Diablo Was Originally A Turn-Based RPG
It is a well known fact that many games, both big and small, go through massive changes during the development process. From story, to gameplay, to visuals, almost everything is up for changing.
At GDC, the creator of the popular Diablo franchise promised to release the original pitch for Diablo, and he did via his blog.
What is interesting in the pitch is the differences we see from the game that is out today. Primarily, that the game was originally meant to be a turn-based RPG, instead of a real-time one. Apparently, this idea came at the behest of Blizzard, who truly believed that the real-time aspect would be better than turn based.
You can find out what he was different via the document, below is an excerpt from it:
Man, if this was indeed meant to be a turn based, would it have received the amount of attention that it did? Would it have followed up in part two and three? I for one think it would be a completely new game and have a total different experience. Wouldn't that give a more sort of Divinity Original Sin to it? I might still have enjoyed it since it's still in my genre of games that I like to play.
I like turn based RPGs so I am very curious to have seen this version. I don't think it would have sold as much though but maybe I'm just missing something. Either way I think that's very interesting and would like to see the previous version very much.
We were very close to lose a future classic, then. 😛
I wonder what would've happened to the genre if Diablo wasn't what it became.
Maybe, I'm not sure. Turn based was sorta popular back then, although IMO it never truly lived in the video game market as it did and still does with tabletop games. I do like turn based games on PC though, and I probably still would play Diablo had it come out as a turn based game.
I can easily see it being something like pillars of eternity or divinity but not that in depth. And yes you are right, turn based was all the rage back then. I might have been a hit then… not so much nowadays though since most games are turning action based.