Diablo Rumor: Early version of Diablo IV looked like Dark Souls

The Diablo franchise is one of gaming's greatest series of dungeon crawlers available. Blizzard's series about preventing the Lord of Terror from taking over the world with his army of hellspawn has been an incredible hit with their fanbase. However, the announcement of Diablo Immortals definitely put them on bad terms with those fans.

Most assumed that the big Blizzcon 2018 announcement would be Diablo IV. So when they introduced the mobile game to the audience, they were met with some serious backlash. Rumors led us to believe that Blizzard was possibly planning on revealing Diablo IV, but their presentation wasn't ready in time.

Whether that was true or not, it looks like the company was indeed working on the sequel to 2012's Diablo III. Kotaku reported today that original plans for Diablo IV had it looking a lot like Dark Souls.

Former team members of Blizzard's Diablo III team revealed that they were planning on moving forward with a second expansion for the game, but were stopped in order for the company to begin work on the next game in the series.

What they told the team was, 'You've finished Reaper of Souls, it's really good. But we think the best thing for the IP is to move to Diablo IV in whatever form that'll be.' The overall sense of the team, at least in my impression, was that there was a vote of no confidence from the executives. They thought Diablo III was a giant f-up.

Diablo III definitely wasn't received as well from hardcore fans as the company had hoped. Many felt that the game was simply made to attract a more casual fanbase, and also felt that the original gameplay trailer before its release had more to offer than the game that Blizzard would eventually send out. Not to mention the issues that players had upon launch...

Though to hear that the Blizzard execs had such a low opinion of the game is incredibly shocking. After all, it's not like the game sold poorly, and overall it's been received well from the general audience. Reaper of Souls was in fact incredibly popular with fans, and it seemed that the company had won back the fanbase.

Still, the executives had made up their mind, and by 2014, Diablo IV would begin production. The remaining members of the team began working on the project, code-named Hades. Apparently, they planned on taking it into a different direction which would turn the top-down dungeon crawler into more of an over the shoulder camera action RPG.

Yet again, Blizzard decided to shelve the project. A member of the Hades team stated that the project was "not shaping up at all."

Don't be too upset, though. There is a current version of Diablo IV in the works, which looks more like the other titles in the series.

Would you have enjoyed a different take on Diablo IV? Would a Souls-Like Diablo work? Let us know in the comments.