The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King | Middle-earth’s Hidden Gem
A game based on a movie? On a handheld??
There’s no doubt ARPGs are in a resurgence right now, but much of the foundation of modern loot driven dungeon crawlers comes from the legendary Diablo franchise. As Diablo celebrates its 30th anniversary, this week we chat about Blizzard’s staple IP, how it’s changed over the years (decades!), and our favorite entries.
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00:00 --> 00:07 Uh, we're here to talk about demons, loot and extend existential dread. Stay a while and listen. Today on.
00:26 --> 00:31 Don't listen over the intro. Or maybe they should don't, you know,
00:31 --> 00:49 replace scroll identification over the intro. Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of press be to cancel your favorite podcast. Casting sigils and demon signs.
00:50 --> 00:51 We're even retro this week.
00:52 --> 01:04 Yeah, we are. Well, sort of. We're going to go over that. I'm your host Sinistar, joined by co host regular Sick Jake. Sick Jake, how are you today? Doing great.
01:04 --> 01:04 Glad it's Friday.
01:05 --> 01:22 Yes. And we have a special guest and the reason that Synstress is here is because if I didn't include her on an episode talking about Diablo, I might not be married after this Sinstress. How are you?
01:22 --> 01:30 I'm good, thank you. Very happy to be here talking about one of my favorite games ever made.
01:30 --> 01:32 Absolutely, absolutely.
01:32 --> 01:36 Yeah. It's a legendary franchise for sure. So I'm glad we're sitting down talking about it.
01:36 --> 01:52 Yeah. So for those that haven't guessed, we're talking about Diablo, we're talking about the franchise that is Diablo will probably specialize on, primarily probably Diablo 2 because I think that's the one that most of us have the most experience with and
01:52 --> 01:53 it's the best one.
01:53 --> 01:58 I also got a new update recently too, which I can talk a few minutes on as well. So.
01:58 --> 02:47 Yeah, yeah, that's where I was saying it's sort of retro because after 20 years, 26 years. Yeah, okay, we'll get there, we'll get there. It's fine. Well, really quick. So quick. History. Diablo came out of a development group previously known as Condor. They were purchased by Blizzard. They became what's known as Blizzard North. So for everybody that saw the Blizzard north logos, that was previously a developer group called Condor. It was released in 1997. It was the mother or father, whatever the term you want of ARPGs. I think everybody pretty well agrees on that, that it was kind of the first real arpg, at least as far as they exist today.
02:47 --> 02:50 It was. But it wasn't meant to be an ARPG originally.
02:50 --> 02:51 No.
02:51 --> 02:51 Which is interesting.
02:51 --> 02:54 It was going to be turn based originally. Yeah.
02:55 --> 02:59 I'm glad they made that change as is the world.
02:59 --> 03:28 Yes, well, you know, it could have been interesting, right, because like the first Diablo in a lot of ways is like a. It's like a modern take on Rogue, Right. Where you have procedural generation of Dungeons and you have the loot and the. I mean obviously there's a lot more Random. A lot more items in Diablo compared to Rogue, but it's, it's neat in that regard. But a turn base would have made sense compared to Rogue, which is like, you know, move, then enemies move. Yeah, so I, I could, I could have seen it. But yeah, I am certainly glad it's what is now an ARPG genre. Definitely started the genre for sure. So that's awesome.
03:28 --> 03:54 Yep. Yeah. So I, I also, you know, I referred to Diablo as a click and kill engineering. You know, I mean, basically like the more things that are on the screen, the more you just click your mouse. It had three classes, the Warrior, the Rogue and the Sorcerer. And there was one expansion called Hellfire, which was done out of out of house. It was synergistic software.
03:55 --> 03:55 Right.
03:55 --> 04:15 And it introduced an additional class, the Monk, but little known, with some tweaks to some underlying files, you could unlock two additional classes, the Barbarian and the Bard. What's interesting is it used the skins from the other. Oh, from, from the, the Warrior and the Sorcerer, I think.
04:16 --> 04:35 But yeah, I remember those classes, but I thought they were because my, my memories of early Diablo was a lot of people hacking it for mods and stuff. I didn't realize those were official classes or could have been official classes that probably just weren't finished. I never really, really played much of Hellfire though. But I played a crap ton of the original Diablo on my first PC, so that's interesting.
04:37 --> 04:55 Yeah. And, and very much like one town and basically diving into the dungeon from that one town. Which is important to note because when we get to Diablo 2, I mean, we might as well, we're going to probably talk Diablo 2 for the majority of this episode, so we might as well move on. So basically very successful.
04:55 --> 05:01 Did you guys, well, before we get into Diablo 2, did you guys like, have you guys both played Diablo 1 and beat Diablo 1 or 2? Yes.
05:01 --> 05:01 No.
05:01 --> 05:02 No. Okay.
05:03 --> 05:09 No, I was busy being a mom when that was a popular game. So no, I did not.
05:09 --> 05:10 Yeah.
05:10 --> 06:00 And I was not busy being a mom. So no, I very much played and beat the original, don't tell my employer at the time. Although they, they are defunct and don't exist anymore. But I played on work computers. We used to all play on work computers. And I remember very much walk rooms and hearing that Diablo music that somber, you know. Yeah. Which is an important piece. Every Diablo basically kind of has that same somber, you know, soundtrack. Oh, the other thing of note that I, I, I, I was like, wait, what? The first time I ever watched the movie Demolition man, they end up in the museum in the hall of fame.
06:01 --> 06:01 Violence.
06:01 --> 06:08 Violence. And the. And the font is that Diablo font is. Is.
06:08 --> 06:12 I have to watch that again because I do not remember that.
06:12 --> 06:13 Huh.
06:13 --> 06:15 And I was like, the whole violence, but not that. Not the font.
06:15 --> 06:19 Interesting. I was like, wait, is that a real font or did they just rip it off?
06:20 --> 06:50 So my main thing with the other one is I've wanted to go back to try it, just to see what if it holds up. But the one thing that's keep me away from it is how manual it was like you had to click on gold to pick it up. Gold, I think was in your inventory, if I'm not wrong. There was no running, which is as I've been playing Diablo 2 lately. Even in Diablo 2, running is a pain in the butt. In the first game, there was no running at all. So it's definitely a different pace of a game for back then. So I. I kind of still want to go back to it, but man, rough.
06:50 --> 07:12 I. I've played maybe an hour. There was a vacation that we went and it was Sin Brother Osin and myself, and we were going to play Diablo and it was janky and messy. And so after about an hour we're like, well, what else can we do? And so that's what happened.
07:12 --> 07:12 Yeah.
07:12 --> 07:13 Yep.
07:13 --> 07:17 And that's like the entirety of my personal experience with Diablo 1.
07:17 --> 07:36 Yeah. And I remember like the. Just some quick memories, you know, at work, playing this at work, like, you know, dropping walls of fire and, you know, the chain lightning and watching these effects and just being absolutely odd with these effects.
07:36 --> 08:00 You know, my. My favorite part of my memory of Diablo 1 is people would hack online and mess around. Right. Because you could mess. Because I think a lot of. A lot of the files are local. So being in town in a random multiplayer session and someone walks in town and starts dropping walls of fire around my character, which you're not normally supposed to be able to do. And it's just like. It's just very hacked game at the time. I remember that.
08:00 --> 08:01 Just to mess with you.
08:01 --> 08:12 Just to mess with you. Yeah. And of the three classes, am I right in that they're basically the same? Right. A warrior could still learn spells, I think. I think they just got an easier time getting strengths out or something.
08:14 --> 08:16 It's been long enough on that. I don't remember.
08:17 --> 08:30 Yeah, I just don't remember there being as this a huge distinction between the classes. Like there was in two and then going forward. But it's definitely, definitely, definitely see the bones of the franchise there. But I'm glad they evolved a lot from Diablo 1.
08:31 --> 08:32 Yeah, absolutely.
08:32 --> 08:32 Sure.
08:34 --> 08:51 So we then in 2000 got what is I, I looking at my research today. Many, many sources refer to this as one of the greatest games of all time, you know, and that is Diablo.
08:51 --> 08:53 I agree with every single one of those sources.
08:54 --> 10:07 Yeah. So, so basically like you get just real quick, it, it obviously expanded on the product that worked. It added a variety of areas including desert zones. So instead of just diving into the dungeon underneath the town, you go to desert zones, forests, you know, you've got different sewers, everybody. Yeah, yeah. And then of course the, the dungeons are epic. The, the when you get low enough that you end up in the hell areas they are very much based on. And this was called out by the developers based on basically the Christian kind of listings for hell. You know, hellfire, you know, lava, brimstone, you know, etc. Let's see you get additional difficulties. So now you have normal, you have nightmare, you have hell and you get a hardcore option. So you know, perma death. The item system is for the Internet.
10:07 --> 10:12 Back then lag would kill you more often than not. I hated perfect.
10:12 --> 10:31 I never did hardcore socketed items. In fact, that's a really cool feature. Including the rune words thing which when I first played through it and runewords may have come with, by the way, a shout out. I found one of the. Yeah, one of the people listening.
10:31 --> 10:32 Yeah, is that one of mine?
10:33 --> 10:39 I don't know if it's yours or mine so. But I, because I had the battle chest as well.
10:39 --> 10:49 But yeah, I bought this, that game like I don't know, three or four times in my life because it kept disappearing.
10:51 --> 11:29 But the runewords are really cool because like you get, you get named runes and so these runes are things like tal and LÐ and et cetera. And when you get socketed items you can, if you put the socketed. If you put those runes in, in a specific order, you know, if you need two, it's a two socketed item. If you need three, it has to be a three. But you can do things like tal plus F equals stealth. And so it actually adds a stealth feature to an item. There's a whole bunch of these. There's like I don't know, 30 or 40 of these.
11:29 --> 11:56 I never really dived into the room words that much because like the drop rate was, was pretty low. I mean I, I didn't really. I love playing Diablo 2. I played a ton of it, but I never really did the Grinding to get a bunch of runes. I definitely did a lot of socketing with gems. I used to use skulls all the time and trying to farm the skulls. Skulls and you can level them up. But Roombirds are definitely an interesting mechanic. I think that came with the expansion. Was it Throne of Throne of Destruction?
11:57 --> 11:58 Yeah.
11:58 --> 11:58 Yeah.
11:59 --> 12:11 So funny enough, one of the bosses. It's one of the female bosses. And I'm blanking on Andario. Yeah. You can farm runes off of Andariel.
12:11 --> 12:11 Oh really?
12:11 --> 12:19 You can just continually go back and kill Andariel and she has a drop rate of something like 30% for runes.
12:19 --> 12:19 Oh, shoot.
12:19 --> 12:21 And so you can. Yeah.
12:22 --> 12:23 It's not actually that hard. Is.
12:23 --> 12:24 Well, right.
12:24 --> 12:24 Yeah.
12:24 --> 12:25 Yeah.
12:25 --> 12:28 It's just poison mostly. But Yeah, I didn't realize that. Yeah.
12:28 --> 12:35 Although you get better runes off her if you do it in. In Nightmare. And so she becomes a little more difficult in Nightmare, obviously. So.
12:35 --> 12:36 Right.
12:38 --> 12:47 Five classes this time. Amazon, Necromancer, Barbarian, Sorceress. We have a female character. We actually have a couple of female characters. And then Paladin.
12:48 --> 12:48 Yeah.
12:49 --> 13:00 So. And then of course the expansion added the Assassin and the Druid. Assassin is my favorite class of all. I love the Assassin. I love using the claws or the, you know, the guitars.
13:00 --> 13:25 Yeah. So I. I used to use it. So when I first. So. So I feel old. My last year high school was 99 pretty much. And before the game, when the game was announced and we knew it was coming out before we all graduated and went our separate ways, we all said, well, we're going to keep in touch and play Diablo 2. We're going to do an eight player game. So we each were trying to pick what classes we want to do. Of course, after high school never happened, but I did play a ton of Diablo 2.
13:26 --> 13:26 Nice.
13:26 --> 13:27 But for me it was.
13:27 --> 13:28 That's a great game.
13:28 --> 13:38 Oh, it's an awesome game. For me it was the Necromancer, which is probably my favorite class from the entire franchise. Like the bone armor and. And the poison dagger. I love all that stuff. But when.
13:38 --> 13:40 And raising all of the things you kill.
13:41 --> 13:55 Yes. And like blood golems and whatnot for tanking for you because that's a game. Diablo is a hard game solo, so it's nice to have a buddy to take the damage for you. But what I loved about Lords of Destruction was also the Assassin class. Because the assassin class I think is the one that doesn't need keys to open chests.
13:56 --> 13:56 Nope.
13:56 --> 14:21 And then the martial art combos was really rad. So like, what else did you like about it badass too Are the only reason I beat Diablo in in the expansion with the Assassin was traps. Everything else I tried, I just could not do it. All my combos were nothing. Diablo's resistances are super high especially if you're playing on higher difficulty. But traps. Running in circles for 45 minutes, dropping traps is how I beat Diablo. It was pretty sad on my part.
14:22 --> 15:12 Yeah. And then of course the expansion also added a fifth act. So unlike the Hellfire expansion for Diablo which was a side story basically you went to an entirely different zone and you couldn't even do like initially you couldn't do multiplayer in that zone, et cetera. Although I think that's fixed in the modern versions. You can get it added a fifth act. So it added an additional like you basically now go through the four acts, you kill Diablo and then you start on the Lord of Destruction. And that this. This kind of was like back when and. And one of the games that Jake and I absolutely adore have has this as well that expansion. It's almost as long as the irregular game like that fifth is.
15:12 --> 15:12 Yes.
15:12 --> 15:18 Is beefy and. And Witcher. Witcher. The expansions were essentially additional expansions are.
15:18 --> 15:18 Yeah.
15:19 --> 15:19 Yeah.
15:19 --> 15:49 They could be games in themselves. Very much so. And yeah but that was the age of like the PC gaming used to be great back then is because you would have these expansions that were so massive it was not the DLC bite sized snacks that we get today for 20 bucks. It was full on experiences like was it Balers Gate 2 famously has a really good expansion. Right. And then so did the first game. So even never went tonight's fantastic expansions. Like back then an expansion was really something worth the money. It was basically a whole other game which was fantastic and cheap usually. Right. So it's good.
15:49 --> 16:11 Yeah. Unlike a $25 expansion that just gives you a class and a few things. It's fine. We might as well really quick let's talk a little bit about like our history and our memories and then we'll talk about the. The new expansion, the new dlc. But sinceris you I know played the hell out of Diablo 2.
16:12 --> 16:38 I did. I did. That was. That is the first game that I ever lost like a week of my life to like nothing else existed. I think I went to work but then I would come home and I would play video games and then you know like I. I have a very specific memory when I was very, very brand new to the game. You have to kill Blood Raven.
16:38 --> 16:39 Right.
16:39 --> 16:59 And that's Very early on in the game and it's like 10 o' clock at night and I'm like, fuck, I died. Well, I'll just go get my stuff and then I'll head back. And two o' clock in the morning. It was two o' clock in the morning when I finally beat that boss. And then I was like, and I've got to work in five hours.
16:59 --> 17:00 Yeah.
17:01 --> 17:20 So, you know, like. And I just, like, I would. I would put my kids to bed and I would just play this game and that's what I did. And it was fantastic and I loved it and it is up there in all of the games that I've ever played. So, yeah, I love Diablo too.
17:21 --> 17:31 Yeah. And a little bit as a family, we need to get more into it, but we've played off and on with our youngest, who's still at home, who
17:31 --> 17:35 also, he's a big fan of the Necromancer. That's his preferred class.
17:36 --> 17:48 Yeah. But we've been playing off and on the remastered version, which is another piece we'll get to after we, you know. Yeah. How about you, Jake?
17:49 --> 18:22 Yeah. So, I mean, Necromancer was good. I liked how each of the classes, you weren't just stuck with one type of build. Right. If you're a Sorceress, you had three different trees in Diablo ii. Right. And they're all quite different and you use a combination of skills from all of them, but you could really have your own personal build. Like if you don't look online in the. In the nonsense of metas and all that stuff, you could actually really make some really fun stuff. Like, if I want to play a Necromancer and focus on daggers and being up front and slaughtering things along my skellies, I could totally do that. If I wanted to focus on Minion Master with the models of enemies, you could do that. Do that as well.
18:22 --> 18:31 Yeah. I loved making a battle mage where, you know, I upped my strength more than other people probably would so that I could, like, kick people in the face. Because that's fun, you know?
18:31 --> 18:33 And then, yeah, you can wear the heavier armor.
18:34 --> 18:35 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
18:35 --> 18:39 Because. Because all of the heavier armor is based on stats instead of class.
18:40 --> 18:40 Yeah.
18:40 --> 18:40 Yeah.
18:41 --> 20:01 So the idea of build is pretty awesome. And there's. There's still. Even to this day, like, I have a problem when I play. Go back to play games or even games, I tend to play them the way I played them 20 years ago, 30 years ago. I try to stop doing that because there's different Classes I haven't even touched. Like I've barely touched the. The Amazon. I barely play that class. Barbarian, I've only done a little bit with. So there's many classes. Druid, I haven't even touched the Druid. So there's. There's a lot of stuff there that I haven't played or experienced. I wouldn't mind going back to try them nowadays. Yeah, I love the Necro so much, but it's. For me, Diablo 2 is the game I go back to. Every couple years I'll spin it up and play it, but I usually don't finish it. I find by the time I get to the jungle I get burnt out to a degree. Because what it is for me was I never liked how you couldn't start the harder difficulties. I find Normal is. Is too easy or takes too long and you don't get good loot right away. I always like playing on harder difficulties when possible. I know they added in one of the patches after release the ability to set the players to count to eight so you can mimic an online. Because the game would scale based on players who are joined. So if you did set player 8, then suddenly the Monster is much harder. But you got a lot more experience, more money, more items. I like playing that way, although it is much more harder to do. But that's generally what I do like. Have you guys played it recently and beat it or do you guys kind of burnout halfway through?
20:02 --> 20:30 I have definitely played it recently. So on Wednesdays I play video games with Brother of Sin and two of my cousins. And one of my cousins always joins a little later in the evening. And so while we wait for him, sometimes we spin up Diablo 2 and my cousin that we play Diablo 2 with is one of these min maxers of Diablo 2. Like he's one of these guys that he's. He's played through it. I don't know how many times he
20:30 --> 20:34 says of Diablo 2, but this is just the way the guy plays games is true.
20:34 --> 21:09 But he. He's. He's run us through. We've beaten Normal, we've beaten Nightmare. I think we've beaten Nightmare two or three times because we're. Because basically like there is a. Almost a hockey stick of difficulty when you get to Hell and like it. You say it's too easy. Hell is almost too hard. And so if you don't have the right equipment, you don't have the right. It will. It will just bowl you over. And so we are still working toward being able to play the Hell difficulty.
21:09 --> 22:46 So, yeah, it's a game that kind of balances itself with the other difficulties by giving all enemies a default amount of resistance. And I don't like it either. I'm with you. It's a hockey stick, right? Because like, you could have a great build, great items, but as soon as you get to the next difficulty, everything has a flat like 20 or 30% more resistance and you got to start from scratch. And I, I don't like that very much. I like the loots and gathering loot, but I don't necessarily want to like have anything invalidated within the first five minutes of the next difficulty. And that's gotten better over time, I think. But I do remember that I did want to say too, the Diablo 2, one of the reasons why I think that game stuck with me so well is it's. It's a case of Blizzard cinematics, right? Blizzard was for me was always known as the king of FMV and video games, right. And when Diablo 2 first came out, the narration of the guy who has to follow the Wanderer, who. The Wanderer is canonically the warrior from the first game, right. And the inter between acts of FMV is stellar. I had to go watch the intro to Act 5 from the expansion with Baal coming up to that keep and the guards like sighs and tells them, bale, get out of here. We stand with the light. And then Bale's like, I will consider your terms. And it's like, your terms are not acceptable and blows them up. But like that whole cinematic scene is like movie level to me. And I used to love Blizzard cinematics and like that carried over to like World of Warcraft, the first few from World of Warcraft, that same epic style of fmv. I was so disappointed when Blizzard kind of moved away from that to more in game engine stuff for a while because like, for me, like, they were so good. Starcraft as well, they were so good at the cinematics and they've kind of moved away from that.
22:46 --> 23:21 That's a disappointing thing I was gonna say. I, I remember the Starcraft cinematic where it's got the, you know, the old grizzled marine with the, with the, the, you know, cigar and the guy, and the guy's like, what's going on? And he just points up and there's, you know, one of the, one of the, the battle cruisers, you know, coming overboard or over, you know. Anyway, I, I'm with you. Although I will say, and we haven't gotten there, but Diablo 3's cinematics were legit. Yeah, they were. They were pretty, you know, the whole Horadrim thing and you know, all of that. So yeah.
23:22 --> 25:46 The other thing about Diablo 2 before we move on is before Resurrected came out, the game was getting updates periodically through the years. Even though it was quite old, it was still getting updates. I know they. I think they had the ladder system back then, but there was. So it was Blizzard north who did, who did Diablo 2. There was a point where a few of the folks who founded Blizzard north were getting fed up with the company. I guess the company was trying to be sold to Vivendi, which Vivendi was like Embracer back then, right? Trying to scoop everybody up and they weren't happy so they wanted to leave and they did leave and there was one guy named Peter Hugh who wanted to leave with them to go on and to start another company. But he was working on a patch, an Update for Diablo 2 and ended up being 1.10 patch, which pretty was out of for me. Was out of nowhere when it released, I think it was 2003, I want to say. So years after the game came out, right. And that patch completely revamped the skill trees and added synergies. So when you took skills in one tree it could affect skills in another one, which is pretty awesome. But it also opened up the ability to mod the game because I was watching an interview earlier today with him and a few other folks and he said that they looked at Warcraft 3 and Starcraft and the whole idea of mods and official mods were a big thing and made those games really memorable for players. And Diablo never really had that. There's unofficial mods for D2 but it was nothing like Warcraft 3. So they not hugely supported mods, but they took all the data for monsters and weapons and gear and stuff and they put it in files that you can access for modding and that actually still exists in Diablo 2 Resurrected Edition. It's a little bit more locked down because it's Blizzard's. It's going to be. But he really, before he left the company to join the rest of the founders of Blizzard north, he stuck around for several months. He said he was working 100 hour weeks to deploy this one last love letter patch to the game he really liked a lot before leaving because he didn't want to proceed on Diablo 3. He wasn't taking, I guess, shape that they wanted, so he wanted to leave. But it's like, it's interesting to see Peter Hugh now because he left them. He went with the other folks to start Flagship studios, which defunct. They're the guys who did Hellgate London, which I never really did play. Yeah. But then they moved on to Runic Games and they ended up making the game Torchlight, which is another ARPG that was super popular, but even today, Torchlight. And it's the guys who made Diablo 2. Right.
25:46 --> 25:47 That makes sense to me.
25:48 --> 26:18 Yeah. But those folks now are. And I talked about it on, I think last week's episode, are now working on a game called Dark Haven, which has got a Kickstarter. So it's a. It's Diablo 2 ARPG with a whole lot of cool spin to it. People should check it out. They're halfway to their goal of funding, so I would like to see people give it a shot. There's a free alpha demo on Steam right now, but it's the guys who made Diablo 2 and Torchlight are now making another ARPG, but it's a. It's a 3D engine and there's destructibility and stuff. It's really. It's really rad to see him 30 years later working on something like this.
26:19 --> 26:30 I need to look at that, because I do. Because Torchlight and Torchlight 2 are like. They're so good. They are so good.
26:31 --> 26:43 Torchlight 2 actually was saved by. I think the devs saved Torchlight 2 because it was the company that, you know, that basically, I think, bought Runic games.
26:43 --> 26:43 Yeah.
26:44 --> 26:58 Was like, we're going to make this a, you know, full of. Of loot boxes and et cetera, et cetera. And. And I think I may be wrong here, but I swear that the devs were like, we'll walk. We'll walk away.
26:58 --> 26:59 Good for them.
26:59 --> 27:00 So, yeah.
27:00 --> 27:13 I love the Easter eggs in that game. Like, they're just. They're so funny and so clever and you don't always find them, so you have to, like. You have to play it multiple times to find all of the different stuff, which is. That's fun to me.
27:13 --> 27:16 Yeah, definitely. Really cool stuff.
27:17 --> 27:21 If we're making recommendations. Grim dawn is another
27:23 --> 27:24 you mentioned a few times.
27:24 --> 27:24 Yeah.
27:25 --> 27:27 It's so good, Jake. It's so good.
27:28 --> 27:31 But Easter eggs, cow levels.
27:32 --> 27:44 Yeah, those. I've only ever done it, like, once. I don't know. Have you done it? A bunch of times? I guess, Yes. I can't remember how you get it in Diablo 2. How do you unlock it in Diablo 2? I know. You steal the poor dude's wooden leg, right?
27:44 --> 28:02 Yeah, It. It. It ties into Wirt's third leg, which I don't remember exactly. I, I looked it up once. One of the things that they changed in, in the Resurrected is I think you can do the cow level more than once. I think you can, you can trigger it.
28:02 --> 28:14 You have to be on nightmare difficulty and you have to do something, and then you have to do something else. I don't remember. I, I, I think that I saw it done. Like one of my friends did it and I saw it, but I didn't ever actually do it myself.
28:14 --> 28:16 Those cows are brutal.
28:17 --> 28:18 I believe that.
28:18 --> 28:19 Yeah.
28:20 --> 28:44 So, anyway, real quick, one of the other things that Diablo 2 introduced is the Horadric cube, which allows you to combine items to make new items. The loot system in Diablo 2, it's funny because everything now is like looter shooters. I think it stemmed off of Diablo 2's loot system. That's a looter clicker.
28:46 --> 28:52 So, I mean, that's why you play Diablo 2, right? Was for the, the constant grind and, and rolling of the dice to get better items and.
28:52 --> 28:55 Yeah, or sets. Yeah, or sets.
28:55 --> 29:11 Yeah. Set items are really rad and sometimes it's really hard to get those pieces in a, in the same difficulty. But when you, if you can get two or three sets together is such a power jump for your character and it would last you for the rest of the act, if not into the next act. So I, I love set items.
29:11 --> 29:29 Yeah. I was very jealous of our, our son this last week. We actually rolled up some characters just to play and mess around a little bit. And he got a set item like in the first, the cave that you have to go. The Den of Evil. He got a set item in there.
29:29 --> 29:32 And I'm like, dude, yeah, that's crazy.
29:35 --> 29:37 You don't get set items that early in the game. Yeah.
29:37 --> 30:24 Rng God. Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay, so Resurrected, which is the, Is the remaster, like a lot of the Common or like a lot of the modern remasters, you can switch modes back and forth in with just button clicks. And it's very cool to look at. It's very, I mean, but they did a fantastic job of the, you know, the 3D pseudo 3D models on that 2D plane. And thankfully, they didn't really touch the gameplay. They did a couple quality of life things. I think they changed some of the stash mechanics.
30:24 --> 30:26 I think it's bigger, if I'm not wrong. Yeah. Yeah.
30:26 --> 30:30 You have multiple pages of stash where you only had one before.
30:30 --> 30:31 Yeah.
30:31 --> 30:35 And there was no shared in remastered. You have a shared stash that's what it is.
30:35 --> 31:22 Yeah. Because in the original Devil 2, having mule characters was a thing, right? Just characters for the purpose of. You'd spin up an instance of yellow 2 just to transfer characters which are items to another character, which is a waste. You can also walk over gold and it instantly picks up, which I did not realize it was a still click to pick up in the old original game. So definitely much loved. But there's bugs in D2, like no hit bugs and whatnot that are rare and hard to run into. But they kept them in the remaster or Resurrected Edition because it's that for what you said. They didn't want to mess around too much with it. It's a coat of paint and that's it. But I love how it's like 2D sprites and it was originally 2D sprites and 3D models. And the flipping back and forth is my favorite part of that. It's just neat to see. Here's my necromancer in 3D and here he is in 2D and it's like one to one. It's. It's really well done.
31:23 --> 31:29 Yeah. So should we talk about the new dlc?
31:29 --> 31:51 Yeah. So that is neat, I guess, because it is Diablo's 30th anniversary as a franchise as of last week and they have a bunch of announcements coming. There's a new expansion for D4 which I can touch on later that they're also in 2026. Blizzard does still have Diablo Immortal, which is their free to play mobile game. And then they also.
31:51 --> 31:52 Really?
31:52 --> 32:01 Yeah, it's still going. And then they have Diablo 4, which is. Which is still getting expansions. And then they had Diablo 2 Resurrected Edition, which came out, I guess was it four, four years ago?
32:01 --> 32:06 I think Resurrected was. Oh, I thought I wrote it down.
32:07 --> 32:08 It probably.
32:08 --> 32:12 I think it was like four years. But yeah, I swear it was like 2021.
32:13 --> 32:55 Yeah. Okay, so like almost five, five years ago makes the most sense. Like, but it was. It was not that long ago, but you know, enough that people are like well received. I think a lot of people like to resurrect, especially Fans of Diablo 2. I know. I loved it when I played it. Oh yeah, it was great. But I mean at that point you're like, okay, it's done. Diablo Diablo 4 is out. They kind of moved on. But nope, they shadow dropped during their. Their anniversary videos. A new class for Diablo 2 Resurrected Edition, which is crazy that Diablo 2, when the original is from 2000, is getting a class like year decades later. And it is the. The warlock class and I got a chance to play a little bit of it. It is a magic. It's a. It's almost a bit of all the caster characters in Diablo 2.
32:55 --> 32:56 Okay.
32:56 --> 34:24 It has summons instead of undead. It summons demons. So you can. You can have your own go go guys and have them spawn and you can do things to have it so that when they bleed it's acid blood or they can attack or all that kind of stuff. He also summoning. He also has some arcane spells like a sorceress, like fire based spells do as well. But the. The big gimmick I think is that any weapon he equips, even a two handed sword, instead of wielding it, it actually hovers in place telekinetically in front of him and he uses that for the attacks. And so he can actually wield a two handed sword if he wants and still have an offhand item like a shield or whatever. The other items are for sorcery characters. So it was pretty interesting. And you can teleport the attack so you can throw your weapon at enemies or you can throw it and teleport to it or attack with it or sweep attack. Lots of moves based around it from that tree. It's a very fun class. It's very, very interesting. But it does feel like the best bits of other classes amalgamated into one. So that's. It's interesting. There's also terror zones. So for people who like to grind the end game of D2, it gives it a little bit more variety by making one of the zones harder than normal. With special items I could drop. I know they added some special things for uber bosses in D2 back in the day. To expand on that, there is a special Uber version of the the Ancients. I think they call them the Colossal Ancients. The Three Barbarians.
34:25 --> 34:25 Yep.
34:25 --> 34:53 Yeah. So that they do that. So there's some stuff there. But it's by and large a class. There's. There's some quality life stuff. Like a stack more. They expand on the stash tab. So they have one for gems now. So you just socket your gems into the stash. It's much more organized. It's kind of what Path of Exile does for those who play that. And then they. There's controller support, which is actually pretty decent as well. So they did some quality life stuff. But it's mainly. Mainly it is a class DLC and it's 25 bucks American.
34:54 --> 35:01 Yeah. Which is kind of by the way, resurrected. Always had. I play with controller. I play Resurrection Okay.
35:01 --> 35:02 Yeah.
35:02 --> 35:09 So that's. That's one of those things. That's one of those quality of life that they brought back from Diablo 3 into resurrected.
35:09 --> 35:10 Yes.
35:10 --> 35:13 Yeah. And I was going to go over that when we get to Diablo 3.
35:13 --> 35:35 Yeah. I have stuff on Diablo 3 controller support too, because that was fantastic. Yeah. But yeah, so it, so it has a class. It's $25 for a class that is very, very high. I. I know there's a necromancer DLC for D3 that came out and it was like 10 bucks, I think. And I think $10 for class is totally fair. $25 is a stretch. The other part of this was a
35:35 --> 35:36 lot of bit much.
35:36 --> 35:57 It is. This was also like a soft launch for Steam because Diablo Diablo 2 Resurrected Edition was not on Steam before. And you can get the. The Warlock Edition on Steam or they call it a Tormented Edition or something. I want to say it was 40, 45 bucks. I think it's 40 bucks. $40 for D2 resurrected with the Warlock is absolutely worth it. Like it's. It's great package.
35:57 --> 35:57 Yeah.
35:57 --> 37:39 $25 just for one class for those who've already bought the Resurrected Edition is a bit of a slap in the face because these are folks who bought Resurrected five years ago and this is what they're getting. I think that's a bit much. So I can't recommend it for those who already own the Resurrected Edition, but if you want a second copy to play with family or friends, or if you really want to play this on the Steam deck, because it is Steam deck there, right. Then you can pick it up. But like the full edition. The one thing that's kind of annoying though is with the Warlock, because the Warlock is a brand new class, they didn't make two D sprites for D2. So you lock yourself out of going back to the 2D style. And I know it's a small thing, but I like going back to the 2D artwork and to compare the two. Right. Like seeing the low 800 by 600 resolution and then go into the 3D and they lock you out of that with the Warlock character, which is kind of a bummer, but I mean otherwise it's, It's. It's more D2 and I was glad to go into it. This class apparently is supposed to be also added to their mobile game Diablo Immortal, and then they're also adding it to Diablo 4 in the next expansion. So I don't know if it's like a reusing of assets and planning and design for this class or they're just trying to do some kind of narrative event. And because, like, it's neat to play these games where you played, like, you played a necromancer in D2. He's in D3 now, and he's also in D4. That, that's kind of cool to do. So I like when they bring back the old classes. Like, I would love to see them bring back, like, the Warrior, for example. There hasn't been a warrior class. And the other game, I mean, there's fighting classes, but not the actual warrior. I'd like to see that design back. Yeah, so, but yeah, it's, it's, it's an interesting dlc. I wouldn't pay for it on its own, but if you don't own the resurrected edition of D2, absolutely a steal to get the whole bundle, for sure.
37:39 --> 37:55 Yeah. And they added Diablo 2 to Steam as part of this as well. And what's fun about that is SteamDB apparently showed that there were more players in Diablo 2 on Steam than there were in Diablo 4.
37:55 --> 37:56 Yeah. Yeah.
37:57 --> 37:58 Better game.
37:58 --> 37:59 Yeah.
37:59 --> 38:20 Yeah, it's getting better. I can talk about it later on, but it's getting better. But I think Diablo 2 is definitely better. I honestly, I think as much as I like D3, Diablo 2 is the one I want to go back to, especially with the resurrected edition. If I have that, that ARPG itch and I don't want to play path of exile, D2 is the one I go back to.
38:21 --> 40:39 So I had a really interesting experience because, you know, when Sinistar told me that this was going to be a topic and asked if I wanted to join you here to discuss it, I was like, yeah, but it's been long enough. It's been years since I've played either of them, really, for any amount of time. So I went back and I, I, I pulled up two and I played it with my son. And it was like, this is a lot, like, more difficult than I remember it being, because I used to kick ass at that game. Like, I was so good. I could just like. Until I got to Duriel and then Duriel. Yeah, you know, fuck Duriel. Everything up until that, you know, I could just, like, run through and, and, and just, you know, rock everything. And I, I just kept dying. Like, I just, I had a hard time playing with my son. I just kept dying. So, yeah, so I was like, I got frustrated and I spun up Diablo 3 on my Switch, which Sinister, actually, he got it for me when it Came out for my birthday. It was wonderful. I played it on the 360 like two or three times. Just through. Just the whole thing through. But playing it on my Switch 1, my Steam Deck has spoiled me for what a good handheld system feels like and look like. Like it just. It does. But you know, going to two and then going immediately to three. Me, in my old age, I actually prefer a lot of the creature comforts of three. I hated it when I came. Well, I didn't hate it, but like it. I had grumbles about it because I was like, this doesn't feel like two. This is all like cartoony comparatively. It doesn't have the gritty feel of it, but like, you know, it has auto aiming. Like you just shoot and it goes. And that's kind of nice. The mini map is off to the side instead of like overlaid on the screen and you know, making it a little bit difficult to see. So like there are a lot of creature comforts in three. Also, the inventory, like inventory in Diablo 2 is a clusterfuck. Like it just.
40:39 --> 40:41 Tetris. You don't like the Tetris thing? It's.
40:41 --> 40:53 I love the Tetris thing. I love the Tetris thing. He hates it. I don't mind. I think it's fun to try to figure out how to make things fit and to try to hold on to everything that you're trying to hold on.
40:53 --> 41:07 You know, when you. When you get the. When you get the. What do they call them? The. Now, it's not runes because those are what you put on the socketed items. You get the. The charms and you get the large charms and you're like, well, there goes my inventory.
41:08 --> 41:23 But sometimes you get a good one, right? One that gives you a bunch of health or a bunch of stats, and it's like it's worth keeping, of course, four slots of inventory. And sometimes you get a four slot charm and it's like 5% fire resistance. And you're like you into the trash. You go, yeah, yeah.
41:23 --> 41:31 But it's like you just. You have to hold on to them until you get something better because, you know, it really does help. They make a big difference. But it does screw your inventory up bad.
41:32 --> 41:32 Yeah.
41:32 --> 42:02 So, well, so okay, so real quick, Diablo 3. There was actually originally a Diablo 3 that was being built by Blizzard north. And as we know, Diablo 3 came out in 2012. Blizzard north went defunct in 2005. So they were actually working on a Diablo 3 between 2003 and 2005. And then it Got scrapped. So what we got is Diablo 3 is an entirely different project and a different team.
42:02 --> 42:10 Yeah. Apparently there's a rivalry between the Blizzard north guys and the Blizzards Blizzard teams in Irvine, California. I think it is.
42:10 --> 42:10 Yeah.
42:10 --> 42:26 So I guess they didn't get along or see eye to eyes. So that when the folks from Blizzard north left, the founders left, eventually they just merged the two teams and a lot of folks left again after that, although a few stay behind and move to Irvine. But it's. It's kind of sad that you have two teams, the same company and they just. They don't get along.
42:27 --> 42:27 Right.
42:27 --> 42:56 Especially when they're working in such a successful franchise. Right. Like Diablo. And I know, I remember when Diablo 3 was announced, just like the hype around it, how excited people were. And then people saw the updated screenshots of the change in the style. I'm not going to say cartoony, but it's definitely a lot brighter in palette than D2 is. And it's definitely not as dark and grim cartoon. It's. Yeah, it's different. It's not what I think people expected. It felt close to World of Warcraft than anything else. Right.
42:56 --> 42:58 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
42:59 --> 43:26 No, so the. As I said, it's a different team that did it. Honestly, I think that they developed it. I mean, it was still PC first. Even Diablo 4 was PC first. Right. But they very much wanted to make sure that it played on the consoles as well. And so. And that, honestly, to me is the greatest benefit to D3 is the controller support is honestly fantastic.
43:27 --> 43:28 Oh, for sure.
43:28 --> 43:34 In fact, it added a feature you don't get in the mouse version, which is the Roll Dodge.
43:34 --> 43:36 Yes, yes.
43:36 --> 44:34 Yeah. So. And they brought it to everything. 360ps3 or 4, I don't remember which. And then eventually Switch and the Switch version, you know, I was traveling for work. I was traveling internationally for work a lot. I was on planes for 12, 13 hours at a time with my coworkers. And so my coworkers had switches as well and sometimes my wife. Yeah, but we would have switch. We would. We would have our switches. And the very cool thing about the switch networking is you don't have to be on wifi. You don't have to be. I mean, all you do is say just we're friends. And it just talk to each other. Yeah, it just connects. So we're playing Diablo 3 on opposite ends of the airplane, you know, having a great time. I even enjoyed the whole seasonal thing. I even enjoyed that.
44:34 --> 44:35 Really. Okay.
44:35 --> 45:02 Yeah. Only because once Again, Diablo is so much about loot and they change the loot like that you can get each season that. It was interesting and it was creative and it was like there was no. It wasn't this boring. Well, we're starting you over and it's these different bots. It's like this is. You can earn these sets, you can earn these items, blah, blah, blah. And so to this.
45:02 --> 45:05 And you can keep them forever after you get it. You just have to play to get it.
45:06 --> 45:07 Yeah, my.
45:07 --> 45:56 My thing with the seasons in Diablo 3. Well, I don't mind the idea of encouraging you to start a new character because that's. I mean, that's kind of how I used to play. Just. I would space out every six months. I would start putting a character and start from scratch. But when I looked at the time, Path of Exile was. Was out, which is very much Diablo inspired ARPG as well. And they also had seasons. But the difference in Path of Exile is each season would have some kind of mechanical difference, whether it's like new shrines that would spawn special mobs or some of the later seasons got very, very different. Like one season, I'll remember, had a. A special screen where the. A pyramid map. And as you move through the rooms of the pyramid, you would unlock certain bonuses. And it was almost like Rog, like, so like Path of Exile was doing the season thing to such an awesome degree. D3, it was kind of like, okay, there's new armor. Right. It didn't. It didn't hit the same buttons for me.
45:57 --> 46:08 Diablo 3 did change. Like they would make this spell will affect these things differently. And the, you know, so they would do that. But no, you didn't get any new areas. You didn't get. I mean, it was. Yeah, yeah.
46:09 --> 46:12 So. Oh, go ahead.
46:12 --> 46:16 I do have to say. What's it called? Whimsyshire.
46:17 --> 46:20 Yes. That was the rainbow area.
46:21 --> 46:31 That. That's the secret level. There's a. There's a goblin that runs around and if you kill him, you go in and it's like rainbows and unicorns and everything tries to kill you. And it's.
46:31 --> 46:38 Yeah, it's. It's hate unicorns. It's the unicorns to kill a unicorn or whatever that movie is, or the
46:38 --> 46:50 unicorns from Cabin in the woods, you know, because they like you're you through into the wall. Like, you know, it's this majestic unicorn that will straight up murder you like that.
46:51 --> 46:51 Yeah.
46:51 --> 47:01 Yeah. I played a ton of D3, but I never made it to Whimsy Shire. Not one not once. I. I don't. I don't even remember what the. The requirement is to get into it, but I never did pull that off. I should try and do that.
47:01 --> 47:19 So it was a. It was a specific loot Goblin. And on the Switch, there was actually an Amiibo that you could use to. To pop the Loot Goblin. And every once in a while you would get. You would get a. The. The Whimsy Shire Loot Goblin. Was there.
47:19 --> 47:21 Diablo. Was there Diablo 3amiibos?
47:22 --> 47:23 Yes. Yes, there were.
47:23 --> 47:25 Of course there was. Yeah. Okay.
47:27 --> 47:29 I'll tell you. The Goblin was one of them.
47:29 --> 48:48 Was it? I should look those up. Like, I usually don't buy Amiibos, but sometimes the Amiibos are really cool looking. There's. There's one for Metroid Prime 4 with Samus on a bike. I'm like, it's 40 bucks, but it looks really rad. I love Samus. My thing with the Switch version of Diablo 3, and the reason I played that version more than the PC version and I played a lot of the PC version of D3, is the Dodge was definitely part of it. I loved playing D3, the controller and the Dodge made that game so much better. It felt more like an action game meal to dodge out of the way of wave attacks. And it's why when path of exile 2 got announced and they mentioned they were doing the Dodge thing, I'm like, fuck, yeah. Because that's like the best part of D3. But the other part of it was the Co Op. On the Switch, you can play Co Op with family, same screen, and Meanwhile on the PC, you can't. If you want to play D3CO OP, you have to get separate devices, separate accounts, pan twice. I hate that because on the Switch, it's just. Yeah, one account. It's so much better of a game. And like when we're in the age now of the Steam deck, where it's so easy for me to dock my Steam deck in the tv. Like, I just want to be able to play same screen on the Steam Deck and you can't. And that drives me nuts. That Blizzard won't go back and support that. They have it in D3 on the switch. I don't understand why they don't bring that to the PC version. It's very frustrating.
48:48 --> 48:49 Yeah.
48:50 --> 49:08 I was gonna say I did play Co Op for a little while with Synstress on the 360, so I think you could do two player. You might have been able to do up to four. The Switch definitely had Four player, same screen, co op. Yeah, so that's pretty good.
49:09 --> 49:12 Do you guys remember, did you guys play D3 when it first came out?
49:13 --> 49:28 No, I got Synstress, the 360 version that included the. I don't remember what, the expansion pack. Yeah, it was the ultimate edition or whatever it was called.
49:28 --> 49:38 Yeah, because when D3 first came out, the big thing I think at the time, and maybe one of the biggest criticisms was the real money auction house. Yeah. You want to explain that one? Because that's not even around anymore.
49:39 --> 49:40 Yes.
49:40 --> 49:48 Yeah, because that is why I actually said fuck that game in the first place and didn't want it. And then, you know, it got better and he got it for me for my birthday.
49:48 --> 51:30 Yeah. So the, the auction, they. Okay, so basically what was happening is in Diablo 2, people were getting epic loot, you know, these crazy sets or these, you know, this javelin of, you know, you know, fuck everything else or whatever. And they were, they would go on to ebay, they would go on to other services and they would sell them for real life money. And then basically like there were, there were escrow systems set up for this that were supposed to protect you, but it was a whole nightmare. And so basically Blizzard looked at that and said, let's legitimize this and let's protect this. And so even on the back of the box it says, you know, a auction system or however they phrase it, and it lasted three years. And what's interesting is it lasted three years not because it was hard to technically remove. They were worried about being sued because it was on the back of the box. And so they kept it for three years. But basically you could use real life money or you could use in game gold. They had two auction houses to trade items for, you know, money. And the problem is, is once again, it basically, people basically looked at it and said, well, now the game's pay to play or pay to play to win or sorry, pay to win. And so, yeah, they basically did. They got enough flack. Everybody said this game's great enough, but this auction system's pissing us off. And so they. Yeah, go ahead. You were going to say something.
51:30 --> 52:19 Yeah, because the problem, the problem I had with the game was I had to, I had to basically ignore the auction house existed when it first came out because the items that would drop at your level when you naturally played the game were fine. Right. But when you, when you looked at your level range in the auction house, like you said, people get the most uber powerful weapon, they're selling on the auction house, I could buy an item for level 5 on the auction house that is 20 times better than whatever I'm finding in the game at level five. It was. It was really, really quite insane. And like there was ways to do it with gold. So if this was like a second or third character, then you had gold from a prior character, then maybe you could, you know, you know, grind up that character with. With auction house stuff. But it felt like it was defeating the purpose of. In the spirit of Diablo. Also, the idea of the real money being involved, it really didn't sit well with me. Right. Like, I already don't like microtransactions in games.
52:19 --> 52:20 Yep.
52:20 --> 53:08 But the idea that there's something like this where like, let's be real teenagers are playing this game, can start buying things with real money. I don't like that. There was a. I had a co worker forever ago. He made not a. Not a bunch of money, but he definitely made almost a thousand bucks. I think he said at the time. And it was enough that when he was. He was going to quit. So at the point when he was quitting, he's like, yeah, I just sold a bunch of stuff and cashed out in Diablo 3 at the auction house, I made a bunch of money, hundreds of dollars. I'm using it for my vacation. So, like, that's where it was at with like, people were making money off it. And again, it just. I don't like that whole idea of selling items for money. I get why the market's there and I get. For some people who don't have the time to put into these games, maybe they like that as an option, but man, am I so glad they brought it out of that game and they haven't gone back to that system since. Okay. It's.
53:08 --> 53:08 Yeah.
53:08 --> 53:33 But I know that it was at that point they were owned by Activision, I believe. Right. And Activision is all about those microtransactions. Right. They're all about making the money because they have the cash cow World of Warcraft. And they're always looking to ways to get money out of players. Right. So I think when they look at Diablo 3 and how you could make money off this thing, I'm surprised. I'm not surprised. It took three years to kill it because of how much money they must have been taken off the top on transactions.
53:33 --> 54:04 Yeah, yeah. But they have gone on record and said, you know, we would have removed it sooner, but like, we basically had to get legal to sign off on this because it is a Feature listed on the back of the box. Yeah, so. Yeah, so. But I enjoyed. I enjoyed Diablo 3. I have definitely played through and beaten that a handful of times. You know, being on a plane for 12 hours, you can kind of do it in a run.
54:05 --> 54:05 Yeah.
54:06 --> 54:30 One, sorry. One other thing I really, really enjoyed about Diablo 3 that I don't feel like it was there as much in Diablo 2 is the lore. Like it was so lore heavy and you find books and you find journals and you get all the different like stories and history and I really, really enjoyed that. Like, I, I love lore. I will. I'm one of those deep dive people. I. I love it.
54:30 --> 54:34 She'll. She'll go read item descriptions for the lore.
54:34 --> 54:35 I do. Yes.
54:35 --> 55:41 There's an author, he. He did a series of books based on Diablo and it was because of Diablo 3 and it's in that time period. Like Tyrael is a excellent character for, for Blizzard. Right. I love Tyrell and like you, you saw him a little bit in D2, but in D3 you get his entire backstory and like the opening of the. Of the falling star is. That's Tyreal coming down. He's the fallen angel, literally. And then like the cinematic, you had the cinematics between the acts, like Diablo 2 had with really, really cool cinematics. Like the fight. Yeah, cheerio. Versus like, I forget who the other angel is, but he was real. But that whole fight and then the reveal of Diablo at the end with that like all those cinematics are epic. And then you're right, you have. In between that, as you're playing, you have conversations with what, Deckard, Cain and with Leah and Adria. I think the witch from the second game, she's in as well. So like, I love that as well and I'm glad they kept that spirit as well too. But yeah, lore wise, story wise only got better from D2. As much as I love D2, I think more gameplay wise, I definitely appreciate the story and the world building for three. I just wish it was a little bit darker in tone, that's all.
55:41 --> 55:44 Yes, that is exactly how I feel about it. I agree 100%.
55:45 --> 55:55 So that I think kind of can transition us into Diablo 4. I think there's only one of us that's played Diablo 4 here.
55:56 --> 56:09 Yeah, I played maybe like an hour. They had a free weekend and I'd like an hour and it just. I. I didn't. I don't feel like I played enough to really get a good feel for it. I enjoyed what I played, but it wasn't that much.
56:09 --> 56:12 It definitely looks darker than Diablo.
56:12 --> 56:13 Yeah, yeah.
56:13 --> 56:25 The. The opening cinematic is definitely R rated, put it that way. It is definitely darker and more violent tone. Like, whereas I could play Diablo 3 with my girls cannot play Diablo 4 with kids. There's just no way in hell.
56:26 --> 56:51 Really quick, I want to go back because we were talking cinematics and it made me have like a trigger memory. One of the very first things I Remember from Diablo 1 in 97, 96. 97 was there are people hanging from a tree. Like in that first cinematic. I'm like, holy shit. You know. Anyway, sorry.
56:51 --> 57:05 So Diablo was also like a. A bloody game. Don't. Does. Is it the butcher that you kill in Diablo 1? And I know he's like this tall and he's very pixelated, but I think. I think you disembowel him or chop his head off or something. I seem to be well in his bloody game also.
57:05 --> 57:19 1. A butcher. Well, I think there's actually a butcher into M3 and that. Yes, that's one of the things. Like my kids would sneak up and watch me while I was playing Diablo 2. And like, even though it's very pixelated, like, that is a gory game.
57:19 --> 57:19 Yeah.
57:19 --> 57:40 Like, you get down and you've got the rack and you've got people that are torn apart and pieces everywhere. And like, I. I love that because I am and have always been a horror junkie. Anyone who knows me knows this about me. Like, that is. That is my jam. You know, you should see them and it's like women that are just torn apart and I'm like, yeah, it just.
57:40 --> 57:41 You should see our basement.
57:41 --> 57:42 Yeah.
57:42 --> 57:44 Yeah, you should see our basement.
57:44 --> 58:48 Well, like, and D3 has a little bit of that in later acts. I think there's the one act where you have the lust demon or whatever and there's some bondage gear that. That felt a bit out of place compared to the first few acts, which are very. I mean, like, again, I won't say cartoony, but yeah, it's kind of cartoony compared to the previous games. So. But yeah, it's definitely a different tone and not as graphic, but okay. So. So Diablo 4. Yeah, I. I had to ask why you jumped. You didn't. You didn't get into it. But a day or two on a free weekend is not enough to kind of get a take on the game. I initially did not like it when it first came out and I regretted buying it when it first came out. And there's a couple reasons why the main thing with Diablo 3 that I liked was that the online play, it was so easy to hop onto Diablo 3 and play with friends or hop online and play with randos. I would hop on random because by the end of Reaper of Souls you unlock like an adventure mode which is more like random quests every day. I love playing that just for random killing time. And you could do online groups very easily. Diablo 4 was an always online game that felt very loyal.
58:48 --> 58:49 I didn't fight right off the bat.
58:49 --> 01:00:40 Yeah. And you, you didn't necessarily to find groups, I think you had to go out of your way to find them on a friends list or something. It was not as easy as D3 was. You would see other players because the world the world map of D4 was is static. It's huge, it's massive, but it's static. And there are certain areas of the map where there's world bosses much like MMOs. Right. And when you go to those world area bosses, that's where you'd see other players or versions of players in the congregate there for world bosses. So you could have like 30, 40 people on screen at once killing a big world boss. It's cool. But it's a static map and it's the same world bosses and it gets very tiresome. And half the time I just want to do dungeons with, with randos. Right. Like I didn't have anybody else friend wise who played D4. Everybody was playing Path of Exile. So if you have friends on your list I'm being at, then maybe you can play D4. But otherwise it feels like a very solo game and I didn't like that. The other part of it was, is the lack of procedural generation. Like I said, the world map is very static. But even the dungeons, the dungeons themselves, I think it's better now. But when it first came out it felt like there's only a handful of the same bosses or the same layouts of dungeons. And it's like a ladder system. Like you enter a dungeon and it'd be do kill X of this or collect X essence or go hit these switches. But it was the same three or four formulas. And then it would unlock the next layer of the dungeon and then you have a small boss and they were all like that. And it didn't feel, it didn't feel different enough. And like because of the switch of graphic style from cartoony D3 to more of a serious tone, which is fine. But I felt like those bosses, it was hard to make out what was unique about them. Like Diablo 3 bosses are huge and epic. Like when you fight. When you fight Mephisto, I think in that one, who's the one where you were. You're in Luke Golen, I think. And he just takes up the entire screen. The thing changes these massive. Like they're very.
01:00:40 --> 01:00:42 He's one side of it, right?
01:00:42 --> 01:01:09 Yeah. And he takes up the whole thing. Or like the Butcher. The butcher in Diablo 3 is an epic fight. He's massively storing a hook around the flames. Very cool set pieces. Diablo 4 is much more subdued. You have those big world bosses. They look cool, but they don't feel as impactful as the ones in D3. And I felt that was annoying. So there's a lot I didn't like. I also didn't like how the. The skills. The skill tree system I. You know, I love built in Diablo 2 because the build diversity, the. The lay how you could really change your build.
01:01:09 --> 01:01:10 Yeah.
01:01:10 --> 01:01:24 Diablo 3 even had that with the ability to modify skills. D4 has a little bit of that. But it. It still felt like there was an optimum way to build my character. And it. And it felt like I was being pigeonholed into a build. I didn't like it. Now that changed. Go ahead.
01:01:24 --> 01:01:39 Oh, sorry. Just one thing I did want to say about Diablo 3 is like, I feel like it ended perfectly. You know, like it came full circle and it was beautiful. And I'm very glad to have experienced that because that was really cool.
01:01:40 --> 01:02:07 Like Tyrael going up to join the Angels as the one representative of mankind. Like, that's an excellent ending. Like, I didn't. I didn't even need Reapers of Souls, to be honest. Like, they could have skipped that expansion entirely and it would have been fine. Whereas Diablo 4, because Devil 4 story is. Is okay. But it doesn't end at the end of the game. It's a cliffhanger. It's basically you spend the whole time like the alt. You don't fight Diablo at the end. The whole. The monster you fight is. It's Mephisto, I think it is.
01:02:08 --> 01:02:08 Okay.
01:02:08 --> 01:02:21 You don't really fight them. It's kind of a cliffhanger. It leaves you hanging. And then there's a second expansion came out. And even that expansion, as cool as that new class was, it adds a Jaguar class or. Yeah, it was like an Aztec themed class. Very cool class.
01:02:21 --> 01:02:22 Okay.
01:02:23 --> 01:02:48 It allows you to do a lot more dodging, which is what I loved. So I love that class. But the story, again, you still don't defeat a meso visto by the end of it. So the story is not done. There's an expansion coming out this year. I think it's Lord of Hatred, I think is the name of it. And in that one, I think finally you get to kill Mephisto. So, like, they don't finish the story is my big beef. Like, it doesn't. And, you know, years of expansions and it's annoying. I don't like it.
01:02:48 --> 01:03:23 Yeah, that's kind of. I mean, there are a couple things that break from the tradition of the franchise, which is procedural, because everything to this point has been procedural. Now, sure, in Diablo 2, people realize that if an exit faces this way or if an entrance to a dungeon faces this way, the exit is going to face a very specific way. So, you know, it's likely in a corner here or whatever, and you can. You can game that a little bit. But everything in between is all. Is all procedural. But. Yeah, the other thing is, is you still kill. Deal.
01:03:23 --> 01:03:23 You'll be fine.
01:03:23 --> 01:03:24 Yeah, yeah.
01:03:24 --> 01:03:25 You still kill Diablo, but you.
01:03:26 --> 01:03:39 You still kill Diablo. And then the expansions give you people like, Ball and, you know, Mephisto and I mean, you know, it's like. But you still kill Diablo because the fucking game is called Diablo. Yeah.
01:03:39 --> 01:03:44 I think Mephisto, you kill Mephisto in the jungle in Act 3 before you.
01:03:44 --> 01:03:55 Yeah, I can't remember what the. What the final. Final in the expansion was in Diablo 3. But in. In Diablo 2, the expansion was Ball. You killed Ball. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:03:55 --> 01:04:01 And in D3, it was like a fallen angel. I can't remember the name of the angel, but he's like, humanity needs to be just wiped out. Right. That's the whole thing.
01:04:02 --> 01:04:04 He was a dick. He was totally a dick.
01:04:04 --> 01:04:08 Yeah. So, I mean, the world of Diablo is very, very depressing. Right.
01:04:09 --> 01:04:13 Have you. Have you watched Supernatural? Because all the angels are dicks.
01:04:13 --> 01:04:15 I haven't seen that show, but I've heard bits.
01:04:15 --> 01:04:18 Oh, all the angels are dicks.
01:04:18 --> 01:04:19 Yeah.
01:04:19 --> 01:04:22 The first five seasons of Supernatural are pretty great.
01:04:23 --> 01:04:23 Yeah.
01:04:23 --> 01:04:28 Which is as long as the show was supposed to last. It's 15 seasons.
01:04:28 --> 01:04:29 Oh, I watched through eight.
01:04:29 --> 01:04:30 15 seasons.
01:04:30 --> 01:04:32 15 seasons. Yeah.
01:04:32 --> 01:04:32 That's a bit much.
01:04:33 --> 01:04:33 The.
01:04:33 --> 01:04:42 The creator planned out a. Mapped out a story for the first five seasons, and they're beautiful. And then after that, it's kind of hit and miss.
01:04:42 --> 01:04:53 Yeah. It's like Stargate SG1. I love Stargate SG1, but it hit the last couple seasons. They didn't think they would have. So it's a completely different alien. Race, completely different story, and it's kind of lost its charm for sure.
01:04:53 --> 01:04:53 Yeah.
01:04:54 --> 01:04:59 Okay, so. So you don't kill Diablo in a Diablo game.
01:05:00 --> 01:06:21 No, no. It's. It's like I, I assume at some point they were going to bring Diablo into it, so I thought the expansion would be Diablo, but. But no, I, I, it's been a while since I played through the base game, so I could be wrong. But I don't think they even give you a hint about Diablo. It's all Mephisto, which, like, it's. If that was the end boss of the first game, then fine. But how the multiple expansions. So the new expansion coming out. I, I'm trying to avoid giving Microsoft and Blizzard money, but the upcoming expansion, instead of just one character class and landmass, it's actually two character classes. The warlock now. But also they're bringing back the Paladin, which I, I did like the Paladin. Oh, and also. Yeah, and a bunch of land and story. And hopefully to finish off the story of D4 or at least have an arc finish. Right. So I think for that reason I might pick up the expansion to play it, depending on how much it is. I don't want to spend $80 on an expansion. But Blizzard's been kind of weird lately because that was the thing with this, is that this is a company that, before that, before they got bought by Microsoft, I think they're still owned by Activision when D4 first came out. And like, it shows with the microtransactions. Like, there's a cosmetics store, it's fucking Diablo. It's top down. You can barely see your character, but they want you. You can spend 29.99 to buy a sorceress outfit that you barely see. Like, the cosmetic store is wild. Like, it's bad.
01:06:21 --> 01:06:22 Look at these amazing boots.
01:06:23 --> 01:08:04 Yeah. Yeah. No, literally, that's what it is, right? Sets and stuff. And yeah, it's, it's because, like, I look at path of exile 2, I keep bringing that up, but path of exile 2, yeah, they're cosmetics that can affect, like, the look of spells and stuff. That's cool. At least you can see the difference. But D4, you can't see. Or D3, you couldn't see a damn three. And D4, you can't see anything either. It's just a. It's just weird. It just. The microtransactions is too much for a game like this. Like, I understand they want to make money and they want games as a Service. They want MMOs. But it's just not the perspective of it. Like if I could go first person or something or close behind the. The shoulder, third person, then. Then maybe so. Yeah. But D4 is definitely better now than it was when it first came out. I did go back to it recently. They revamped the whole item system so it's a lot as a lot less spreadsheet looking. I like stats are a little bit clear to read, a little bit easier to understand. Much more like D2 was. I do like one of the things they did really well in this one was. And Diablo 3 and Diablo 2 unique items were always like the big things you wanted for your character. Right. They usually had extra bonus that you didn't get on magic items or rare items. They were special to that item. They. They were unique. Diablo 4 kind of has the gameplay loop of you want to find those unique items like prefixes and then you can y them off the item and store them and you can level them up and make those. Make the ranges on those stats better and then apply it to other items. That's the. That's the end game for D4. That's a really cool system. So then it becomes like. Then it becomes. Well, I want to explore the world map because all the dungeons on the world map have uniques and tells you which ones for which class. So I know that this cave will have a barbarian thing. This one has a ranger thing or not ranger but druid thing.
01:08:04 --> 01:08:05 Yeah.
01:08:05 --> 01:08:28 So you have a reason to go to them. Yeah. And it's cool. And that system is really good. And they've made it better over time. So D4 is much better now than it was at release. I just. The story was really dry. The cinematic in the beginning is neat. But it's nothing like D3 at all. Like the D3 cinematics are so epic and the set piece is so much better. D4 is dull. Maybe that changes with the expansion though.
01:08:29 --> 01:08:38 I remember what you said. I. When we are finished here, I'm gonna go look up the Intro cinematic for D4 because I want to see what this R rated cinematic is.
01:08:39 --> 01:08:39 Yeah.
01:08:39 --> 01:08:58 I. So speaking of cinematics, when. When I first. When we first got got sinisterous Diablo 3 on the play on the Xbox 360, I would nap on the couch while she was playing it and I would wake up to these just epic cinematics that were going on.
01:08:58 --> 01:08:58 Yeah.
01:08:58 --> 01:09:08 Because Diablo 3 is full of them. It is like. It's almost like between like every. Every level. It's almost that level. Yeah.
01:09:09 --> 01:09:09 It's pretty good.
01:09:10 --> 01:09:10 Pretty great.
01:09:10 --> 01:09:34 But yeah, it's. It's a really good franchise. Like, I. Even though the team, the people who let. Who worked on D2, as much as I like it, and they've long since moved on and it's different teams and Blizzard is very much a different company now under Microsoft than they were under Activision. It's. It's definitely changed a lot. But 30 years of Diablo is crazy to think about. To think of a game that I played when I was leaving high school and now I have three kids and I'm still playing. The franchise is nuts.
01:09:36 --> 01:09:37 Yeah, for sure.
01:09:37 --> 01:10:16 And. And, and the fact is, is even. Even if the, you know, say the graphics or whatever are dated, the gameplay is not. You know, I read a review on Diablo that basically the reviewer said this is going to be the game to clone. You know, like every. Like we had the FPS era and now we're going to have the Diablo era, the ARPG era. Right. And we've had a lot of them and they're great. And there are some that definitely are at that tier. Torchlight was at that tier Grim dawn that we talked about. We've tried a few others. There was a Van Helsing game that was okay.
01:10:16 --> 01:10:17 It was okay.
01:10:17 --> 01:10:20 It was okay. Titan Quest, Grim Dawn.
01:10:20 --> 01:10:33 I really. Jake, I would ask you to really consider picking up Grim dawn because it is. It is Diablo, but Lovecraftian.
01:10:33 --> 01:10:44 Okay. Yeah. And I own it because of Steam. Right. It's a Steam backlog problem I have. There was a few other ones. There was last Epic Quest.
01:10:44 --> 01:10:45 Yeah.
01:10:47 --> 01:12:15 Yeah. Less epic. I tried because they said they were. It was fun on the Steam deck, but when I tried the Steam deck at the time, it was really buggy, so I dropped it. I think I still have that one. Path of Exile is the one I go back to all the time. It's. It's free to play. There's so much content in that first game, especially now compared to when it first came out. The first Path of exile has like 12 acts. It's also lore heavy with books and. And narration. You. You learn about the. The. The native tribe that used to be on the island. And it's got hints of Australia in there. It's really great. It has the. It has a skill system where you sock at gems to modify your skills. Path of exile 2 is currently. You have to pay for it in early access, but when it goes 1.0, it's going to be free to play as well. And I love path of Exile 2, even though it's not complete yet. There is a lot of content there. The classes are fun. The tech tree is. You have to see the tech tree to believe it. It's wild but it's also really great gameplay wise. Like the dodging to me like a top down game, especially when using a controller but you have to dodge out the way of attacks. Just has a really epic feeling as you're dodging the. The boss using your attacks and the additional customization of skills is really great. Path of exile 2 is fantastic. I, I understand people don't want to pay for it in early access. Totally get it. But when that game goes 1.0, people need to check it out. It'll be free. But it's, it's the, it's. If you like Diablo 2, path of XL2 I think is the next best thing in terms of like where it goes from there. Like spiritual success for sure.
01:12:16 --> 01:12:26 I would argue Grim dawn, same idea is at that tier and that game is gritty and dark. It is super dark.
01:12:27 --> 01:12:36 I think after Diablo 3 I think there's a lot of studios saw that and they're like well no, that's not Diablo. It's supposed to be darker.
01:12:37 --> 01:12:57 No, that's how I felt about the game when I first got it and played it and it was enjoyable. But I was like it doesn't really feel like a Diablo game, you know. And it just the way that it carried itself forward though I think it really does fit itself into that well.
01:12:57 --> 01:13:11 Real quick, I. I want to call out. In Sin's background is a commissioned work from a former podcast, Pulse. Yeah, yeah, Pulse made that and I
01:13:11 --> 01:13:15 came from the hospital and that was waiting for me. It was very happy.
01:13:15 --> 01:13:20 He even carved like the edges in and burned those so that it looks like it. Yeah, yeah.
01:13:20 --> 01:13:21 It's pretty epic.
01:13:21 --> 01:13:26 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, Diablo 2 had a real
01:13:26 --> 01:13:52 style to it and like it's a game that it's. Yeah, it's pretty. Yeah, he did an amazing job. He's really great. I have another piece that's awesome. Diablo 2 has a style and it's, it's so easy to play it now. The resurrected edition is, is totally worth picking up and to play and you can use a controller for those who want to use controller and play on the tv or you can go play it with mouse and keyboard like it's meant to be. It's one of those things where I kind of wish they would do a resurrected edition of the first game. Just add running.
01:13:52 --> 01:13:53 Oh for sure.
01:13:53 --> 01:13:54 But I would like to see the same treatment.
01:13:54 --> 01:14:04 I would love to play the first game and have that experience. It's just. We tried it and it just didn't work. Right. So we found other things to do.
01:14:05 --> 01:14:06 It's old school hard.
01:14:07 --> 01:14:22 Yeah. It's. It's brutal. It's not a game. You're meant to, I think, beat Diablo easily. Right. Like, I remember. I think I did it once, if I'm. If I'm honest. Like, it was. It was not very often and it. And you definitely have to cheese all the spells. So to do it.
01:14:22 --> 01:14:26 Cheese is a valid strategy. I will always say that.
01:14:26 --> 01:14:26 Yeah.
01:14:27 --> 01:14:28 I. I think part of the drive
01:14:28 --> 01:14:30 for me, the game lets you do it.
01:14:30 --> 01:14:30 Yeah.
01:14:30 --> 01:14:33 It's not cheating if it's in there. That's. That's true. Yeah.
01:14:34 --> 01:14:55 I think the drive for me, and part of the reason I beat the first Diablo way back in the day was, as I said, we were playing it at work and everybody would spit it up. And so it was almost a competition to see who could get through the game as quickly as possible, you know, and so we would charge. Yeah, pretty much.
01:14:55 --> 01:15:03 I remember how many levels were in Diablo. 1. Was it that long a game? I have to go. I have to go look it up. Yeah.
01:15:03 --> 01:15:14 Yeah. Awesome. Well, any other thoughts? We. We're not going to talk Diablo Immortal. None of us, I think, have really played it.
01:15:14 --> 01:15:29 I. I tried it just because I have a phone and that was the thing. It's fine. But I mean, I don't. I don't like playing games like that on my phone. Like, it's. There's no controller. Right. Like there's no mouse. So why am I playing Diablo? My phone. But it works. It's fine. It's fine.
01:15:32 --> 01:15:38 Yeah. And we've made some recommendations for other games if you're interested in trying something else out. Any other thoughts?
01:15:40 --> 01:16:03 There is a really cool PlayStation port of the first Diablo game. When we're talking console Diablo. My first experience was playing on PC, but I rented the PS version the one time just to try it. Surprisingly good. So surprisingly good. So if everybody's having issues trying to play like the old GOG version or something, then check out the PS1 version just to see what the graphic style is like in the running. It's interesting.
01:16:03 --> 01:16:04 Nice.
01:16:04 --> 01:16:11 Yeah, nice. Great franchise. 30 years is a big milestone for Diablo. Didn't realize it was so long. Quick.
01:16:11 --> 01:16:13 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:16:14 --> 01:16:21 All right. Well, Sintress, thank you for joining us. Thank you for reminiscing about this amazing series of games.
01:16:21 --> 01:16:36 Thank you. For having me. I, I I'm glad to have an outlet because I can talk about this game a lot. Diablo 2 in particular Diablo 3 you know quite a bit too. But it's good to have this. So thank you for having me on here.
01:16:36 --> 01:16:38 I appreciate it's great to have you on. Yeah.
01:16:38 --> 01:17:02 Yeah for sure. And we do have a little bit of housekeeping so we have a patreon patreon.com presby to cancel and if you can join we'd love to have it. We, we we do appreciate anybody that helps us out and we have a couple tiers that we shout people out so Cthusias Jeff and
01:17:05 --> 01:17:10 Von Beardley. I had I thank you Vaughn.
01:17:11 --> 01:17:45 Yeah. And you get some special things. We have a back we have a behind the scenes channel in our Discord. You get a different color on a Discord et cetera, et cetera. Once again though it's not necessary. We just appreciate anybody that does it. Let's see you can find our our information at pressby to cancel.com or press b.org and come join our Discord. Tell us how we're wrong. Tell us how you appreciate these games, all that stuff or if you hate
01:17:45 --> 01:17:48 them or try it there too. Yeah.
01:17:48 --> 01:18:51 Yeah. Oh I have one thing to shout out real quick. If you're watching this on YouTube or Twitch or if you're listening to Monday, they might still be around. Steam Next Fest is going on right now and there's tons of demos and I know it can be hard to try to sift through the wave of crap that's in the demo store half the time. A lot of it's AI slop this time unfortunately. But there are some great gems in there. I did do a video here on our channels. Check that out. I played through a few including Vampire Crawlers which is that Vampire Survivor sequel. But also there's a game in the spirit of, Star Star Fox 64 wild blue skies. That's awesome. Loot Horde I believe which definitely has some inspiration from Diablo with the tetrasing of inventory. Yeah but it but is a roguelike game turn based. It's interesting. A lot of great stuff in the next best this time. Titanium Court is excellent if you can get past the intro. So be sure to check out that video. And if anybody else has played any demos on Steam Next Fest let me know what's good because I'm always looking to see what the next new indie game that will be we should have on a radar for sure.
01:18:52 --> 01:19:06 Yep. Yeah. Well we appreciate everybody and check us out on our audio wherever you find your podcasts. Of course, we're YouTube. We do. We do stream on Twitch on Fridays.
01:19:07 --> 01:19:08 Yeah.
01:19:08 --> 01:19:13 So this has been another press p to cancel byeedrum,
01:19:33 --> 01:19:48 Sam.
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