Diablo

Diablo is an awesome trinity of dark fantasy dungeon-crawling games from Blizzard. Set in the world of Sanctury, they tell of the ongoing struggles of humanity against the backdrop of the eternal war between the High Heavens and the Burning Hells, which has a tendency to spill into the mortal world. All three are some of the best examples of old-school "are you a bad enough dude to fight your way through the dungeon of evil?" hack-slash gaming you'll find outside of the tabletop.

Basic Backstory

In the beginning, there was the emptiness of creation, inhabited only by Anu, the Spirit of All. In pursuit of true perfection, Anu cast out those aspects of itself that embodied concepts of evil, only for them to become incarnate on their own as a monstrous seven-headed dragon called Tathamet, the Prime Evil. The two spirits fought to the death and ripped each other apart, creating the universe. Most notably, Anu's spine became the bedrock around which formed the High Heavens, whilst Tathamet's festering corpse becomes the Burning Hells.

From Anu's spine, now known as the Crystal Arch, were born first five Archangels, representing the Five Virtues of Valor, Justice, Hope, Fate and Wisdom, and then legions of angels.

From Tathamet's corpse, demons arose like monstrous maggots, whilst the dragon-god's decaying heads became mighty arch-demons; the three Prime Evils (Mephisto of Hatred, Baal of Destruction, Diablo of Terror) and the four Lesser Evils (Durial of Pain, Andariel of Anguish, Azmodan of Sin and Belial of Lies).

Where do humans come into the picture? It's a long story, but, in short, humans are the watered-down descendants of the Nephalem, a race born when rebellious angels and demons fled their eternal war and tried to hide in Sanctuary, a world created for them through the power of the Worldstone.

The specific plotline of the games revolves around the Lesser Evils revolting against the Prime Evils and banishing them to Sanctuary. There, in ages past, an order of sages called the Horadrim fought the three archdemons and imprisoned them in special gems called soulstones. Naturally, the Prime Evils want out... which doesn't spell anything good for Sanctuary.

The First Game

Diablo, Lord of Terror, has come to rest in a labyrinth beneath the graveyard of a village called Tristram. After driving the region's king into madness and undeath and possessing the king's younger son, Diablo seeks to gather the strength to launch an invasion on Sanctuary. Your goal is simple; butcher you way to the dungeon's heart and kill Diablo.

Playable classes are threefold; the Warrior is a straight-forward tank, the Rogue (your token female) is a master archer, and the Sorcerer specialises in blowing shit up.

The Second Game

Diablo was slain... but, in an attempt to contain him, the Warrior was driven to thrust Diablo's soulstone into his body. Consumed by the Lord of Terror, he sets off to free his brothers. You have to stop him.

This game features five playable classes; the female Amazon (polearms and ranged attacks) and Sorceress (fire, ice and lightning spells), the tanky Paladin, the slaughtering Barbarian, and the summoning-focused Necromancer (who, amazingly, isn't a token evil teammate).

It subsequently got an expansion pack, Lord of Destruction, that introduced the Assassin (a female member of a clan of trained mage-killers, specializing in traps and punching daggers) and the Druid (shapeshifting brawler meets summoner meets elemental caster) and a backstory in which you have to try and catch up to and slay Baal before he can corrupt the Worldstone.

Wizards of the Coast liked this game so much that they did up a splatbook to play in the Diablo world using Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition rules, the now-obscure but pretty faithful Diablo II: Diablerie. Sadly, it came out before Lord of Destruction, so it only features the base Diablo II classes. Still, they work fairly well under the 3e rules, and manage to be surprisingly faithful to the actual game.

The Third Game

The Worldstone got blown up. The last two evils - Azmodan and Belial - must be fought by a new generation of heroes, Diablo rises again after assimilating the other Evils into itself, and you fight all the way to the High Heavens.

Playable classes are the Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Monk, Witch Doctor and Wizard. You also get three unique followers, allowing you to make your own adventuring party, rather than the generic mercenary hirelings of the previous game.

It got an expansion pack called Reaper of Souls, in which Maltheal, Archangel of Wisdom, is corrupted into the Archangel of Death. Adds a super-tanky class called the Crusader to the game as well.

The game got large amounts of flak from players (including Blizzard fans) for how much of the content that made Diablo II was cut out and many of the things simplified. No wonder, since Diablo III was made by the same people behind World of WarCraft. Not even Reaper of Souls fixed it, ironically making Diablo III the least Diablo-ish game in the series...not to mention the plot being really bad along with the PCs and NPCs having bad dialog.