Diablo creator David Brevik is honest with himself. He truly loves the 1991 Dungeons and Dragons-lite, Dungeon Master cousin Eye of the Beholder, but he seems certain the landmark PC game has the worst ending. Ever.
Brevik recounts his time playing the game to PC Gamer in a new interview, saying, “I had mapped out all the levels on graph paper. I was really into it. And then at the end, I killed the final boss, and a little dialogue box pops up and says ‘Congratulations, you win!’ or whatever. Then quits to desktop.
“So that’s the worst ending of any game I’ve ever played,” Brevik concludes. He isn’t alone in thinking this way – though Eye of the Beholder astounded ’90s players with its stunning, nearly-3D graphics, but one contemporary review from the magazine Computer Gaming World complains, “Not since Sentinel Worlds I has any CRPG had so abrupt and unrewarding a finish. You kill the Beholder. You get a text box of congratulations. You are dropped out of the program to DOS. End of game.”
Latest Videos FromGamesRadar+
Brevik agrees, “But I really love the game. It’s amazing,” he reminds PC Gamer.
“I mean I love/hate Eye of the Beholder,” he admits. After not playing it “in a long time,” he remembered it recently and decided to give it another shot.
“Eye of the Beholder was, in 1991, one of the best games that I’d ever played,” says Brevik. “I was super into it. The graphics, the immersion. This is pre-Wolfenstein [3D], so 3D stuff was not really a thing. But this had some fake 3D-style graphics that you were taking a party through a dungeon, and it was turn-based and grid-based” – and he stills loves every inch of it, except for that insulting ending. I mean, come on, I can quit to desktop myself.
Playing Baldur’s Gate 3 with no weapons at all forced me to progress my story in a very specific way.