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GameSpot: What about the role-playing in Diablo I? Obviously there are critics who were saying that it was just an action game and didn't have enough role-playing. For Diablo II, you're going to change that. Is this something you had planned to do from the outset - bringing more role-playing elements into Diablo II - or are those elements more a response to critics?

Brevik: Well, you can't listen to all of your critics; you can't please everybody. I've heard the debate all the time - is it an action game or a role-playing game? I leave that to the experts - they can debate it all they want. I don't really care. We're just trying to make the best game possible.

One of the things I felt was missing from Diablo I was that it really didn't have the flavor of the world that I wanted. To bring that more into play, we've added more role-playing elements. We've made the story much deeper, and we've made a lot more quests, and the quests are multiplayer. It's more robust than it was last time. Even the characters are much more of the role-playing type in that they have skills that others can't use. We did it to make it a more enjoyable game. We felt it would be a deeper experience. We wanted the characters to be more unique and the world richer. That's the reason we did it. We thought it would be fun, not because everybody was bitching that there wasn't enough role-playing.

GameSpot: When you were making the first Diablo, did you plan it as being two games or a trilogy?

Brevik: We had no idea what we were making when we made the first one. We just hoped it would sell 100,000 units. We hoped that people would enjoy it. It exceeded my expectations. It's done a lot better than I could ever imagine. I love Diablo and its world. It's something that I definitely wanted to create. We've had ideas for sequels - I've had ideas for a lot more Diablo stuff, but...it was just the natural thing to do. When we started out, it was never an idea of planning for Diablo I, Diablo II, Diablo III, that kind of thing. It was more just making the first and hoping that people liked it.