Diablo 1 Review: The Original Diablo Game

cf. History of 1990s Computer Games.

Diablo 1 Review

Welcome to my cRPG blog on Diablo 1, a hack n slash cRPG developed by Blizzard North and released in 1996.

Along with Fallout 1 and Baldur's Gate 1, Diablo 1 sparked a Renaissance in cRPG History. Most notably, Diablo 1 brought a degree of production value, artistry and responsive, engaging gameplay to the cRPG genre.

Much like Doom 1 did with FPS in 1993. Indeed, Diablo and Doom have a lot in common.

Diablo 1 helped popularize the genre, and its cRPG Design has been incalculably influential right up to the present day, while still remaining the best game of its kind.

Hereafter, except in section headings, Diablo 1 will be referred to simply as Diablo. Note also that for viewability purposes I have scaled the size of my screencaps by 200%.

Diablo 1 Setting & Scope

Diablo is set in a dark and gritty medieval fantasy world that, while generic and limited in representation, is well-designed and consistent in both theme and mood.

The cRPG dungeon crawl is staged beneath the Horadrim cathedral located in the town of Tristram (above-right pic). There are five main biomes to explore:

• Town
• Cathedral
• Catacombs
• Caves
• Hell

The player progressively makes their way downwards to Hell -- carving a path through hundreds of demons and undead en route -- in order to confront the Dark Lord of Terror, Diablo himself.

Diablo 1 Gameplay

Diablo's gameplay consists of hack n slash combat, exploration, treasure-hunting and minimal NPC interaction. Most NPCs just give the player lore dumps, but some give quests as well. Overall, the gameplay boils down to slay, loot and equip or sell, interspersed with Dungeons & Dragons-style leveling up and stat-allocation. This was not an original gameplay concept even in 1996, but Diablo represents an admirable refinement and shrewd streamlining of it.

The game is presented in isometric perspective at a viewport resolution of 640x480. The playing field (where the action takes place) extends the full width of the viewport but 128 pixels of its height is allocated to a fixed UI panel located at the bottom. This UI panel or Interface Bar is important since it shows us how much health and mana reserves we have (red and blue orbs), shows the potions we have in our belt slots, gives us info on the enemy and allows us to call up other UI modes as well.

The player controls a single combatant (Warrior, Rogue or Sorcerer class) on the playing field in precise point-and-click manner. Click to move, click on an enemy to attack etc. This simple gameplay starts off as a yawn-inducing plod but quickly becomes more engaging and frenzied as the player progresses.

Diablo gameplay places great emphasis on positioning: the difference between being mobbed and finding a doorway chokepoint is an entire hitpoint pool. That is, it is the difference between life and death.

Diablo employs an auto-scrolling viewport that is anchored to the avatar position as opposed to anchorless viewport scrolling with mouse-look. This is because Diablo is just an arcade game rather than a proper tactics cRPG.

The tactics in Diablo are centered around movement, positioning and executing attacks with good timing. Kiting is commonly employed. In addition, avenue of approach, limiting incoming attacks, buffing and healing come into play, and spellcaster builds (culminating in Diablo 1 Sorcerer Build) need to learn their repertoire through experimentation.

Diablo 1 Framerate

Note, however, that arcade games and the best Amiga games (which predate Diablo by several years) featured smooth screen-scrolling at 50 frames per second whereas the original Diablo is capped at a wretched 20 FPS; that is, at less than half the framerate of some games that came out in the 1980s.

In the interests of even-handedness, there are a few possible reasons for the framerate cap that come to mind:

• Multi-player considerations and limited bandwidth
• Console port considerations (though the game was not ported to PSX until 1998 -- and by a separate dev)
• Too many on-screen sprites (not just the hordes of monsters but also the tremendous amount of spell effects. Sometimes, even shmup framerates are pre-capped in order to accommodate increased sprites on limited hardware)
• Animation system convenience (?)

It seems to me that the coders must have had some serious technical hurdles to overcome, since the walkspeed is extremely slow as well (and thus the scrollspeed).

Also, while the Infinity Engine was capable of running Baldur's Gate at 60 FPS (with six characters + dozens of summons), we must remember that it came out almost exactly two years subsequent to Diablo. In 1996 the API era hadn't fully kicked off, but Diablo paved the way and suggested the potential.

Diablo 1 System Requirements

Diablo was playable on IBM Compatible PCs installed with Windows 95/NT 4.0 and DirectX 3.0, powered by Pentium 60 or Cyrix 6x86 processors and 8 megabytes of RAM (16 for multiplayer).

Whereas, two years later, Baldur's Gate required DirectX 5.0 and Pentium 120s with 16 megabytes of RAM and 2 megabytes of vRAM.

Diablo 1 Turn-based

If Diablo employed turn-based combat as originally envisioned, and also allowed us to control the three characters simultaneously with authentic turn-based tactics and control (click to select character + marquee selection), I can't help but think it could have been untouchably great. What we got, though, was a fully realtime arcade game whose blatantly obvious technical limitations won't satisfy arcade aficionados (or Amiga gamers) because they have an acute eye for framerates and are accustomed to smooth, hardware scrolling.

Please note that Amigans and Arcadians such as myself cannot help but mention scrolling routines and framerates when appraising DOS and Windows PC games, even though PC hardware for the most part lacked custom chipsets with which to deliver such. Most of us developed a fine eye for 2D framerates and fidelity in our youth, and thus compromises are still immediately apparent to us decades later.

Outside of extremely expensive graphics workstations and coin-op chipsets, the Amiga was the only tech that could have displayed Diablo 1-esque visuals in 1985; that is, 10 years before Diablo 1 came out. [1]

Diablo 1 Combat Encounter Design

cRPG encounter design in Diablo can seem brutal due to RNG and mob numbers. I'm talking bullet-hell akin to shoot 'em ups. What chance does a conventional warrior have against spit-spam from 20 demonic terrors? None, unless they can cast spells like Fire Wall.

Examples of Diablo 1 Bullet Hell

Diablo 1 RNG

Diablo employs a roughly-hewn random number generator, and this is where the genius of the game's design primarily lies. By virtue of the RNG, no two games are alike in Diablo -- even if we play the same class over and over again.

Almighty RNG dictates the likes of:

• Dungeon layouts, including placeables such as lootable receptacles and shrines
• Enemy spawns (and the same enemy can fight differently from game to game)
• Quest seeds (some of which are mutually-exclusive)
• Itemization (loot drops, loot from receptacles)

Due to the RNG, it can become impossible to progress depending on what is rolled. In that case, players can begin new games but with the same character along with all its items and gold (XP + wealth).

One full run of Diablo takes characters to about 25th level, but a second full run adds only two more levels.

The game is a grind, but a pretty fun grind up to a point.

Diablo 1 Shrines

Random shrines and book itemization are interesting inclusions in that shrines can give bonuses to stats and books give new spells and add to spell level. Discovering shrines and books is far superior to Diablo 2's soulless skilltree. Basically, shrines and books can be thought of as breakpoints or even as "mini-levelups".

Diablo 1 User Interface

Up to two user interface panels can be called up over the playing field, with each panel blocking out half of the playing field. Calling up panels does not pause the game. Only the P key or Esc key pauses the game, and no commands can be given while in pause mode. That said, the P key can be used to take a break from the action, which could be beneficial.

Most notably, Diablo's tactile UI features mouse-over for extra info (left screencap) and the ability to move icons around as per operating systems (right screencap). Note how the icons can be moved over the playing field, where they can be dropped onto the ground. Such features were quite fancy for the time.

Note also how the icons are of different sizes. Arms and armor take up the most inventory space whereas rings and amulets take up the least. This is king-tier inventory design that many cRPGs lack, right up to the current gen.

On the other hand, buying from and selling to merchants is not as pleasant because the items are merely listed, and I abhor scrolling through lists of items -- especially when most of the items are going to be disappointments at best, and when the scrollbar is clunky because there is no mouse-wheeling feature.

Diablo 1 Stash

Since there is no stash either, items can be dumped on the ground in town where they are preserved even after saving and reloading. This is useful if our inventory is full but we think the items may be of use to us later. (They rarely are, and so this just amounts to clumsy hoarding and an embarassment of useless, burdensome garbage littering the town).

Of course, having access to a persistent stash shareable between characters would just make the game too easy in that first level twinks would be able to wield and wear end-game gear.

Diablo 1 Graphics

Diablo runs at a resolution of 640x480 in 8 bit color depth or 256 colors. Diablo graphics are dark and moody, and bright colors are kept to a minimum. There are no blue skies, no sunshine and no lush green forests with blooming flowers and butterflies flitting about. Instead, there is stonework, dirt and lava. The town of Tristram is moonlit, with objects casting long shadows.

Spritework and animations are not impressive, even for the time. However, they are better than subsequent games such as Baldur's Gate, whose sprite design was actually inspired by Diablo 1.

The visuals are suitably grim:

Diablo 1 Light Sourced Graphics

The following two images clearly show how the visibility of background tiles are impacted by spell effects, aka dynamic lighting. In this case, the area gets lit up by Fire Wall.

Nice.

Diablo 1 Music & Sound

Music and VOs are masterpieces. The music in Tristram is unforgettable, and the heavy rock tracks that play in the dungeons are underrated.

The dialogue is fully voiced and the voice acting is some of the best in cRPG history.

Thus, I have no criticisms in this department.

• Packed into *.wavs, there are six main tracks: intro, town and level a to d
• Speech and other sound effects are stored in 250mb of *.wavs, constituting a full half of all game assets

Diablo 1 Itemization

The employment of cRPG itemization is overly stingy in Diablo. In single-player mode, players should not be at the mercy of the same RNG as in the multi-player game. 

Let's give an example of the plight of the heavily item-dependent warrior class. There is a 50% chance of the Warlord of Blood quest triggering on the 13th level. If it triggers, the player gains access to four weapon racks and two armor racks that drop magical weapons and armor with a 100% chance. But that equipment, while always magical in nature, can spawn as low-tier and with low-tier mods. Thus:

• Warriors may not get the quest in the first place and
• The chances of yielding top-tier equipment with top-tier mods are slim even if they do get the quest

I'm sorry, but that is just too stingy when we consider the rolls within rolls within rolls. Spell out: We're not just looking for a certain item type, but also a certain mod on the item and a decent roll on that mod. And usually not just one mod, but two.

In addition, Steelskull the Hunter and Sir Gorash can drop garbage towards the end of the game. It doesn't make sense for a unique Steel Lord and a unique Blood Knight to drop anything less than top-tier weapons and mods. I mean, there is still a ton of randomness involved in that suggested range (top-tier draw), but at least the player has a chance of having a reason to fist-pump.

A warrior's chance of finding a Godly Plate of the Whale? Snowball's in hell. But Diablo 1 Sorcerer Build can farm an Arch-Angel's Staff of the Apocalypse through Adria without too much pain and suffering.

To expand, Wirt offers only one magical item per area reload (which can be ring, weapon, shield or armor) [2] whereas Adria offers up to six magical staffs per area reload, and books for spell-learning. 

Griswold offers the same item types as Wirt (premium items), but they are not as high in level (thus, lacking the higher level mods). And his stock only updates when the player levels up or buys a premium item from him (which are expensive). Not only that, but Grizzy's stock is static once set at that level: when we buy something, all replacements are predetermined. Quitting out of the game and reloading doesn't change the RNG for replacements like it does with Wirt.

For this and several other reasons, it is much harder to play warriors than sorcerers. Indeed, rogues are easier to play than warriors, too.

It is possible to reach Hell without having found good spells and arms and armor. Indeed, it is likely.

The teleport spell was barely ever found back in the day since most players didn't know that it's best farmed through Adria once the 12th dungeon has been reached. And teleport is what facilitates farming loot, which is mandatory for all builds.

Thus, short of dumb luck and / or the employment of exploits, reaching and beating Diablo usually requires SEVERAL run-throughs, and build optimization demand hundreds or even thousands of repetitive runs.

Diablo 1 Conclusion

What I like about Diablo is that it knows what it is and what experience it is trying to deliver. Above all its gameplay is focused, refined and pick-up-and-play, but its outward appearance of simplicity veils an inner complexity, nuance and design genius that is revealed to players through replays, meaning we can't begin to appreciate or understand the depth of the game by playing once only.

cf. 

• Diablo 2 Review
• Diablo 1 Sorcerer

Amiga Diablo [1]

Outside of extremely expensive graphics workstations and coin-op chipsets, the Amiga was the only tech that could have displayed Diablo 1-esque visuals in 1985; that is, 10 years before Diablo 1 came out.

In 1985 your average computer user was staring at ASCII on monochrome monitors. Bow down to the original Alienware.

The Amiga is a rare example of yester-year tech-excess. As it pertains to games, it took several years for the average designer, coder and artist to harness its power (though king-tier talent harnessed its power much earlier).

Remember that (as Silicon & Synapse) Blizzard had been Amiga coders before Diablo 1. They knew the Amiga. But by the time Diablo 1 was in the pipeline the Amiga had lost the race to IBM PCs.

But let's say someone -- anyone --- had the idea for Diablo 1 a few years earlier... Could they really have made a Diablo-esque game for the Amiga as early as the late-80s?

Let's think about that. 7 MHz micro with 1 MB RAM and no HDD.

BUT: Hardware scrolling and hardware sprites. Enough colors. Good soundchip.

We need to halve the viewport resolution and reduce the color palette. That won't matter if the game has smooth scrolling.

Smoothly-scrolling 320x240 viewports are infinitely superior to 640x480 choppily-scrolling viewports.

Non-core cinematic presentation goes (FMVs). No loss there because cinematic cutscenes have nothing at all to do with gameplay. Full voice-acting goes as well. Not much loss there either since the Amiga can still sample a few lines to bring the characters to life. "Hello, my friend. Stay a while and listen" is all you need for Cain.

The only barriers to Amiga entry are FMVs and VOs, which have nothing at all to do with gameplay -- they are mere cinematization. Take them away and Diablo 1's data storage demands become manageable.

What remains is game logic and essential assets that can be crammed into 3-6 diskettes.

Yep, the Amiga could have hosted a Diablo-esque game a decade before Diablo came out.

[2]

Wirt's offerings lean heavily toward the useless "ages" aka indestructible property, though he is capable of offering the best items in the game, with mods up to an including Emerald (the most expensive mod, but not the most useful).

[*]

Drops sometimes fall into patterns. For example, in one run of level 13, I found three rings all of which gave +VIT: Ring of Vigor x2 (+18) and Ring of Life (+28).

[*] Version reviewed: 1.09.

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