How the game "Diablo" was created: 15 interesting facts about the cult game (14 photos)

Diablo is a cult game that essentially created a whole new subgenre of RPG (Hack-n-Slash). But few people know that the game was originally intended to be turn-based. It's hard to say whether such a game would have been successful.





1. The history of "Diablo" began with Max Schaefer, his brother Eric and their friend Dave Brevik. Dave Brevik had just quit his job at "Iguana Entertainment", after which the friends decided to found their own company "Condor", which was located right in Brevik's house.



Dave Brevik

Brevik had been hatching the idea for a future game for a long time, as he had always been attracted to various dark fantasy with magic, but there was simply no money to develop his own game.





Max and Eric Schaefer

In order to somehow prove themselves and put down roots, the guys began to take on the development of projects offered to them for the company "Sun Soft", one of which was the game "Justice League" for the Sega Mega Drive 2 console. In fact, it was a kind of clone of "Street Fighter", but with characters from "DC comics", such as Batman, Flash, Superman, etc. And the fee received for the development of this game allowed the guys from "Condor" to start developing their own game - that very "Diablo".

After some time, the Schaefer brothers and Dave Brevik went to the "Consumer Electronics Show" conference to show their developments. And they were amazed when they learned that the company "Silicon and Synapse" (the future Blizzard Entertament) was also developing this game, but for the "Super Nintendo" console.

The guys from these two companies even became friends and began to discuss their future projects. Thus, the developers from "Silicon and Synapse" shared their developments for their future game "Warcraft", and the guys from "Condor" showed their developments for their future game "Diablo", the idea of ​​which Brevik had been nurturing since high school, since he was a fan of fantasy in general and the game "Dungeons and Dragons" in particular.

2. By the way, the name "Diablo" was not invented in honor of the devil, but in honor of the mountain in San Francisco, where Dave Brevik himself lived and studied.



3. During the development of the game, Dave Brevik took the position of lead developer and programmer, Eric Schaefer became the lead designer and scriptwriter, and his brother Max was just a designer. But in fact, each of the friends was doing everything at once. And of course, we must not forget that new employees (15 people) were also involved in the development of the game, although to a lesser extent.



4. Initially, it was planned to use plasticine to create the game, but such complex graphics would have required a lot of additional investment in both money and time. And the company did not really have either. Therefore, it was decided to make characters using sprites.

5. The gameplay itself was partially taken from the game "X-Com", namely the isometric view, the size of the characters and automatically generated locations. And the battles themselves were in a turn-based mode, which later caused problems. But we will talk about this later.



6. The money for the game development was already starting to run out, and the developers still hadn't found a publisher, as many refused because they considered the concept outdated, because at that time gamers were crazy about the game "Doom".

But suddenly the company "3DO" became interested in the project, offering "Condor" a pretty good amount. However, Brevik and the Schaefers themselves refused to cooperate. Brevik remembered his new friends from the company "Silicon and Synapse" and decided to contact them.

At that time, the company "Silicon and synapse" had already been renamed "Blizzard entertament", and the first "Warcraft" was released under the wing of this very company.



The guys from "Blizzard" asked to bring them their developments for the game "Diablo". Brevik and Schaefer took all their developments and went to "Blizzard".

The early version of the game reminded everyone of the game "X-Com", but in a fantasy setting. And despite the fact that the early version of the game was still raw, and many elements simply did not work, "Blizzard" liked this game. They offered Condor a contract, and they accepted, despite the fact that the amount was half that offered by 3DO.

7. The original idea for the game "Diablo" was to be turn-based (the battles themselves), since Brevik simply adored this game system. But "Blizzard" did not like this idea, which caused a big dispute between the companies.



"Blizzard" claimed that the turn-based system would only ruin the game, since players would be more nervous, since every wrong move could cost them victory. But Brevik stood his ground, claiming that the main feature of the game is precisely the turn-based system.

As a result, it was decided to hold a vote, and as it turned out, the overwhelming majority of the developers from "Condor" themselves were for the abolition of turn-based mode. Brevik was very angry, but still agreed with this decision.

As a result, a week later, Brevik was able to change the code, converting the turn-based mode into a real-time mode, although some sources claim that it took literally a couple of hours.

8. But no matter how well everything was going, when the game was already close to completion, "Condor" ran out of money. Then the company "Blizzard entertament" offered to buy the company from them, making it one of its branches, to which Brevik and the Schaefers agreed. After that, the company "Condor" became known as "Blizzard North".



Thanks to this, Brevik and Schaefer received additional funding from Blizzard, as well as an additional six months for development. The money and additional time allowed the developers to "finish" the game to perfection and make the Battle.net network mode.

9. Initially, the developers were thinking about creating separate add-ons with weapons and armor to sell them for a separate fee. But later they abandoned this idea.



10. According to the original idea, the game was supposed to have only one playable character - a warrior who could choose his own style of play, be it close combat, archery or the magical path. But later it was decided to add an archer and a magician, so that the player could choose the character whose path he would like to follow.



11. The ending conceived by Brevik and Schaefer was positive, meaning Diablo would be destroyed and everyone would be happy. But the bosses at Blizzard Entertainment had their own vision. They decided to leave the ending open for future sequels, so at the end of the game we saw the main character inserting Diablo's soul stone into his forehead.



Brevik and the Schaefers were surprised when they saw the final video shown to them, but they did not argue, since they liked this idea even more.

12. Unfortunately, not everything was included in the final version of the game. For example, the quests from the drunk Farnham and the girl Gillian were cut from the game, the priest Tremaine, the star map and much more were cut.

However, a couple of decades later, enthusiasts began restoring the game and released a separate mod called "Diablo: Belzebub hub", which returned the cut content and also activated the HD mode.



13. Also. some of Brevik and Schaefer's developments were not included in the game, such as Izual, the Hellish Forge, and many other things. But all of these things were eventually implemented in the second part of the game.

14. In the first part of the game "Diablo", the main characters had no names or backstories, and the characters themselves were residents of Tristram who returned home after many years and discovered that evil spirits were operating in their hometown.



Only after the release of the second part of the game was it decided to expand the game's lore, giving the main characters names (Aiden, Mareyna and Jazret), a biography and a backstory. Thus, we found out that each of the heroes ultimately ended badly.

15. The developers decided to leave the players a small parting word. After we get to the 16th final level, you can hear a certain demonic phrase. But if you play it backwards, you get "Eat your vegetables and brush your teeth after every meal", which means "Eat your vegetables and brush your teeth after every meal."