Veterans of Blizzard North (Diablo II) bring the gang together to create a new hack’n slash under the leadership of an independent studio.
Moon Beast Productions, founded by Phil Shenk and Peter Hu (themselves alumni of Blizzard North), has indeed recruited, among others, none other than Erich Schaefer, the co-creator of the father of the genre.
” We put the Blizzard North band back together »
While the small sphere of the hack’n slash genre has a lot of attention mixed with fear around Diablo IVone of our biggest gaming expectations of the year (with an open beta slated for this month), a new indie game could hold its own.
Two alumni of Blizzard North (the studio behind the franchise Diablo) indeed founded Moon Beast Productions and convinced Erich Schaefer (co-creator of Diablobut also director of torch light) to come out of retirement to become the creative director of a new hack’n slash of their own.
In any case, the three men know a lot about the genre, since they all three worked on the legendary Diablo II, widely recognized as the father of hack’n slash. Phil Shenk, one of the studio’s co-founders, was notably the chief character artist on the game released in 2000, to which we owe the appearances of the Assassin and Necromancer classes, among other things.
Back to original sin
Their project to propose a new hack’n slash therefore seems to be in very good hands. For now, Moon Beast Productions presents itself as a small studio with a dozen employees, a much smaller workforce compared to other studios working on this genre of games.
The team apparently makes up for its small size with a cauldron of good ideas in an attempt to revamp the well-established hack’n slash genre, including how to approach progression in a “Players vs. Environment” game.
Erich Schaefer is also used to working with a small team, having created the very solid torch light with 25 developers. In any case, he seems very enthusiastic about the idea that his two former colleagues have proposed to him. Unfortunately, we have very little information on this subject, other than a first visual, displayed above. Patience is therefore required to see if the fathers of Diablo can overshadow their own creation.
Source : Moon Beast
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