Blizzard canceled a roguelike version of Diablo 4 with permadeath and Batman: Arkham-style brawls

If things had gone differently at Blizzard 10 years ago, we might've been playing a version of Diablo 4 with melee brawls akin to the Batman: Arkham series. I'm not even sure that idea sounds good on paper, but it didn't seem to work out in practice either because Blizzard eventually rebooted the project into the demon-slaying action RPG we have today.

In an excerpt from his book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment on Wired, Jason Schreier tells the story of the Diablo 4 that never was. Fresh off of Diablo 3's Reaper of Souls expansion, director Josh Mosqueira spun up a team to work on a game that would've veered far away from the series' hack-and-slash identity.

This proposed Diablo sequel, codenamed Hades, took inspiration from the Batman: Arkham series and replaced the isometric perspective with an over-the-shoulder view. Combat would've been "punchier" and death would've been permanent. Apparently, Blizzard had so much trust in Mosqueira that it was going to let him completely change the shape of one of its most beloved series.

However, critical problems with the concept for Hades held it back. It was supposed to have close-quarters combat with slow-motion animations to give hits extra impact and also somehow do all of that in co-op. Nobody could quite figure out how to pull this off in a way that was fun to play and in a way that felt like the kind of Diablo game millions of people were expecting after Diablo 3.

The project fizzled out as Mosqueira stopped showing up to the office, leaving the small team on Hades to flounder. And then in July 2016 Mosqueira left Blizzard, which then led to the project's cancellation shortly after. But before it was rebooted into the Diablo 4 we have today, a team of developers held a game jam that helped spawn the necromancer class for Diablo 3.

Even though Diablo 3 was heavily criticized, I think the last thing people would've wanted was a game that didn't even play like a Diablo. I love Batman: Arkham Asylum but I also love being a wizard in RPGs and battling a group of thugs with my fists would not have impressed me.

Still, it's interesting to me how pieces of this idea for weightier combat made their way into the real Diablo 4. This week Blizzard launched its first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, and one of the reasons I can't stop playing it is how satisfying the combat feels compared to other action RPGs. The visual and audio effects give weapons and magic a crunchy feel when they impact enemies in much the same way the Arkham games do for Batman's jabs and kicks. Maybe some small bit of Hades stuck around in the developer's minds after all.