Gaming News Diablo 4 will have a major competitor created by one of the fathers of Diablo!
With the release of Diablo IV fast approaching and its beta opening its doors very soon, one of the fathers of the saga has just joined another studio to create another action-RPG with revolutionary ambitions.
Erich Schäfer is back in action
If you’ve been playing Diablo since one of the first two episodes of the series, you might have heard of Erich Schäfer. As the co-creator of Diablo and Diablo II, the American developer is nothing more and nothing less than a master of the genre. In fact, in addition to being semi-responsible for one of the largest Hack’n’Slash licenses, he was also involved in the development of the Torchlight and Rebel Galaxy franchises. A particularly extensive CV that undoubtedly makes him a great asset to anyone who manages to persuade him to work with him.
However, after several decades in the industry (and a rather mixed experience with Hellgate: London), Shaefer has learned to accept nothing. He says himself that he just wants to work.”on projects that are fun and honestly trying to do something different.” So when we learn that he’s just joined Moon Beast Productions to work on a new action RPG game, we might as well tell you that we’re already wondering what that project might end up being. About the latter, Schäfer develops:
What the Moon Beast team has built in such a short time is impressive. It has fueled my imagination with various possibilities and that is one of the main reasons why I joined them.
A real competitor to Diablo IV?
In an interview with our colleagues from venture beatErich Schäfer returned to the action RPG genre as a whole. According to him, most of the games in this category are too similar:
They are all essentially the same games. They have a structure of 4X. They have five classes and each of them has a skill tree. It’s a very good place to work. Of course I’ve always loved it. But it’s very difficult because today’s content expectations are broader. There are companies like Blizzard working on $100 million budget titles. These big action RPGs need a full campaign. And then you have to feed the content game non-stop. And action RPGs have always had a lot of content.
A particularly suffocating vision of the genre that Moon Beast Productions aims to change in its own way. With the help of Shaefer, the studio announces quite revolutionary ambitions and wants to bring a breath of fresh air with the next title. When asked about this, Peter Hu, the co-founder of Moon Beast Productions, develops:
We developed Moon Beast to bring a new perspective to action RPGs. Too many games these days are linear evolutions of the original Diablo. Going back and reinventing the action RPG genre in isometric view with Erich is a dream come true for me. In the short time since we’ve met, we’ve come up with some incredible ideas that have sparked a creative ambition I haven’t felt since the days of Diablo II.
If we can’t come up with anything more specific at the moment, we look forward to hearing more about this famous project. Obviously, it certainly shouldn’t see the light of day for quite a while, which will give us time to discover Diablo IV at leisure. As a reminder, the game’s beta will open its doors to those who pre-ordered it on the weekend of March 17th, and then to everyone on the weekend of March 24th.
