EPT
For many years Diablo 2 and its expansion were considered the king of the action RPG genre. People say it managed to create a new niche, to revolutionize the gameplay, but for me in personal, Diablo 2 is the biggest letdown in my days as a gamer. I'm acknowledging all the achievements of the thing as far as gameplay is concerned, but I hate it at the same time, because it destroyed the universe I think Blizzard had the most room for evolution. I guess not that many people here were fans of the original Diablo, so I will care the explain why D2 did the franchise such a bad favor.
Unlike Diablo 2, the original Diablo is set in a single location and everything takes place around the town of Tristram. Having an only starting point, or lets call it a town, made Blizzard put an extra effort to create a unique mood and atmosphere. The moment you enter the game for the first time you get overwhelmed by Blizzards best up to date music theme, by Matt Uelmen:
Because you are eventually going to spend a lot of time in this town, there is a huge possibility for the theme to get annoying after a while - but it doesn't. I'm speaking on behalf of everyone that loved the original Diablo - we all loved that melody as well. It wasnt only this theme thou, the music for every dungeon was spot on, compared to that, what Blizzard did for Diablo 2 was the generic orchestra stuff, so dull, that the only theme I remember was the remix of the Tristram theme, once you get the quest to save Cane. But even if you neglect the music as a factor for creating original atmosphere, what makes every good RPG stand above all others are the NPCs. Diablo's original NPC were so full of personality and character, that it made learning information about every new quest a wonderful event. No Diablo 2 NPC is even half as awesome as Griswold and Adria is one of the greatest NPCs ever made for a RPG game. The fact that her witch hut was far away from the other houses created a believable sense of community - Tristram was a living place with a strange town folk, communicating and spreading gossips about each other. The drunk guy was always sitting away from the town square, cause no one wants him, the clever boy with the fancy artifacts (Psst, over here!) was far away in the woods, so you could make your black trades with him away from the eyes of the town folk. Overall, every single detail had the task to make you involved in the story of this town, because the most important characteristic of the original Diablo's plot was, that it represented the conflict and the dramatic events of this single town. To put the whole plot in a sentence, a dark power is corrupting the Tristram town for years, people are afraid to go into the cathedral, because of the evil lurking within. Tristram's universe was a dark one, very much like the middle age in western Europe, and everything in Diablo's lore was centered about this dark gothic atmosphere. The plot was running rather slowly and very smoothly - as if the player was unveiling a mystery.
The other major thing that set the stone for the amazing Diablo universe were the character classes. You had a male warrior, a male sorcerer and a female rogue - thats it. They all shared the same spells and each of them had an only unique skill which was, lets be honest - rather pointless. But what made this set of characters so great was that they were all again believable and correct to the lore of the universe. None of them had super natural force by default - like summoning undead, having a holy aura or be a shapeshifter.
This guy
![[image loading]](http://www.diablo-ironman.com/public/warrior.gif)
became this...
![[image loading]](http://www.diablowiki.com/images/c/c3/Paladin.gif)
Lets not forget that the story of Diablo 2 is set right after the events of the original Diablo, which makes this huge evolution of the regular character and habitant of diablo's universe completely illogical. If you have just played the original Diablo and jump right on the character creation of Diablo 2, the most natural reaction you would have will be "Amazon ?! Really" but we will get to that later. Overall, one of the most disappointing transformations in Diablo's universe was the change in the arcane magic's appeal - from something considered in the original diablo as a witchcraft, that you could learn only from ancient scrolls and books, it became the most common thing you get to learn naturally on level 6.
Another thing that made me dislike Diablo 2 were the artifacts. The benefit of the revised prefix/suffix system meant there is now a great variety of artifacts, the introduction of the rare and set items did the gameplay only good as well. But my disappointment were first of all the unique artifacts. Those in Diablo 1 were a really rare thing, but that doesn't mean they were all super awesome and useful. What all unique artifacts in diablo 1 had, was a personality
![[image loading]](http://sites.google.com/site/physicsmaester/d1-5.jpg)
The Wizardspike is one of the few unique artifacts in Diablo 1, that wasn't lowering any of your attributes. Overall you had to make a trade-off when you wanted to use an unique item, but even if you didn't, the satisfaction of finding one of these was really great, because they all looked so cool. Speaking of which, another step backwards for me was the design of the items -
This...
![[image loading]](http://www.beepworld.de/memberdateien/members6/demon-stalker/goetterdaemmerung.gif)
... became this
![[image loading]](http://www.concept13.com/flq/Diablo2/items/images/casques/greathelm.gif)
The cartoony style of the original Diablo's items was exciting, cool and correct to the lore. The direction the artists took for Diablo 2 was rather disappointing - most of the items looked realistic as a picture and dull...
![[image loading]](http://www.beepworld.de/memberdateien/members6/demon-stalker/test.gif)
![[image loading]](http://www.concept13.com/flq/Diablo2/items/images/armures/platemail.gif)
Naj's Plate in Diablo and Diablo 2...
Overall thou, the final nail in the coffin of Diablo's universe was the approach to the story. As I said earlier, the plot in the original Diablo was really locally based, but in the sequel, it was global. The conflicts in the second game involved the whole world, which meant the universe should be expand. Which is all good, if Blizzard managed to pull out the same Tristram trick with every new act and location. If every location felt like a living entity with unique character and atmosphere, Diablo 2 would've been in a great relationship to the original game, but what Blizzard did instead is trying to focus on diversity - we had a desert, a jungle, a mountain and a"hellish" town. All very different but with no personality whatsoever. In their effort to make the conflict in the game look global, Blizzard completely distorted the timezone and the overall atmosphere of the game. From a mystery and dark age game, Diablo 2 became a melee of your character, killing a horde of creatures, typical for the environment of the different acts. All in all, its obvious to me that Blizzard are first coming with ideas about the gameplay, and then try to bend the lore around it, to justify the transformation. Whats terrible about this, is that the player, who appreciated the game for its depth and unique atmosphere, ends up with a click-click-click hack'n'slash bullshit, where characters from completely different backgrounds and mythology unite against the great evil, that will apparently destroy the world for whatever reason.
Diablo 2 is not only incorrect to the atmosphere, the timezone and the lore of the original game. It completely lives behind all its origins, to become what it is. This would've been totally fine if Blizzard decided to locate the game in an entirely new universe and leave the lore of the original Diablo as it is, but instead they've ruined it all, just to build their typical generic Hollywood shit above it. Diablo 2 is maybe indeed more appealing to the general public which actually makes me very concerned about Diablo 3 and the future of the franchise.
Actually I'm not concerned at all, its pretty much hopeless. Rainbow hack'n'slash for the win...
