Diablo - How it Saved the Computer RPG

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A debatable topic if there ever was one but 1Up has a piece titled How Diablo Saved the Computer RPG, looking back at market at the time, the release of Diablo and why it was successful (with some dodgy assertions). From the opening:

It's safe to say that by 1995, the computer role-playing game was dying. RPGs were losing traction to the wave of games modeled after two recently innovative titles: 1992's Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty and 1993's Doom. After the success of those two titles, the computer game industry as a whole shifted to producing more real-time strategy games and first-person shooters. The dwindling audience that enjoyed turn-based role-playing games full of mechanics, simulations, and obscure details were then being swayed by turn-based strategy games like Civilization II.

By this time, traditional first or third-person RPGs were still being released, but pretty much no one except Europeans bought them. One of the bigger successes in the genre came from a small studio in Maryland: The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall from Bethesda Softworks. Yet that was more of an anomaly -- Bethesda saw better traction from shooters like Terminator: Future Shock and its sequel SkyNET. Even the stalwart Ultima series -- Lord British's saga of isometric RPGs in a fully fleshed-out fantasy universe -- abandoned its core principles in pursuit of the action-driven market. Ultima fans generally felt betrayed when Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle -- a party-based RPG with a vast world -- was followed up with Ultima VIII: Pagan -- which featured a lone hero in a much smaller setting that bizarrely featured platforming elements (most likely in pursuit of luring action and even console gamers to the Ultima series). ​

 

The original Diablo was a strain on the early years of my marriage

What a great game, although I'm not sure that it saved RPGs. I think that was really BG that did that.

 

Sure, it was successful, but I wouldn't say it saved the RPG market. Development for Fallout was already underway by the time it was released, and that is much more of an RPG than Diablo ever was. In fact, I wouldn't even call it an RPG, it's more of a hack & slash with some RPG elements.

 

IMO the Baldur's Gate series (and similar titles) were the true anomalies. There just weren't enough good classic RPG's to begin with, while RTS/shooting/pvp games were rapidly evolving (perhaps because they're easier to break down, study, and reassemble into new titles?). I'm saying classic RPGs because as far as I know JRPG's flourished in this era.

While it might be easy to say that RPG games were waning because action games were much more "hip", titles like the Heroes of Might and Magic series would beg to differ. These games were mostly about sitting around and waiting endlessly for the computer AI to finish their turns, and they were pretty successful anyway.

 

I take issue with this, there were many amazing RPG's on the SNES back in the day, Zelda: a link to the past, Chrono Trigger, the Secret of Evermore, Terranigma, Tales of Phantasia, robotrek, Earthbound.... to name a couple, Ill think of many more given some time.

 

But they're SNES games. Edit. And almost all of them are JRPG's.

 

I'm inclined to agree with henkie here. How could Diablo have saved RPGs when Diablo itself is not really an RPG itself? Keep in mind that I'm one of the biggest fanboys of the Diablo series you'll find. I loved the original, D2, and will certainly purchase D3 if and when it eventually gets released. (I find it somewhat comical that the originally anticipated release date of D3 was in 2008.) I thought for sure we'd get it late 2010, then early 2011, and now it's looking more like 2Q 2012.

That said, I'm having a hard time coming up with any other RPGs that were popular at that time. What the hell was I playing in 1995? I was still in college. Civilization (or Civ 2) perhaps?

 

I believe Diablo was released in '96 (barely), but I see your point. My first RPG experience (at least that I can remember), was Fallout, which I played in '99 or something, I believe. In '96 I played mostly Command & Conquer and Doom (2), if I recall correctly (which may not be the case, though I'm pretty sure about C&C at least, or maybe it was Red Alert by that time).

@Shoshino: Since when is Zelda an RPG? In fact, you could extend that question to all jRPGs, because usually in those games your influence on the plot and your character's reaction to it is about as much as the Doom marine had.

 

There was already a ton of great RPGs out there when Diablo was released. Diablo took the RPG genre in another direction, but I wouldn't go sa far as to say it "saved" it. It added better graphics and a sinister background that most companies wouldn't produce. Most RPGS were games with a steriotypical, valiant hero or band of heroes. Diablo changed that a bit. Truly a great game. As a hybrd RPG Diablo impacted the RPG indutry, both others genres as well.

 

None of them really stood our for me. From my perspective ~1996 was the time of Warcraft 2, Heroes of Might and Magic, a bunch of other RTS games, action games, Diablo and jRPG's (I also consider these different from traditional RPGs).