Blizzard veterans reveal Darkhaven, a Diablo 2-style RPG that trades "incrementalism" for "bold, expressive loot" and destructible terrain

Do you miss the good old days of Diablo, before Blizzard’s hellish clickfest megamorphed into a live service Beezelbub owned and operated by stinky uncle Microsoft? Be upstanding, perhaps, for Darkhaven – a new action RPG from a studio founded by a trio of Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 veterans, who have some questionable notions about weaponising volcanos.

Said veterans are Diablo 2 lead character artist Philip Shenk, Diablo 2 programmer/designer/lead Peter Hu, and the original Diablo’s senior designer, art director, and story writer Erich Schaefer. So, actual veterans then, rather than people who sneezed in the presence of some Sanctuary concept art while delivering pizza to Blizzard North, back in the 90s.

Darkhaven is an isometric (whatever that currently means) dark fantasy affair set in a world of fallen empires, overgrown ruins, and supernatural predators. Some kind of terrible evil is on the up and up, and it’s your job as Chosen One (or Chosen Several, if you’re playing co-op) to bop it on the hooter.

If Darkhaven is channelling the auld Blizzard North energy, it also sounds somewhat like a 4am Noita playthrough, in that the world is chaotic and modifiable.

“Designed for solo play, cooperative adventures, and high-stakes PvP-enabled realms, Darkhaven is set in a procedurally generated, fully dynamic, and persistent world,” explains a press release. “Terrain and structures are deformable and buildable, allowing players to dig through earth, tunnel through dungeon walls, drain lakes to uncover buried ruins, redirect lava flows to reshape battlefields, or rebuild shattered fortresses. Seasons change, weather alters combat and traversal, and world-altering events leave permanent scars. Every action contributes to a shared, evolving history.”

As Shenk summarises in the press release, “we’re building a world that remembers what you’ve done, bears the scars of your victories and failures, and tells stories that only your playthrough can create.”

It doesn’t sound like it’ll hinge quite as heavily on gear quality and progression as classique Diablo, either, let alone the wildly incontinent loot walrus that is Diablo IV. Characters will be able to “jump, climb, swim, dash, and traverse the world freely, introducing a new layer of action and skill rarely seen in the genre”, with victory in combat “not just a function of stats, but of movement, timing, and terrain awareness”.

“It’s not just about numbers fighting numbers anymore,” Schaefer comments in the press release. “It’s much more engaging. For me, it becomes more about skill, finding flow, and making smart decisions in the moment. I’ve never had more fun making and playing an ARPG.”

There is plenty of gear to acquire, but they’re apparently rejecting the “incrementalism” of certain modern ARPGs in favour of “bold, expressive loot – items that feel powerful, sometimes surprisingly so, and capable of redefining builds rather than merely optimizing them”, as the press release continues. Hu comments that “finding something powerful should be exciting and inspiring, not something that gets smoothed out into tiny percentage gains.”

All of which is very much speaking my language, as a serial incremental loot hater, with the caveat that they’re funding it via Kickstarter, ahead of a Steam early access release. I am newly suspicious of crowd-funding, in the wake of the Darkest Dungeon boardgame bullshit. Still, as Diablo successors go, this one has more of a pedigree than most.