Blizzard almost made Diablo 4 a roguelike in the Batman Arkham style called Hades

Diablo 4 almost ended up being a very different entity, as Diablo 3 director Josh Mosqueira envisioned it as a Batman Arkham game with roguelike elements

Activision Blizzard

Diablo 4 almost ended up being a very different entity, as Diablo 3 director Josh Mosqueira envisioned it as a Batman Arkham game with roguelike elements - a far cry from the series' action-RPG roots. The news comes from Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier’s book Play Nice: The Rise and Fall of Blizzard Entertainment in a chapter posted on Wired about the studio’s divided leadership following Diablo 3’s success.

Blizzard faced a dilemma after launching Diablo 3’s Reaper of Souls expansion. The game was undoubtedly a success, but Blizzard leaders wanted to pursue a new project that would bring in sustained revenue over long periods – not just one-time profits from a game or DLC purchase. They cancelled Diablo 3’s second expansion, and Mosqueira floated a different idea: a punchier action game with an over-the-shoulder camera, called Hades.

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Mosqueira wanted it to seem reminiscent of the Batman Arkham games, and he also wanted permadeath. The idea was that you would die, then your next character would come back with a special, inherited perk of some kind. Schreier says Blizzard devs were baffled and thought this was essentially a new IP, as it bore such little resemblance to Diablo, though they also thought Mosqueira’s vision overlooked something essential: how multiplayer would work. They couldn’t see how co-op combat would work in Arkham style, when Arkham’s battles relied so much on slowing down time while Batman punched everyone in turn.

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Mosqueira left Blizzard in 2016, Rise of the Necromancer disappointed players, and Schreier says Blizzard developed a new concept of what it means to “commit to quality” that extended beyond a game’s development and encompassed how a team handles their work between releases as well.

So if you’re wondering why it took Blizzard so long to make Diablo 4, you can thank project Hades for that. Meanwhile, Diablo 4’s first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, is out now.