Path of Exile’s designer and studio co-founder says he’s cautiously optimistic for Diablo 5, but “desperately” wants it to do well for the sake of the action RPG genre.
In a new video on his personal YouTube channel, Chris Wilson – who co-founded Grinding Gear Games in 2006 and was lead designer on Path of Exile, then left the studio in 2023 before its sequel’s release – gave his thoughts on Blizzard‘s recent announcement that Diablo 5 is in development.
Wilson opened the video by saying that Diablo was the series that led to his decision to create Path of Exile in the first place, but that he had gone off the series with its recent instalments and hoped the fifth game would be a return to form.
“I desperately want Diablo 5 to be a good game,” he said. “I spent my teenage years obsessing over Diablo, and played Diablo 2 to a degree that completely changed the course of my life. Six years after its release, when there was no sequel in sight, I created Path of Exile with some friends so that we could have a new action RPG to play.
“I was hopeful for the Diablo 3 announcement in 2008, but, like many of you, I just felt that it was too different from Diablo II to be enjoyable for me. I tried the game when it came out but it didn’t hook me.
“The same thing happened with the Diablo 4 announcement in 2019. Discussion of an open world, monster level scaling, and showing how amulets have Attack and Defence as their implicit properties quickly killed any excitement for me. I felt that the Diablo series had just moved on from the type of game that I loved.
“But when I watched the Diablo 5 announcement, I felt a glimmer of hope. This wasn’t just due to the words they were saying, but also what they intentionally chose to show. Check out the Diablo 5 logo. Notice anything familiar about it? It’s black text on fire, just like the Diablo 1 and 2 logos, and nothing like the Diablo 3 and 4 logos.”
Wilson said he was still trying not to get too excited for Diablo 5 yet, especially after Blizzard said it was originally considering releasing it as an expansion for Diablo 4 instead.
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