“You’re Devaluing the Entire Experience”: Diablo Co-Creator Explains What’s the Biggest Problem with Modern ARPGs

Blizzard North co-founder and president David Brevik recently spoke to VideoGamer about the state of action RPGs (ARPGs) these days.

Image source: Blizzard Entertainment

As a reminder, Brevik is considered a co-creator of the Diablo franchise. He served as senior designer and lead programmer on the original game, as well as development lead and design director on Diablo II.

According to Brevik, in the pursuit of faster progression systems, near-instant rewards, and quick kills of enemies, many modern ARPGs have lost something that is truly important to games of the genre.

Thing Trunk’s Book of Demons is a successful example of a modern ARPG, according to its developer (Image source: Steam)

«”I think RPGs in general have started to lean towards being able to kill a bunch of enemies in the area really fast… get more rewards and level up, and your screen is filled with stuff you don’t care about,” Brevik said.

The developer acknowledged that the monster count in the first Diablo was high for its time, but modern games in the genre have learned the wrong lessons from the classics. It was the “great” pacing that helped Diablo II maintain its popularity over the years.

By comparison, in Diablo III you can reach level 70 in just a few hours (image source: VideoGamer)

Brevik believes that in RPGs (especially MMOs and ARPGs), the fun is not in the destination, but in the journey to get there: “When you shortcut that, it becomes ridiculous. You cheapen the whole experience.”

After leaving Blizzard in 2003, Brevik worked on Hellgate London and Marvel Heroes, and founded several studios. He currently heads up the indie publishing house Skystone Games.