One of my most hotly anticipated games for this year, and I know I’m not alone in this, will be Blizzard’s Diablo III. I can remember the days of the original Diablo, forging my way down into the bowels of the abandoned church and almost leaping out of my chair when the butcher growled “Aaaahhh, fresh meat!” when I grew close to him. I then went online, firing up my 33K modem (yes, that’s all I had back then) and hitting up the then fledgling Battle.Net only to be overwhelmed by other players who gifted me with unimaginable loot. I even went as far as to buy the only official expansion, Hellfire, and play that to its fullest revelling in the extended Diablo universe.
Diablo II was a completely different experience, one that was far more social for me than its predecessor. I can remember many LANs dedicated to simply creating new characters and seeing how far we could get with them before we got bored. The captivation was turned up to a whole new level however with many of us running dungeons continuously in order to get that last set item or hoping for that extremely rare drop. The expansion pack served to keep us playing for many years after the games release and I still have friends telling me of how they’ve spun it back up again just for the sheer thrill of it.
Amongst all this is one constant: the torturous strain that we put on our poor computer mice. The Diablo series can be played almost entirely using the mouse thanks to the way the game was designed, although you do still need the keyboard especially at higher difficulties. In that regard it seemed like the Diablo series was destined to PC and PC only forever more. Indeed even though Blizzard had experimented with the wild idea of putting StarCraft on the Nintendo64 they did not attempt the same thing with the Diablo series. That is up until now.
Today there are multiple sources reporting that Diablo III will indeed be coming to consoles. As Kotaku points out the writing has been on the wall for quite some time about this but today is the day when everyone has started to pay attention to the idea. Now I don’t think there’s anything about the Diablo gameplay that would prevent it from being good on a console, as opposed to StarCraft (which would be unplayable, as is any RTS on a console). Indeed the simple interface of Diablo’s past would easily lend itself well to the limited input space of the controller with few UI changes needed. What concerns most people though is the possibility that Diablo III could become consolized, ruining the experience for PC gamers.
Considering that we’re already got a beta version of Diablo III on PC it’s a safe bet that the primary platform will be the PC. Blizzard also has a staunch commitment to not launching games until their done and you can bet that if there were any hints of consolization in one of their flagship titles it’d be picked up in beta testing long before it became a retail product. Diablo III coming to consoles is a sign of the times that PC gaming is still somewhat of a minority and even titles that have their roots firmly in the PC platform still need to consider a cross platform release.
Does this mean I’ll play Diablo III on one of my consoles? I must say that I’m definitely curious but I’ve already put in my pre-order for the collector’s edition of Diablo III on the PC. Due to the tie in with Battle.Net it’s entirely possible that buying it on one platform will gain you access to another via a digital download (something Blizzard has embraced wholeheartedly) and I can definitely see myself trying it out just for comparison. For me though the PC platform will always be my primary means by which I game and I can’t deny my mouse the torturous joy that comes from a good old fashioned Diablo session.
