Path of Exile designer says he ‘desperately’ wants Diablo 5 to be good for the sake of the genre

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.

“While this is a great internal conversation to have, I feel it’s probably best to not say it publicly,” he said. “It undermines some of the confidence and gravitas of the new game if players think it could have just been an expansion.”

Despite this, Wilson says he really hopes Diablo 5 is a huge success, because he believes fans of the action RPG dungeon crawler genre are “content starved”, and if Diablo 5 is a success it could bring new players to the genre.

“I’m tentatively hopeful for Diablo 5,” he concluded. “I wasn’t expecting to be, but they have said enough of the magic words and picked the right font for the logo. I have my fingers crossed that they’ll do a good job with it.

“You may be wondering why I desperately want Diablo 5 to be good. After all, wouldn’t it compete with other action RPGs that I care deeply about? Yes, and I think this is a good thing, and not because competition drives innovation, but because having more good action RPGs out there is good for everyone.

“You can tell that players are content-starved. Even at the crazy pace that Grinding Gear Games releases new updates, players ravenously devour every new action RPG that they can.

“Diablo 5 comes with Blizzard-level marketing and hype attached to it. If it’s good, then not only does Blizzard benefit, but every other action RPG developer does as well. It’s good for more people to hear about action RPGs.

“If Diablo 5 really does well, it’ll sell a lot of copies and bring a whole lot of mainstream players into the genre. They’ll enjoy playing it and will be hungry to try out other games. A rising tide lifts all ships. Also, if Diablo 5 ends up as close to Diablo 2 as I’m hoping, then it’ll be a nice reset back to the genre’s more traditional roots. I’m all for that.”