HomeNewsDiablo 4: Vessel Of Hatred
Man in charge of Diablo thinks we should start calling games that he thinks are like Diablo ‘Diablo-likes’How… diabolical
How… diabolical
Image credit:Blizzard
Image credit:Blizzard
The genre of ‘ActionRPG’ is supremely annoying to write about, because the term can mean different things to different people, but here’s how I see it:Diablo 4and similar games, such asPath Of Exile, are ‘ARPGs’. Which stands for ‘Action RPG’. But Zelda games are ‘Action RPGs’, which is a totally different genre that you could, if you felt like it, also shorten to ‘ARPG’. So, to summarise: ARPGs and ARPGs are two different things, and both are Action RPGs. Got it? Great.
It’s because of this kerfuffle that I’m not exactly mad at Diablo boss Rod Fergusson recently suggesting that we just call games that are similar to Diablo ‘Diablo-likes’. I just find it very funny that he’s the one saying it, in a bold faced act of admittedly very inconsequential linguistic colonialism that carries the unspoken connotation that something is “like the game I make, but a bit crap”.
“Feels like the genre of “ARPG” is starting to mean a lot of different things,” Fergussonwrote on X- thanks for the spot,GamesRadar. “Much like “Souls-like” and “Rogue-like”, I wonder if we could normalize “Diablo-like” for ARPGs that follow the Diablo formula…”
Anyway, as usual, the one who has to step in to clear up is this mess is old muggins over here, and I say this: If it’s an RPG that features action like the action you’d find in an action game, it’s an ‘Action RPG’ (ARPG for short). But! If it’s an action game that features RPG elements like those you’d find in an RPG, that there is an ‘ARPG’, also known as an ‘Action RPG’. Note, however, that neither of these describe Diablo, which has demons in it - and is therefore a Doom Clone.
