Diablo's creator says Blizzard needs to push past D4's "super high" expectations

Diablo co-creator David Brevik is one of the industry's most influential figures, helping to popularize the action-RPG genre at large. His devilish dungeon crawler and its iconic sequel, Diablo 2, are widely regarded among the best RPGs of all time. He and several of his fellow executives then split from Blizzard in 2003, and he went on to work on the likes of Hellgate: London and Marvel Heroes before founding publishing house Skystone Games in 2020. Diablo 4, meanwhile, has continued to grow and twist into a gargantuan, live-service behemoth that has become the status quo, and often feels outmaneuvered by its smaller rivals. I recently had the chance to chat with Brevik at length, and I asked him how he feels about the current state of the series.

Diablo 4 is a game I've really enjoyed, but it definitely feels stuck in a rut at the moment. Its seasonal updates are never truly revolutionary, and there's a sense, as seen in the most recent developer chat, that Blizzard is wary of getting too bold lest it alienate some of its giant fan base. Instead of exciting and novel mechanical changes, we're getting pricey Starcraft skins. In the meantime, the remastered Diablo 2 Resurrected has been plodding on largely unchanged for the past few years, despite some initial additions after its launch.

Brevik thinks that game development at any scale is difficult nowadays, but that it's especially tough for the largest names. "I mean, we've seen so many triple-A and double-A stuff get canceled in the last two years. It's just brutal, and it's really difficult for giant games. It's super risky; there's a lot of competition. It's very different than it was 20 years ago." He suggests that this explains the trend of new studios that are "teams of veterans that have been doing this for a long time, but want out of triple-A because of how unstable it has become."

Blizzard's plan with Diablo 4 has been evolving it through DLC, but it's already stepped back from its initial yearly rollout, with the next expansion not due until 2026. Brevik says D4's sheer size nowadays makes dramatic change tough to enact. "I think that anytime that you have a big game and you make any changes at all, you're going to have some people that are not happy with it and are a little vocal about it. So I think it's a really tough thing when you're super popular and you have a huge game, the expectations are just through the roof.

"It's just really stressful to do anything. And so you have to put that aside and say, 'Hey, I believe in the direction we're going here. I believe in what we're doing, and though maybe not everybody will understand it, and I recognize that, we think that this is the best thing for the future of the product and the company and things like that.' I think that is a difficult thing to do. And, you know, the expectations are super high. And whenever you're doing anything like that, it's never an easy task."

Brevik speculates that the sheer number of games released every year leads to many players sticking to their favorites. "There's so many products, and there are so many cool games out there, that it's hard to really keep track and play everything. I think that's another reason that people kind of gravitate towards these particular products [such as Diablo 4]. 'Oh, I really liked playing this, I'm going to keep coming back to that.'"

Nowadays, the innovation tends to come from smaller studios; where the first Diablo was initially heavily inspired by the likes of Rogue, we're now coming full-circle with the recent trend of roguelikes. "The roots of all of Diablo are based on Rogue and that kind of system," Brevik says, "I think that roguelikes in a lot of ways are very similar to the core and draw inspiration from Diablo, in the same way that Diablo kind of got it from Rogue. They're different in a lot of ways, but their core and their roots are very similar."

That feels especially true when it comes to games such as Vampire Survivors and Megabonk that basically distill the ARPG loop down to its most fundamental form. Nowadays, the definition of a 'roguelike' has become far more broad than its initial use, but Brevik points out that "that's kind of how the term 'action-RPG' came to be really. A little bit of [the magic of] Diablo was that nobody knew what to make of it when it first came out. It was like chocolate and peanut butter. Is it an action game, or is it an RPG?"

As someone whose job involves describing new games to people, genres certainly have their value, but I've always maintained that the science of defining them is rather mushy, especially as developers combine influences. "I think you see a mixing of genres more and more often," Brevik remarks. "It's really hard to categorize something." One great example is the Skystone-published Tyrant's Realm, which launched in January and is a blend of PS1-inspired visuals, measured Dark Souls combat, and roguelike replayability.

"I love that style of games," Brevik tells me, "at the time when we first signed it, there weren't a lot of games like that. It had a retro vibe, and I appreciated that." He says the team was "super happy" with the response to Tyrant's Realm, and that he found it a more approachable way to tackle Souls-style combat. "I'm not very good at those games - I love to play them, but I'm just not very skilled. Mixing in the roguelike elements I think really sets it apart."

To wrap things back around to the challenge of change, I turn the conversation to Diablo 2, which has just turned 25 this year. As mentioned up top, Blizzard initially made a lot of additions to its remaster, introducing shifting 'terror zones' and even all-new runewords that opened up additional build potential. Since D4's arrival, however, it's pretty much stopped this altogether, and now simply maintains it with occasional ladder resets. I ask Brevik whether he prefers this strategy of 'preserving' his creation in its original form versus making more changes to keep it feeling fresh.

"I mean, it's definitely dangerous territory to wade into, right? Because you might change, in some ways, kind of the history of the product; they don't want to get too far away from that. I think that the more you add to something, the more you change something, the further it gets away from maybe what its core is. And so it's kind of a dangerous road to go down, but I think that they struck a good balance and seemed to satisfy a lot of the players."

Ultimately, he seems grateful that Blizzard continues to treat Diablo 2 with a reverence that it's already got everything it needs to stand the test of time. "I think that they did a good job. And they've kind of said, 'That's good enough for now, we're just going to kind of move on. And I think that, you know, it felt like a very respectful decision to me, which was really nice."

Which of the Diablo games is your favorite? Tell us in the PCGamesN community Discord server, where you'll find plenty of ARPG enthusiasts to chat with.