David Brevik is believed to be Diablo’s father. Now the developer spoke about a decision that changed the action RPG Diablo forever.
David Brevik is a game developer and former CEO of Blizzard North. In the 90’s and early 2000’s, Brevik worked on Diablo 1 and 2 and has since been considered the father of Diablo. In 2003, Brevik left the developer studio and in 2021 said Blizzard was dead to him.
In an interview on the Ars Technica YouTube channel, he spoke about the development of Diablo and revealed how one decision changed the game forever and made it what we know it today (via YouTube)
What decision is it? Brevik says in the interview that Diablo was originally developed as a “turn-based RPG” in which movements or attacks would have been individual turns. Similar to the X-COM series of games or the new Wartales on Steam.
At one point in development, the proposal came up to make Diablo a “real-time game” and to delete the turn-based gameplay.
But Brevik didn’t like the idea. I was very afraid of losing what I thought was the essence of the game, he explains.
However, since the question of a real-time Diablo kept coming up, Brevik presented the proposal to his development team of around 15 at the time – and according to Brevik, they responded with: I think that could be really cool.
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A vote decided Diablo’s fate
What happened next? Brevik started a vote with the entire development team in the Blizzard North kitchen to decide on the transition to real-time combat. The result should have been clear. Brevik lost.
While Brevik himself was still unconvinced by the idea, he says, the decision has been made and Diablo should feature real-time combat. Nevertheless, he was afraid that the changeover would take far too long and that one would have to return to turn-based fights later.
We can give it a try. I think that’s stupid. I think it’s a waste of a month to do this. We made this game cheap. we will go back We’ll try to get more money at the same time. Yeah we’re going to take longer to develop the game now because it’s going to be this real-time thing. So not only do we need an additional milestone payment, but we won’t be able to show or talk about anything for a month because it just takes so long to do that.
But then it turned out very differently.
Months of work or just an afternoon?
Bevik converts Diablo in one afternoon: Despite his doubts, Brevik decided on a Friday that he would start the conversion from Diablo to a real-time system himself and sent his employees home.
Then Brevik started work and was done in just a few hours – not in a month or more, as he had expected: I started work on Friday afternoon and it was finished by Friday evening.
Then he hit a skeleton with a club for the first time and oh my god, that’s fantastic thought. At that point, Brevik realized that Diablo was much better this way.
When all employees were back in the studio the following Monday, the work was done, everything was running and it was clear to everyone that this was the right way. After that, you never looked back.
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