presenters at blizzard were very specific in not saying that we are getting a diablo 4

We had these fights with them all the time when we were working on Diablo 1 and 2. I'm always a little that Blizzard tries to keep things more mass market family friendly. How did you feel about Diablo 3's aesthetic, personally? Was it Hell by way of Disney?ĮS: Yeah, I was the art director for Diablo and Diablo 2, and I did not like the new direction on Diablo 3. It feels like a direct response to the criticism that Diablo 3 wasn't dark enough. It's going to be gruesome, blood flying and guts spilling. It's not gratuitous, it's not doing it just for the sake of being graphic. You guys seem to be feeling the same way? It was gory, it was dark, it was profane. That was the thing that really stood out to me watching that trailer. And I hope that they go through with that and don't hold back because I think the tendency of Blizzard lately, especially with Diablo stuff, is to try to turn it to PG instead of an R-rated thing and they really should be pushing the other way. MS: Apart from the structure, it was just nice to see a little bit of a darker tone, a little bit more graphic, a little bit more shocking and grim.

But it's still early and who knows what's exactly going to happen and what decisions they'll make. It seems like they're kind of going in that direction. A Diablo Marvel Heroes seems like a natural fit to me. That's what I ended up making with Marvel Heroes. I think that the direction that they're taking was kind of the direction we wanted to take with Diablo 3 when we'd started designing it, which was more of a very social kind of experience, a kind of a hybrid between ARPG and an MMO. I think that in a lot of ways it's very similar to a game that I would design.

I stream with my wife often-and so everybody's been asking me, oh, what's your Diablo 4 opinion? When they announced it that night, we didn't stream because I was like, I gotta take a day to at least process this. Erich then left the company in 2014 to start Double Damage Games, which released Rebel Galaxy and its sequel, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw.ĭavid Brevik: For me it was a little bit strange. When that company collapsed, Erich and his brother started Runic Games and created Torchlight and its sequel. Together with his brother and David Brevik, the trio started Flagship Studios and developed Hellgate: London. Erich Schaefer left Blizzard North in 2003.

Presenters at blizzard were very specific in not saying that we are getting a diablo 4