Diablo (video game)

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Diablo
Developer(s)	Blizzard North
Publisher(s)	Windows, Mac NA Blizzard Entertainment EU Ubisoft PlayStation NA / EU Electronic Arts JP Electronic Arts Victor
Designer(s)	Erich Schaefer David Brevik Max Schaefer, Eric Sexton, Kenneth Williams (game developer)
Composer(s)	Matt Uelmen
Series	Diablo
Version	1.09
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, PlayStation
Release date(s)	PC NA January 2, 1997 [citation needed] PAL 1997 Mac NA May 1998 JP April 28, 1998 PlayStation NA March 1998 PAL April 1998 JP July 9, 1998
Genre(s)	Action role-playing game, dungeon crawl, hack and slash
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ELSPA: 15+ ESRB: M (Mature) OFLC: MA15+ OFLC: R16+ PEGI: 16+
Media	CD-ROM
System requirements Windows Windows 95 or better, 60 MHz Pentium or better, 8 MB RAM (16 MB for multiplayer), SVGA-compatible graphics card, 2X CD-ROM drive Mac OS Power Macintosh or compatible, 8 MB RAM with virtual memory, System 7.5 or higher, 2X CD-ROM drive

Diablo is a dark fantasy-themed action role-playing game developed by Blizzard North and released by Blizzard Entertainment on January 2, 1997.

Set in the fictional Kingdom of Khanduras, located in the world of Sanctuary, Diablo has the player take control of a lone hero battling to rid the world of Diablo, the Lord of Terror. Beneath the town of Tristram, the player journeys through sixteen dungeon levels, ultimately entering Hell itself in order to face Diablo.

An expansion pack, entitled Diablo: Hellfire, was released in 1997, although it was not created by Blizzard Entertainment. This was followed by a sequel, Diablo II, in 2000, and a third game, Diablo III, was announced on June 28, 2008, at Blizzard's World Wide Invitational in Paris, France.^[1] A playstation version of the first game was also released.

[edit] Gameplay

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Diablo is one of the best-known examples of the action-RPG subgenre. Although players level up, choose character classes, and manage a variety of spells and equipment as in a typical RPG, all actions are done in real time, as in an action game. Diablo in some ways resembles roguelike games, though major differences include the commercial quality of the game's graphics, the fact that it plays in real time rather than as turn-based, that games can be restored after the player dies where most roguelikes feature permadeath, and Diablo's relatively short learning curve. Diablo was influenced by Moria and Angband.^[2] The majority of commands in Diablo, such as moving and attacking, are executed by mouse clicks; however, learned spells can be assigned hot keys.

Gameplay is structured around a monster-filled dungeon located near the town of Tristram. In town, players may rest, buy items, and repair equipment. There are sixteen levels of the dungeon, divided into four areas. Each area has a different appearance, architecture, light level, monster mix, and musical soundtrack. The first level of each of these areas has an additional exit leading back up to the town of Tristram. In single player, these entrances are blocked until the character opens them from the dungeon side, and the entrance is available for two-way travel from then on. In multiplayer, the entrances to town all start in their "open" position, but with a level requirement to access them from town.

Diablo is highly re-playable due to its randomly generated level layouts, monsters, and items. In addition, in single-player mode there are only three core quests as the rest of them are drawn from several pools, making it impossible to complete every quest in one playthrough of the game. Either way, only the last two quests are compulsory. Given this arrangement, no two playthroughs of the game are ever exactly alike.

[edit] Characters

The three character classes of Diablo are the warrior, rogue, and sorcerer. Each character, following typical role-playing conventions, has his or her own particular traits. The warrior possesses physical strength, the rogue has high dexterity, and the sorcerer is oriented towards magic.

• Warrior: The warrior is a powerful melee fighter, master of weapons of war and capable of enduring more damage than the other classes. They range from barbarians of the northern highlands to noble paladins. The voiceover for this character, as well as for Pepin the Healer and narrator, is performed by Paul Eiding.
• Rogue: The rogues are the best archers in the world of Sanctuary. They can have a higher level of magic than warriors, although not nearly as high as sorcerers. The rogues belong to a group called the Sisterhood of the Sightless Eye. The voiceover for this character, along with Gillian the bar maid, is performed by Glynnis Talken Campbell.
• Sorcerer: A powerful master of the arcane arts, the sorcerer is able to achieve the greatest heights of magic, so that he doesn't have need of physical weapons. Sorcerers belong to the Vizjerei mage clan, and have come to Tristram seeking long-lost tomes of magic knowledge under the cathedral. The voiceover for this character, along with Cain the elder, is performed by Michael Gough.

Unlike other games that strictly differentiate between classes, a character's abilities are not unique; a warrior can use the same spells as a sorcerer, while a sorcerer can use weapons such as axes. All three classes require the same amount of experience to level up, and there are no class-based requirements for equipping items or using spells. However, different classes have different starting attributes and different maximum possible levels for their attributes, and gain different amounts of life and mana per level.

A warrior engages in combat with a ghoul enemy. A "Level Up" button indicates the character has attribute points available to distribute. The icon at the lower right indicates that the character's head protection is damaged and in danger of breaking.

Four numerical character attributes (Strength, Magic, Dexterity and Vitality) in Diablo affect the character's combat statistics, which in turn determine how powerful the character is.

With each level up, the player may distribute points among the four base attributes to permanently increase them. They may also be modified by elixirs and magical shrines encountered in the game. Various magical items increase character attributes while these items are being used. Certain items may have minimum attribute requirements before they can be equipped or used.

Characters can learn spells from tomes found in the game, and add them to their spellbooks. Spells can later be cast repeatedly, if the character has enough mana to do it. Spells can also be improved by learning higher levels of the same spell. Different spells, and different levels of the same spell, require varying amounts of mana to be cast. Each class also has a unique skill: Warriors can repair items (although not as well as the village blacksmith, Griswold), Rogues can disarm traps, and Sorcerers can recharge magical staves that have a certain amount of spell charges on them.

[edit] Monsters and items

Each of the sixteen levels in Diablo contains monsters that are tougher and stronger than ones from the level before it. When the player kills a monster, it may randomly drop an item or gold. Upon killing more enemies of the same type, the player may find out more details about the monsters, such as hit points and resistances or immunities. Enemies are divided in three groups: Animals, Demons, and Undead. The group determines which weapons the enemy takes more or less damage from.

Items are sold by the vendors, randomly dropped by slain monsters, and can be discovered within the labyrinth inside of chests or barrels or sometimes lying on the floor. There are several types of items. Gold is the currency used to buy goods and services from the vendors. Consumables are items that are destroyed when used, and include life and mana potions, elixirs to increase base attributes, scrolls to cast spells and spellbooks to learn spells permanently. The player has eight slots representing a belt which can contain only consumables (except spellbooks). These slots are numbered, and pressing the corresponding hotkey will use the associated consumable. A special kind of items are quest items, which come in many varieties. Some of them activate a quest when picked up or found, while others must be carried along or used to interact with the environment, and yet others are given as special rewards for completing quests.

Any character can use any piece of equipment so long as they meet its statistical requirements (Strength, Dexterity, and Magic). Weapons and protective gear have durability values that decrease with use, but can be restored through several means. If durability reaches zero, the item is destroyed. Staves are two-handed weapons used primarily for the spell charges they contain, which can be recharged. Each charge allows one casting of the spell contained within the staff.

Diablo helped popularize a system used in other RPGs such as the Might and Magic series, to handle the many combinations of random items imbued with random magical properties. Magical items in Diablo have an idiosyncratic naming system; a particular enchantment will be either a suffix or prefix. For example, the "Godly" prefix, appearing only on armor, adds greatly to armor class. An item with this ability would appear as "Godly (itemname)". Magical items can have both a prefix and a suffix; however, certain systemic limitations within the game mechanism prevent some prefixes and suffixes from appearing together on the same item. Different equipment types draw from different pools of affixes; some affixes are never available on certain types of equipment.

Equippable items can have various modifiers, and break down into three major classes: normal items (items that have no special attributes and are most abundant), magic items (that can have up to one prefix and one suffix) and unique items (very rare and powerful, and may have up to six magic bonuses). Magic and unique items must be identified before their modifications become known.

[edit] Multiplayer

The game supports several types of multiplayer connections. It can be played over a local area network using the IPX protocol, a telephone line with the use of a modem, or by means of a serial cable in a direct connection. One can also play Diablo over the Internet via Battle.net.

The game lacks the stronger anti-cheating methods of Blizzard's later games and as a result, many characters online have been altered in various ways by common third-party programs known as "trainers".^[3] It is difficult to play a fair online game of Diablo in public games, as hacks and duplicated items are common. The use of trainers (which modify memory locations while the game is running in order to cheat) is fairly common and character editors are often used to give incredible statistics to even newly made characters. Additionally, there are a number of glitches which allow exploits such as infinitely duplicating items.

[edit] Synopsis

[edit] Plot

The story of Diablo is based on the premise of a war between Heaven and Hell. The town of Tristram is brought into this conflict due to the reawakening of the soul of the Lord of Terror. The player arrives at the town after an attack by demons, and the player must save the town and, in effect, the world, by ridding it of the Lord of Terror. As the player delves into the underworld, knowledge about Diablo and some of the history behind the war between Heaven and Hell is revealed. The player also learns that the hero is there to avenge his family who were killed by Diablo.

Diablo, the Lord of Terror, is one of the Three Prime Evils of Hell, the most powerful demons. Before the events of the game in 964, Azmodan and Belial with many other demons rise to form the rebellion which quickly banishes the Prime Evils into the world which is known as the Dark Exile, which was planned by Izual, who was Archangel Tyreal's trusted general. Tyrael gathers together mortal heroes to create the Horadrim. He bestows the Soulstones upon them and tasks them with tracking down and imprisoning the Prime Evils. Mephisto is captured near the jungles of Kehjistan and imprisoned under a Zakarum temple in what will eventually become Kurast. Baal is tracked to the desert near Lut Gholein. Tal Rasha, the leader of the Horadrim, sacrifices himself to capture Baal in a damaged Soulstone. Diablo is finally captured by a group of Horadrim monks led by Jered Cain. The monks bury Diablo's Soulstone near the river Talsande in Khanduras, and a Horadric monastery with a network of catacombs is built over the burial spot. Diablo's stone was buried in caverns beneath the town of Tristram, and after centuries, weakened. The eastern lord Leoric comes to Tristram, declares himself its king, and converts the old, long-unused Horadric monastery to a Zakarum cathedral. His advisor, Archbishop Lazarus, secretly releases Diablo from imprisonment. King Leoric descends into madness as he valiantly struggles to resist Diablo's possession. Increasingly deranged, King Leoric begins imprisoning all who question his authority and executing them as traitors. He declares war on the kingdom of Westmarch. Under Diablo's influence, Archbishop Lazarus kidnaps King Leoric's only son, Prince Albrecht. The terrified child is possessed by Diablo.

Lachdanan, captain of King Leoric's army, returns from the disastrous war with Westmarch and is forced to kill Leoric. The fallen monarch curses Lachdanan and his followers with his dying breath. Not long afterward, Lachdanan and the king's guards are attacked by Leoric, resurrected as the Skeleton King, as they attempt to bury him. Under the premise of finding the missing prince, Lazarus led groups of townsfolk into a trap in the labyrinth, where the innocents were killed by demons and slain by a demon called the Butcher.

The game begins shortly after, when the player's character arrives. The player has to fight through sixteen levels to face Diablo, encountering various monsters and quests along the way. The labyrinth descends from a simple dungeon to catacombs to the dark caves and finally the fiery pits of Hell. The player's character fights demons along the way, killing Archbishop Lazarus, the Skeleton King and eventually fighting Diablo. At the end of the game, the player's character kills Diablo's mortal form, leaving Diablo trapped in a soulstone. The hero then pierces himself with the soulstone, attempting to contain the Lord of Terror. Ironically, it is revealed that this is what Diablo had planned, as the hero would be a better host than the prince. Diablo II continues the story, with Diablo having possessed the hero who killed him.

[edit] Versions and expansion pack

Diablo was released by Blizzard on January 2, 1997, with an official announcement on the release by Blizzard Entertainment on January 3, 1997. An oft stated release date of November 30, 1996 is incorrect as Diablo only went gold and into full production on December 27, 1996.^{[citation needed]}

Diablo normally requires the original CD to play, however also included on the disk is a shareware version of the software that could be played without the CD called "Diablo Spawn". This version of the game could be used to join multiplayer games hosted by someone with the "Full" install, but was not playable in single-player mode.

In 1998, a PlayStation version of Diablo was published by Electronic Arts. The game lacked online play, but featured a two-player cooperative mode. It also featured an option to learn the story through a narrator without having to find the books in the game. This version was infamous because of its need for 10 blocks free on a PlayStation memory card;^{[citation needed]} the standard size of memory cards for the platform was 15 blocks.

The only official expansion pack made for Diablo was Diablo: Hellfire in 1997. The expansion was produced by Sierra Entertainment rather than an in-house Blizzard North development team. The multiplayer feature of the expansion pack was disabled with version 1.01. The added content included two additional dungeon segments located within a new side storyline, several new unique items and magical item properties, new spells, and a fourth class, the Monk. There were also two possibly unfinished "test" classes (the Bard and Barbarian) and two quests which could be accessed only through a configuration file modification.

[edit] Re-releases

The original game was later re-released alongside Hellfire in a 1998 bundle, called Diablo + Hellfire. 1998's Blizzard's Game of the Year Collection contained copies of Diablo, StarCraft and WarCraft II. The Blizzard Anthology (2000) contained Diablo, StarCraft, StarCraft: Brood War and WarCraft II: Battle.net Edition. The Diablo Gift Pack (2000) contained Diablo and Diablo II, but no expansions. The Diablo: Battle Chest (2001) contained Diablo, Diablo II and Diablo II's expansion, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction.^[4]

[edit] Reception and influence

[edit] Reception

The large majority of reviews Diablo received were very positive. It received an average rating of 94 on Metacritic,^[5] with many awarding the game near-perfect or perfect scores on their respective grading systems. Most praised the game's addictive gameplay, immense replayability, dark atmosphere, superior graphics, moody musical score, and its great variety of possible magic items, enemies, levels, and quests. This last aspect was praised by GameSpot editor Trent Ward in his review of Diablo: "Similarly, although a set number of monsters is included, only a few will be seen during each full game. This means that players going back for their second or third shot at the game will very likely fight opponents they haven't seen before. Talk about replay value."^[6] Computer Games Magazine's Cindy Yans said that "weapons, armor and items are so numerous that you're always acquiring something new to try…not to mention the game’s multiplayer universe"; she went on to say that "for anyone who enjoys a good multiplayer dungeon crawl, Diablo can’t be beat".^[7] Reviewers commonly cited this online multiplayer aspect as one of the strongest points of the game, with it being described as greatly extending its replay value. The most common complaint about the game was the length of its single-player aspect, which many felt was too short. Cindy Yans finished her review, "Despite the rather pale storyline, [...] watered-down quests and a fair amount of necessary repetition, Diablo is a must for anyone interested in 'just plain fun.'"^[7]

[edit] Awards

Diablo was awarded GameSpot's Game of the Year Award for 1996.

[edit] Sales

As of August 29, 2001, Diablo has sold 2.5 million copies worldwide.^[8]

[edit] Influence

Diablo has been credited with creating a sub-genre of point-and-click action RPGs.^{[citation needed]} Since 1999 many games have used the concepts introduced in Diablo and some have imitated the game. Games using the same gameplay combat systems as Diablo are often referred to as "Diablo clones".^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official website
• Diablo at the Open Directory Project
• Diablo Wikia Wiki