with this company.

For Diablo III game designer Joe Shelley, one of Blizzard's 10-year-old veterans, the game has become crucial and decisive in deciding where to work. Diablo II entered the world stage at a time when he was in college, moonlighting as an intern at one of those companies. Nights he played in Diablo II, after which in the morning, completely exhausted and tired, went to work. “It played an important role in choosing what I really decided to devote myself to - the game. Not just play, but work with the game! Blizzard is the embodiment of desire. "



20 years have passed since the moment when Diablo, developed by the American studio Blizzard North and released by Blizzard Entertainment, was released on December 31, 1996. Many consider the game one of the first Action / RPGs: complete immersion in the character’s world of the fictional universe and its pumping, plot non-linearity, random generation of levels, rapid battles, crowds of monsters. In other words - there is something to remember!

Both versions of the game Diablo (1996) and Diablo II (2000) over the past decades have become legends and influenced the development of many other games of this genre. Diablo III (2012) - refers to the modern era, it is characterized by more rapid battles, an epic storyline and an endless leveling of the character.



When Diablo was just taking its first steps in the industry, VFX-Artist Diablo III and gaming industry veteran Julian Love worked for Sierra On-Line. One of his fellow programmers opened the world of Diablo to him. The following months, creating the appearance of working in the Sierra office, the guys fought and pumped characters into Diablo.

Julian Love: “For some reason, I still continued to work at Sierra On-Line when Diablo II came out. The game has become an obsession. My talk was about Diablo, everything revolved around Diablo. At one point, a sober understanding came: why am I still not on the Blizzard team. So I filed for termination with Sierra On-Line. ” 15 years have passed since Julian joined the Diablo II development team.



Rob Foote, who before joining Blizzard, worked in a completely different area, far from game development, began as a tester. “Being just a part of Diablo was already exciting for me.”

Origin history


Diablo is a role-playing game in which the player creates one character and leads him through the dungeon, trying to find and destroy the Devil himself (Diablo). All actions take place in an isometric perspective in three quarters.
In 1993, brothers Erich and Max Schaefer (Erich, Max Schaefer) together with David Brevik (David Brevik) created a game development company Condor. Their goal is to develop an RPG game, create a gothic world, a digital space in the dark fantasy genre, without orcs and elves. What was needed was an original approach, the creation of something really creepy, filled with the feeling that something terrible was approaching. A game in which fierce battle is everything!



“Diablo was exactly the game I wanted to play,” says Erich Schäfer. “When I was younger, I spent a lot of time playing the board game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). He was a Master, described the game world and the events taking place in it, invented various legends in which fleeting and brutal battles were fought. Diablo's specialty is an RPG that you can play with one hand, there are a lot of loot and items. ”



In addition to the original idea, in the early stages of development it was clear that Diablo would become a product in the style of the popular X-Com strategy, which is characterized by turn-based battles. The action began in Tristram, increasingly leading the players deeper and deeper into the netherworld to the devil himself, to absolute evil. The battle at the beginning of the game immediately made it clear to the players what awaited them further ... Violence! Fierce battles, the confrontation of the Underworld and Heaven, and so on for all three versions.

Back to the time when it was just beginning. Condor ran into a problem: nobody at that time wanted to finance the development of RPG games for personal computers running on DOS. The reaction of the publishers, in which the team served with Diablo, was basically the same: playing in this genre is not for the wide gaming community, but for a small hardcore audience. The Condor team, to stay afloat, took up the development of games under the contract.

»We set about developing the Justice League Task Force, a fighting game for the Sega Genesis console. It was a fight game with Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, "recalls Condor co-founder and former Blizzard North president David Brevik." We showed our game at CES, and it turned out that there was another company that did a similar thing for "Super Nintendo consoles. We were not much to say surprised, because no one chatted, the idea did not go beyond the team!"



Silicon & Synapse turned out to be the developer of the Super Nintendo Justice League Task Force, a game development company that was in the process of changing its name to Blizzard Entertainment and was preparing to debut on the PC gaming market with a new real-time strategy game called Warcraft: Orcs & Humans



David Brevik recalls the feeling at that moment of some kindred relationship with this company. “Thoughts were spinning in my head: oh, computer games. After all, this is what we live in, we love computer games, moreover, we are gamers. Now we are engaged in projects for maintaining pants, in the hope of translating our gaming idea, which we burn! We knocked on various doors with her, were rejected 50 times. "Nobody wants to play our game because they consider role-playing games dead, with Diablo we would breathe life into this genre."

Blizzard Entertainment just brought the finishing touches to its brainchild of Warcraft, communication with Condor continued, soon the two studios became close. Сondor team even offered to test the innovative RTS game from Blizzard. Following Warcraft’s successful debut in 1994, Blizzard visited Condor and listened to everything about their RPG game. “It seemed that Blizzard just fell in love with Diablo,” Brevik continues. “Two months later, after their visit, a contract was signed, we immediately started developing. The development took more than two years, we worked together so much that we were ready to merge the two studios, soon Blizzard bought the Сondor and we became known as Blizzard North. "

Gothic Fantasy with Superheroes


“At that time, we called this genre Gothic fantasy. It was a plexus of desire to be different from everyone and craving for dark and gloomy Italian zombie films, ”says Erich Schäfer, talking about the striking visual cover of Diablo I, then he was a leading designer and art director. “We were overwhelmed with the desire to make the game brutal and demanding decisiveness. I wanted you to kill the first monster by crushing his head with a shovel before you have a sword, ”he adds immediately. “Many images were taken from my memories of traveling around castles, churches and catacombs.”



“Atmosphere and tone are the two constants that are unchanged throughout all three parts of Diablo. I love horror as a genre, all three parts leave a unique feeling of reigning fear, ”says Rob Foote, recalling the visual design of the world, from Diablo to Diablo III. “I remember this first meeting with the Butcher, one of his appearance was causing fear. And the quest in Diablo II with a countess abluting in a bloody bath! You can’t forget him. Remember in Act 1 there is a location Black Fields? And in it there is an abandoned farm, from which the farmer comes out and tells how he and his wife hid from scavengers, you go down to the cellar at the request of the farmer, so that his wife would thank you for your salvation ... and she’s a withered corpse! ”

Erich Schaefer: “Evil, Gothic, cruelty are just one part of the equation called Diablo. We managed to attract and retain gamers, one way or another we hit the bull's eye, inviting you to feel like a superhero in a battle with absolute evil. ”

Joe Shelley: “During the game you must become so strong as to overcome all the fiends of hell. You must reach such heights of character development, get and get all kinds of objects that will strengthen your abilities to the level of "god".



“All fights take place with monsters, there are no hidden enemies in Diablo,” adds Julian Love, “this is an important component of Diablo, there is no gray, only white and black.” The beauty of Gothic is that during the battle, there is no thought, but right I’m doing from a moral point of view, killing. No, you clearly understand that you don’t kill people, you are fighting monsters, demons, rooting out evil.



"Despite the fact that I am a non-religious person, I think that the devil and demons are enemies cooler than giant rats or orcs, "says Erich Schäfer." Yes, during the game of the priest ayutsya monster-cannon fodder, but the main question: whether there is a villain, more powerful than the devil "?

Birth of Online Action-RPG


During the development of the game, Diablo made a number of changes to the initially one-user turn-based RPG. Chief among them was Blizzard's offer — before Blizzard North — real-time battles.

From David Brevik’s memoirs: “I remember this moment, as if it were yesterday, when we abandoned the Diablo turn-by-turn and put the game in real time. We had a rather heated discussion in our office about this. I resisted such changes, did not want to change anything, I was attracted by a deep step-by-step system in which each move was divided into several parts. There is nothing to compare those feelings during the rogue-like games: oh god, what to do, I have very little health left ?! You need to make a decision, delve into the inventory, find a way out of a difficult situation. Risk! You make a move and ... die! A couple of weeks of leveling your character ... And you start again. The game in real time did not create such tension, therefore I defended step-by-step ".

It was difficult to evaluate how translation will affect real-time RPGs like Diablo, it was a new experience for those who played it after the release. Julian Love recalls: “I was a fan of the first multiplayer arcade game Gauntlet. But when Diablo came out, I got lost for many many days in its depths, I got on its hook from the very first launch. "



David Brevik was worried that such a transition to real time could delay the already protracted game development process. In addition, more money was needed to complete the project. But, most of the team voted for real time.

It was Friday, David was left alone in the office, alone with his greatest fear. “I thought: it will take forever. You guys better go home. When the guys returned on Monday, oh miracle! Everything worked. I remember how I started the game, clicked the mouse on the screen and my character went with a sword in his hands and broke the skeleton into pieces! It was something! And then the following happened: everyone in the company simply remained after work and played. Usually people do not stay after a working day to spend their leisure time at work! But with Diablo it was different, we stayed and played what we worked on during the day. ”

Due to the transition to real-time battle, there was a need to review a lot, starting from the behavior of monsters, pumping skills to items and, of course, trophies (loot).

The second major change, which was required a bit later - the online release - can be devoted to a whole story: the introduction of Diablo to Battle.net. For the development team, creating a multiplayer game could be a major insurmountable obstacle. For further work, we needed code for the multiplayer, but Condor did not yet know how to work with the multiplayer, and indeed with the network. In the end, it all opened the curtain over a new arena called online gaming.

Rob Foote recalls: “Diablo II was the first real online game I played at that time. It was a completely new experience, when during a game on Battle.net you chat with people about what is happening in Diablo, after which you plunge into the game. Let's just say that this habit has remained to this day: playing in Diablo III, we chat with gamers who go through Seasons and discuss our characters. Many here also play Hardcore, during the game you go beyond the scope of your game world, join the stories of other players, and become part of the Diablo community. ”



How Heaven and Underworld Sound


Well, we continue to make the first impression! The appearance in the style of dark fantasy, the ability to play online a multiplayer game, what else will make you feel the atmosphere of Diablo? Of course, music and sound effects. Matt Oulman - made Diablo and Diablo II sound. He began his collaboration with Blizzard North in 1996.
We wanted a timeless sound that embodied the idea of ​​perpetual confrontation while being different from the music of other Blizzard games. For this reason, we decided to combine the eclecticism of guitars and flutes, and also weave into the canvas of music the sound of small ensembles that players first heard fifteen years ago in the vicinity of Tristram.
Russell Brower, music composer of Activision Blizzard, without him, games like World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, Diablo III would sound completely different: “The diversity of the sound of the game was impressive. The original Diablo was the first Blizzard game I didn't play because
it was part of my work. Music, sound effects exceeded all expectations. The soundtrack became part of the Diablo universe, as the last puzzle in the picture completed the creation of an awesome atmosphere reigning in the game. "

Prior to joining Blizzard in 2005, Russell Brower was active in animation and storytelling. For him and the Blizzard sound team, a game is a kind of religious cult, it is a passion, it is a craving to create new worlds and stories. “The key word is history. The game can be another concept, a scenario, everything can only be at the stage of gray textures, but you still already feel its scale and atmosphere! Matt Oulman showed us the way along which to move forward, to develop the most powerful instrument of the game - sound. In Diablo III, music has gained a new dimension: orchestral arrangements, vocal parts of the British and Irish choir, rich tone of voices, each of which conveys a certain shade of emotions. Every sound is a kind of guide to the world of Diablo! ”



“As a composer, I must feel every detail, hear and revitalize it with sound. I felt something ancient, primitive, blowing from objects, so I started thinking about duduk. Duduk, this oldest wind musical instrument, was an integral part of the Armenian people. Conscious in the biblical era, in cities buried under the sands of the desert. The sound of the duduk spatially takes us to that atmosphere. ”

The musical design of Diablo III has evolved in the same way as its history; from the very first seconds of the launch of the game, the music gives an emotional coloring to what is happening. Dark fantasy is filled with the theme of loss, regret. The composer should be able to fully convey the drama of each scene of the game.

Russell Brower, recalling one of the most dramatic scenes: “There was a character named Leah, there was something in her storyline that hit me a lot. At one point I was visited by a feeling of kinship between our experiences with her (at that time I had some kind of troubles in real life) I drew a parallel with the character of the game, sat down at the piano ... and played Leah. The finished romantic, who threw out emotions on the keys, it took 20 minutes for everything. ”



Second coming


“At first, none of us thought that we were creating something innovative,” reflects Erich Schäfer. “Yes, we developed a quality product in the hope that the public would like it. But we were obviously not ready for such a scale of success. We could not even imagine that our idea would have such an impact on future game development. ” For Schaefer and the inexperienced but passionate Blizzard North team, the popularity and successful sale of Diablo became the embodiment of their wildest dreams and dreams. “After we finished Diablo, there were other ideas for games, but we were still too sick with Diablo,” recalls David Brevik.



“We were aware that it was time to leave Diablo behind and start moving forward. We’ve been building Diablo for several years, it was one of the longest projects we’ve ever worked on. ” When the Blizzard team moved from Warcraft to StarCraft, Blizzard North decided to start a new project that would be similar to the previous one. Work began on the bugs, it was especially necessary to do something with cheating.

Following the example of Blizzard (developed by Warcraft II), the idea of ​​creating Diablo II - began to seem like the right decision. “It was only four months after the release of Diablo, before we started working on Diablo II. We got excited again and were ready to plunge headlong into creating a better product, ”Brevik explains.

“We began to think about what the Acts of the game will be, the understanding has come that locations can be transferred to an open area. Together we came up with all kinds of improvements, hoping to create a more perfect continuation of a successful game. ”

Whirlwind of ideas


One way to complement the game is to create a sequel to it. A game like Diablo - RPG, with simple controls and deep customization - implied a lot of ideas for its improvement and improvement. It was necessary to go beyond the already created world, expand it, add even more ambitiousness!



Erich Schaefer: “It was a fairly simple and amazing process, for two days we organized brainstorming sessions, inventing and describing new locations and places of the game world. We reviewed the initial area in which the Diablo took place, replaced it with the Irish countryside, then went to the desert, then to the jungle, and then to hell. This brainstorming process united us around the idea, we tested, sorted out the options, it was an amazing team work of Blizzard. Creating an advanced present based on the past. ”

Rob Foot: “I'm sure it all starts with an idea. It is the engine of the process, the foundational pillar. The main ideas are not project documents with a detailed description on 200 pages. The more ideas, the more chances to make a great product, to direct the game in the right direction. ” As an example, Rob cites Adventure Mode in Diablo III: Reaper of Souls (2014).



“One of the requests sounded something like this: moving between the Acts of the game, creating a Waypoint to go anywhere in the world. Engineers worked on the development, creating an endless, dynamic, rich gameplay. And then additional suggestions rained down. But what if you leave Bounties / rewards in every Act of the game? If, yes, if ... you need to try! The implementation of this small request took a couple of months of work. ”

As a result, Diablo III in Adventure Mode gives players the opportunity to get anywhere in the location, the player himself can determine his task and receive a reward for its implementation. In parallel, they worked on the implementation of ideas about the Rift. Recall that the Rift is a location with random generation of monsters.

Throughout the 20 years of Diablo, ideas have been a powerful tool and engine of the game creation process. In the early stages of the development of Diablo II, the team considered the idea of ​​launching a game in 3D. It was 2000, the era of 3D graphics was just beginning, many high-profile releases were issued using new 3D technologies. “We had everything to make a 3D game,” recalls David Brevik, “but, after thinking and weighing the pros and cons, we were left with the opinion that this is not entirely ours, the game may look better, more functional, remaining 2D.” Squeeze out of 2D 3D? Diablo II had a fixed perspective that allowed you to scale sprites and give a 3D effect.

After almost 10 years, the development of Diablo III has made it much easier to translate the game into 3D, thanks to already developed technologies and powerful equipment. Although discussions have already been held around the prospect.

Rise of the Dead


Julian Love: “The development process of Diablo III resembled an iterative process, roughly speaking, when the action was repeated as many times as needed to achieve the desired result. All that was left was to watch what takes root and what gets eliminated. The development project has been in this state for several years. ”



Speaking about the history of Diablo, it's hard not to notice the long gap between the release of Diablo II and III. Although the development of Diablo III on Blizzard North began almost immediately after the release of Diablo II, the project later moved to Blizzard Entertainment.

Erich Schaefer: “When I left with Blizzard North, there was a team working on Diablo III, I was just fragmentary in this project. It was a completely different game, a real massively multiplayer online game. "

For the Blizzard Studios, the mid-2000 period was incredibly stressful. During the release of Diablo in late 1996, a team in the south worked exclusively on the StarCraft video game. Each of the studios was engaged in one specific project, over the next decade this concept changed, Blizzard slowly turned into a single entity working on several projects, regardless of the studios. On August 1, 2005, Blizzard North moved to its head office in California.



Julian Love: “There were two goals. One of them is to make an excellent Diablo III game, and the second is to assemble an excellent Diablo III team. A team that can continue to create the universe of the game Diablo. It was not easy, it was necessary to approach wisely and with caution in the selection of team members in order to ultimately get not only a magical product - Diablo III, but also a team united by one idea. ”

This process dragged on for a couple of years, in 2012 Diablo III was introduced to the world, it differs from the 2017 version of Diablo III. Julian Love summarizes the work done, from the release of the add-on to Diablo III: Reaper of Souls to the release of Rise of the Necromancer (2017): “I think that over the years we have been constantly improving, becoming better and better, raising the game process to a new, higher level. If we talk about the financial side of the issue and the amount of remuneration for the work done - our efforts were not in vain. She met our expectations, presented new opportunities and freedom, fully compensated for the time that was spent on its development and implementation. ”



David Brevik: “A lot has changed in twenty years. Diablo III is a completely different game, it differs from Diablo II and Diablo I. Moreover, Diablo II is completely different from Diablo I. Different characters, objects, but there is something that has always remained unchanged is love for Diablo. No matter which version you like, Diablo captivates you in its frightening atmosphere. People play Diablo, people love Diablo. ”

Erich Schaefer adds: “Gamers are returning to the Diablo gameplay again and again. During this time, an insane amount of various games was developed, but we managed to fill the game world with high-quality content that carries with us again and again. ”

A series of three games of all time is not such a large number, a kind of deficit that could become even more desirable for Diablo fans. Diablo has its own heritage. Although back in 1996, investing in a game like Diablo was risky. But it was worth it! After 20 years, the influence of Diablo is noticeable in many famous games. She changed the idea of ​​RPG. Run and chop demons!



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