We enter Tristram as an outsider, and come to see it as a refuge, a bulwark, and ultimately doomed despite our best efforts.ĭiablo IV presents us with that town, offering us warmth and salvation in a blizzard. It’s a vision of the fortitude and precarity of civilization. Tristram was a triumph in that regard, elevating a bog standard solo adventure from a grim fantasy dungeon loop into a tidy, compact cosmic horror story about a backwater town and the primeval doom just below its surface, and all the weirdos that lived there. Whether it’s Wizardry (the progenitor of Dragon Quest, et al.) or The Dungeons of Moria (which directly ties into the creation of Diablo), my takeaway from a lifetime of dungeon crawlers is this: a dungeon is only as good as the town it menaces. From the earliest tabletop adventures to the most recent Final Fantasy, in my mind, the best dungeon crawlers always have towns. Towns have a long history in dungeon crawling. Diablo always begins in a town, whether it’s Tristram, the Rogue Encampment, or New Tristram (conveniently located on the outskirts of a largely obliterated Old Tristram).

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