According to David Brevik, it’s a big detriment to the gaming experience when you progress very quickly in today’s action RPGs.

Brevik is no newcomer to the game. He was the lead designer and lead programmer on the first Diablo, and then the project and design lead on Diablo 2, so he has been instrumental in the success of Blizzard’s IP. One of the common criticisms of Diablo 3 was that you could get to level 70 in 3-4 hours, depending on how you played the game. This was a lot faster than before, and Brevik didn’t like it (but he didn’t work on that game).

According to an interview with Videogamer, Brevik thinks the pacing of Diablo 2 is great because it takes longer to level up, and he thinks it’s more satisfying when it takes longer to get to the top, whereas modern action RPGs focus on making leveling up not take so long. He feels that shortening that journey and making it as ridiculous as possible detracts from the gameplay experience. He says that the fun part of an action RPG is not getting to the end, but the journey to get there.

Brevik also pointed out that while there were moments in the first two Diablo games when Blizzard’s game sent many enemies after the player, in modern action RPGs there are almost hordes of players who invade the player’s life and then defeat them en masse. He says that this is not as personal and realistic as what Diablo 2 offers, and believes that the pace was one of the reasons why Blizzard’s game had such a long lifespan. He doesn’t find it appealing, but rather silly, to be able to instantly kill a screen full of things to mow everyone down or to run around the map and destroy everything. It’s not a cool experience for him.

One other thing to mention about Diablo is that there are rumors that a Nintendo Switch 2 port of Diablo IV is in the works. With Microsoft wanting to support Nintendo’s new console, it makes sense.

Source: VGC, Videogamer