David Brevik, Max and Erich Schaefer developed Diablo 1 and 2, but have not worked at Blizzard for a long time. So what do they say about the announcement of Diablo 4?
Who are David Brevik, Max and Erich Schaefer? The three founded Blizzard North and developed Diablo 1 and 2 there. However, they no longer work at Blizzard.
David Brevik recently developed the interesting action RPG It Lurks Below. Max Schaefer is working on the action MMORPG Torchlight Frontiers. His brother Erich collaborated with him on the predecessors Torchlight 1 and 2.
This is how the Diablo creators reacted to the announcement of Part 4
What do they say about the announcement of Diablo 4? Erich Schaefer thinks that he does not follow the development of Diablo that closely anymore. The release of Diablo 3 was strange for him because he had worked on the two predecessors and Part 3 was created without him, but he is not so interested anymore.
Max Schaefer, on the other hand, is still closely following Diablo and feels that it always hurts when something bad happens to the Diablo franchise. The announcement of the mobile game Diablo Immortal hit him hard, but Diablo 4 made up for it.
David Brevik found the announcement of Diablo 4 strange. He had to let it sink in for a while, which was due to the fact that the concept seemed so familiar to him.
The MMO concept is already older
Why was the concept familiar? According to Brevik, Diablo 3 was in development when he and Max and Erich Schaefer were still at Blizzard. They had planned a social game, a mix of MMO and action RPG. After leaving Blizzard, Brevik implemented this concept in Marvel Heroes. Therefore, Marvel Heroes with the open shared world also reminded of Diablo 4.
Max Schaefer also follows this original concept of Diablo 3 with Torchlight Frontiers. His action RPG also utilizes MMO elements.
That’s why the idea is even much older: The developers had a similar idea for Diablo 2. There was supposed to be a hub, a town where about 25 players could meet. But that did not work out, and they turned the hub into Battle.net and the chat before each Diablo session.
Basically, Diablo 4 is what David Brevik, Max, and Erich Schaefer would have also created.
The atmosphere is well received
What do the three think of the dark atmosphere? They are excited that Diablo is becoming dark again. They did not like the colorful style of Part 3 and felt that Blizzard wanted to target a younger audience with the series. Therefore, they are happy that a different direction is being taken now.
Diablo 1 and 2 were already very dark, and elements like burning, upside-down crosses or naked corpses in rivers had to be removed because that was a bit too intense.
The style of Diablo 4 is therefore well received by the original developers of the action RPG series, and everyone hopes that Blizzard will really stick to this and maintain it.
