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A detailed report from Kotaku on the state of play at Blizzard, and in particular the upcoming Diablo game, revealed some very interesting, though unconfirmed, surprises, including the fact that the studio was working on a similar version of Diablo 4 in many ways to Dark Souls. Code name Hades, the game was developed as a hardcore dungeon crawler with a view of the shoulder instead of the traditional isometric perspective of Diablo.
Work on Hades began after Blizzard canceled a second extension scheduled for Diablo 3, according to the report, which resulted in the dissolution of most of the team members. Those who remained, including Josh Mosqueira, director of Diablo 3, worked on the Hades project from 2014 to 2016 until he was also canned; Two sources said that despite all the efforts made, the game did not come true.
After that, the team worked on two things: the DLC Rise of the Necromancer for Diablo 3 and another version of Diablo 4, the latter with the code name Fenris, which, according to Kotaku, is the current version of development. Fortunately for fans of Diablo who did not like the visual style of D3, it will adopt the aesthetics of the first two games.
"Many people had the impression that Diablo 3 had escaped what had created Diablo Diablo in terms of artistic style and spell effects," said an anonymous Blizzard employee at the site. "They want to do [Fenris] gross, darkens, [get rid of] everything that was considered mapping in Diablo 3 … do what people were afraid of in Diablo 2, but modern. "
This seems to me a reasonable approach: the initial reaction against the colorful visual style of Diablo 3 was, I think, exaggerated but not totally unfair. The first two Diablos were darkand the sight and sound of the butcher coming out of his room under Tristram's cathedral always put me on the edge. Returning to this style would at least attract the attention of long-time fans, although the alienated players in the Diablo 3 series who know Blizzard are first and foremost aware of their new, more family-friendly rates like Overwatch and Hearthstone. .
One of the challenges that Blizzard faces is that Diablo is a harder beast to monetize than its other games, and players may be particularly susceptible to efforts in this direction, because of the disastrous house of Real money auction of Diablo 3. More generally, the influence of the parent company Activision is apparently also a growing concern: Blizzard has retained a remarkable degree of independence since the merger of Vivendi, then owner, with Activision in 2008 (and yes, it's been a decade now), but it may slip one way. Amrita Ahuja, longtime Activision manager, became CFO of Blizzard in March 2018 and quickly called for a reduction in expenses. In October, Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime suddenly resigned. A former employee was quoted as saying that the company was increasingly under the impression that "finance is making more calls than ever before".
The full report is optimistic about Diablo 4 (developed by a team totally different from Diablo Immortal), but maybe a little less about Blizzard. Give him a few minutes of your time in Kotaku.
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