I was little. Really little when the first Diablo hit the shelves. I remember I didn’t even know how to play it, so the majority of the time, I just sat there watching how my dad did it. It was one hell of a journey for me. I don’t remember all the things, but there was one instance that stayed with me forever.
So, I bet it is night, late fall, maybe early winter. My dad plays Diablo. I’m sitting on the chair beside him and eyeballing the monitor. He was already somewhere in the late middle of the game. Wondered about some underground castle or catacombs where giant rhino-dudes were making trouble. And I remember this clearly because, being a dumb little kid, I was so impressed with those dudes (I think they were some sort of demons and perhaps had some more common name than rhino-dudes) that I couldn’t help but ask my dad: “Who are those guys? Why do they have horns? How did they get those horns in the first place?”
And he, trying to be honest, but not too much, with a little dumb kid, said: “They are very bad people, and very bad people could grow horns.”
Now that was the real shit. For the rest of the evening I was preoccupied – how was that possible, and why no one did anything about it? I mean, growing horns was the real problem. At least for a little kid back then (I’m really glad Metal Gear Solid V Phantom Pain and its horn-growth mechanic was some 20-something years away).
But anyway, he was going through those catacombs or castles. And I watched him, and then he opened one chest. And an armor dropped. And wore this armor, and it changed the way the main hero looked. Like before, he was some kind of swagger running around in a red jacket or something like that (dad played as a warrior), now he looked like a real badass knight. I mean, he had the plate armor, helmet, and all other important things that were must-haves for a true warrior. I think it was the best armor in the game for the warrior. And it left me speechless. The second I saw it, that was it, the game was sold to me. Back then, I was a big sucker for knights. I loved all movies where there were knights in full plate armor, where they fought and did other knight stuff. I think my favorite movie was Valiant or something like that. About this kid who turned into a knight, won the princess, and turned out to be a prince and beat all the bad guys. Or something like that. I don’t remember much, only remember cool armor and the scene where he walked in it on the bottom of the lake.
So, when I saw that, I wanted to play this game. And I got a little older and finally played it. And I couldn’t understand a shit. Yeah, despite how really simple Diablo was (we’re talking about the first one), where you basically had a pre-built character with few stats to use, it was really tough for me.
Now, another example of me being an epic smooth brain, I managed to fuck up my build in Diablo. I played warrior, and I managed to do it. You may ask me – how? And I would tell – Intelligence. Yep, you got it right, I was this idiot who leveled up warrior into Intelligence. So, my guy, on contrary to others, couldn’t hit hard, wasn’t sturdy, but he was Intelligent as fuck. Boy, I had a hard time playing.
And this game is really cool since, in the beginning, it’s fairly easy, and even if you fucked up a few levels, you still had some survivability chance. The real problem happened when I met the first real threat – The Butcher. Oh yeah, the nightmare of my childhood. The horror that paralyzed me every time I heard this fucking voice. And now, for you to understand it – Freddy Krueger seemed funny, Jason Voorhees seemed like a cool guy, Michael Myers – shit, I wanted to be as big and tough as Mike, alright?, Chuckie was just a little irritating doll, Leprechauns weren’t popular in the places I grew, and Maniac Cop had Bruce Campbell so I knew who would win – Bruce fucking Campbell of course. But the Butcher. This motherfucker left me scared.
So, the first time I met this huge bitch in an apron, I played my intelligent warrior. Well, he wasn’t very intelligent since he opened the door to the fucking room in the middle of the underground hallway. There, among the countless mutilated corpses hanging from the hooks, right in front of the meat table (I think it’s called like that), stood this guy. And the millisecond he saw me, he said one phrase which I remember to this day. He said: “Mmm, fresh meat.”
Yeah, and then he charged me like a motherfucking Usain Bolt. I panicked, I walked inside the room, I closed the door, and my intelligent warrior got killed in two or three hits. Long before I was able to do at least something to save the day.
I won’t bore you describing later attempts to beat him with my intelligent warrior. I would just say – they failed. Intelligent warrior was bad and had to go.
I started all over again and now used my intelligence to understand that perhaps the good idea was to put points into already high stats like Strength and Vitality (I think it was called like that). And, oh miracle, the game changed. All of a sudden, my character stopped sucking sweaty ape’s balls and was bringing serious pain to the skeletons, zombies, and other suckers who thought they were hot. Besides, I discovered such a thing as farming. Yeah, you had to kill all the enemies on the floor, walk out of the dungeon, save the game and exit it. Load it. And voila – infinite money, experience, and stuff. I abused it a lot, won’t lie to you. When you’re a kid and find a nice exploit, you start using it like there’s no tomorrow. Screw the game design, screw the challenge – munchkin mindset was real long before I knew what it was called.
So, the next time I opened this forsaken door and heard this voice, there was a very different outcome. This guy rushed to me. Only this time, I didn’t panic. I didn’t run, neither was I scared. I was full of determination to face him and make him pay. And I faced him. And I fucked him up. And he could do shit about it. At that moment, I was the butcher, and he was the little bitch with an intelligence build. I was a one-man hate campaign at that moment. I was like the dude from Matrix who killed Neo before this fucking dweeb used cheat codes and ruined the perfect dystopian movie ending. That was an ecstatic experience to put it short.
After I was done with him, basically, the rest of the game was nothing but a walk in the park. I religiously upgraded Strength and Vitality (I believe it’s called like that, but I could be wrong, didn’t play it in a very long-long time) and basically understood the main idea behind the game – you hoard the stuff, you sell the stuff, you fix the stuff, you get better stuff, you kill the stuff, and then you repeat until it’s over.
The first Diablo didn’t have a chest. So I put all the shit I didn’t need on the lawn in front of the house I considered being mine (I think it belonged to someone else, but whatever, when you’re this young, the understanding of private property is very basic and usually doesn’t go further than My Toys – Your Toys). I came up with a system, sorted everything I hoarded according to the importance and time when I found it. That was cool. Besides, using cheat with farming made me basically filthy rich very fast. When you’re a little kid, you have too much free time on your hands, you don’t have stupid job or responsibilities beyond making sure your room looks alright during mom’s inspection.
So, later I found the armor, and it was also cool. The best experience I had, and after that, the game turned into one huge power fantasy. I played as a cool knight in cool armor. Often I went to the first levels of the dungeon for the single purpose of one-shooting basic skeletons and zombies. It felt very satisfying to be so strong and devastating you could take out those guys just by looking at them while they could do shit to you. The most realistic thing I’ve seen.
Anyway, meeting Diablo and killing him turned out to be fairly anticlimactic. I just went through the dungeons as usual, I didn’t read texts, so I had no idea what was the goal of the game and why we even did what we did when all of a sudden, this huge red dude runs at me and starts doing and casting all sorts of weird shit. He hits hard, but I’m overpowered by this time, so my strong warrior can take some abuse. Besides, I already know how to use healing potions effectively (I think I used hotkeys, yeah, I was cool), so I start returning the favor. This bitch starts running away from me, casting fire, his backup dudes try to swarm me. My PC is going crazy from all the shit going on the screen. And I’m like: “Hm, this mob is sturdy.”
Then I killed him, and it was the end. I saw a creepy final movie where the main hero takes a crystal out of Diablo’s forehead, turns him back into a human, and then, after thinking for a second or two, jams it into his own forehead. The end.
So I’m sitting there and like: “Dude, what the fuck?! I just started having fun! The fuck was that shit? Why did he take the crystal, why did he stuck it in his own forehead? Why-why-why? The guy was already dead, could you just leave it be? And what’s the deal with the crystal, anyway?”
I had a lot of questions, rants, and regrets. The game just became fun, and it was over. That sucked. Besides, I had this suspicion that my warrior, being strong and sturdy, was one dumb motherfucker. Like, he just took and inserted a freaking crystal in his forehead. Who does that?! How is that sane? How is that even logical? My mom taught me not to stab my head with pointy shit, and so far I’m doing alright. He’s a grown man with a killer beard, why can’t he be like that?
But that was it. The end. The game was done. I felt sad; I felt betrayed. It was the first game I had finished from start to finish on my own. Somehow, my still-developing little brain was able to finish this game. I loaded my previous save and kept playing. I think I reached level cap a long time ago and just spent my time running around the dungeons like a madman butchering everything in sight. If there would be stats, I think my hero would be considered some serious maniac.
I didn’t want to end with this world. Gruesome, grotesque, and somewhat dumb it was, I loved it. I loved this little forsaken town of Tristram, which was so cursed it had a 100+ level super dungeon under it. I loved the town music (and I still do, Tristram Town Theme is on the top of my soundtrack playlist) and could spend hours in town talking to the characters, listening to what they had to say (by this time, I started listening, because I felt I missed something important).
Then I replayed the game again. And again, I played as a warrior (to be honest, never played the first game as any other character, the warrior was one love). But now I read and listened to all the dialogue. I started to understand the lore. All of a sudden, all the freaky shit that happened there made sense. I found out about a rather tragic story of the King (I want to write Yorik, but I think it’s from Shakespeare) and his lost son. The betrayal of the bishop (or someone like that) and all the damage this motherfucker did. All of a sudden, I understood that there were more mini-bosses than the Butcher and Diablo. And it made sense. This world became even more alive, more mysterious. I wanted to know more about it. Find out more about the characters. By the time I finished Diablo for the second time, I think I understood the plot, the characters, and the reasons behind this crap really well. Now the quest became more personal since the characters of Tristram felt like sort of family (that’s why you don’t let your little kids play computer games, they start getting attached to the pixels on the screen). Man, that was one hell of a trip.
Anyway, then dad brought the DLC. Hellfire or something like that. And it was a miracle. It gave new levels, new gear, new quests, and reasons to live. Unfortunately, I don’t remember much about this DLC except that in the beginning, you basically explode a grenade in some kind of hive and go on a rampage. On entering the hive, you receive a message about how long they slept and waited, and now it was their time. And blah-blah-blah, let’s already proceed with killing. I think I beat it too, even though it was hard as hell. It was a true DLC for those who found the original Diablo too damn easy. At least, it seemed like that to me. I think later, when I would have more free time on my hands, I should play it and go down memory lane, but not now.