Activision Blizzard has opened the floodgates of hell for one of its most anticipated games of next year with a hands-on preview ofDiablo 4. However, before exploring the next installment of theDiablofranchise, it’s important to see where the series is at in 2022 to understand where it is going. 2021 saw the release ofDiablo 2: Resurrected, 2022 saw the release ofDiablo Immortalon mobile devices, and now Blizzard is ushering in the next era of the franchise withDiablo 4.
With an ambitious three years almost completed, it’s clear that Blizzard’s goal is to bringDiabloback to the forefront of the company and bring the franchise to new audiences after a decade since its last release. However, it can be tough for Blizzard to try and one-up itself and improve everything about a 26-year-old franchise with its fourth iteration. However, our early preview proves that even the old guard of ARPGs can still iterate on what makes it great and improve where it needs to in order to bringDiabloback to the forefront of Blizzard. To do that, Blizzard started by looking atDiablo’s pastas an inspiration for its future.
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First and foremost,Diablo 4is a return to darkness for the series. Blizzard’s intention withDiablo 4is to go back to the franchise’s horror roots fromDiabloandDiablo 2with all the gore, Gothicism, and atmosphere that one would expect from a series that built its reputation on killing legions of Hell’s demons. Thedevelopers at Blizzardmade a point to tell the preview audience that this is not a game to play with children around, and after spending dozens of hours insideDiablo 4’s vision for Sanctuary, it’s safe to say they are right.Diablo 4looks delightfully dreadful.
Diablo 4feels scarier than ever, more gruesome than ever, and about as visceral as a top-down RPG can get. From the second the preview build started, it was clear how far the mood had shifted fromDiablo 3’s Halloween horror aesthetic toDiablo 4’s grounded and dreadful look, but dreadful in all the right ways. The game’s central theme is hatred and how it has consumed the residents of Sanctuary, and that notion of hatred comes out splendidly in the art style and creature designs. Some enemies like The Butcher are downright brutal to look at, while Blood Lords look like a modern take on Nosferatu and are twice as frightening.Diablo 4looks like a medieval paintingin motion, but of the most ghoulish things one can conceive of.
As a franchise dating back to 1996 that helped define the action RPG genre, it is worth questioning how Blizzard can takeDiablo’s already rock-solid gameplay loop and improve upon it for new and returning audiences. The early preview build we got some hands-on time with demonstrated that thecoreDiabloexperiencehas been preserved but has also been iterated upon in the right ways so far.
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Diablo 4’s main combat loopis fundamentally the same: click on enemies to attack, equip and unleash a myriad of abilities, deal damage in flashy new ways, and then create a character that best suits the player through the use of skill trees and loot drops. However, new movement options like the Evade skill for all classes open the door for more complex and dynamic boss battles where positioning is more critical than ever. Other changes, like the game’s focus on potions, now allow players to act more aggressively than before but then balance that change with enemies that never let up.Diablo 4was a frantic whirlwindof slaying, questing, and looting from the preview build’s beginning to its end.
However,Diablo 4’s leading hook isn’t necessarily in the creature killing, even if that’s what players will do most of at the end of the day. Thevision ofDiablo4is squarely on letting players play how they want to, build the characters they want to build, and do it all inside an expansive open world. The traditional framework for class building and loot grinding is still here, but the developers want players to explore the limits of these systems more than ever before and let the end-game content be tailored for them.
Diablo 4’s most significant character-building improvements come from its skill trees and potential build diversity, both of which seem like some of the most extensive they have ever been. The preview build only gave access to the Barbarian, the Sorcerer, and the Rogue, but all three ended up feeling unique, each delivering on different fantasies and doubling down on class building and specialization with more options for whatever players want to do. Fundamentally,Diablo 4’s groundwork for class buildingat lower levels already feels far more engaging thanDiablo 3’s.
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For example, the Rogue can decide to be a melee-focused class or a ranged-focused class, and then within either of those specializations are options to be single-target focused or AOE focused, and then on top of that, there are boosts for status effects or player buffs.Diablo 4is packing specialization on top of specialization on top of more specialization, and the best part is that the skill tree and progression systems have yet to feel daunting or confusing.Diablo 4’s skill treestarts small and lets players build as they get to know their class, all while still feeling powerful from the moment players launch the game.
As franchise veterans will know, early-gameDiabloand end-gameDiabloare two different beasts. It’s almost impossible to escape the hordes of min-maxers and theory crafters that will inevitably optimize every class in the game once players reach level 100, and that could makeDiablo 4’s focus on build diversityfeel like a wasted effort. What’s more,Diablo 4needs to strike a good balance in class building with its PvE crowd and PvP crowd, as PvP is another first for the franchise, and optimizing for one or the other tends to get messy in these games. However, Blizzard does state that it has plans to mitigate such issues at full release.
Diablo 4will also feature an expansive open world with five unique zones to explore in another massive first for theDiablofranchise. This week’s preview build of the game only let players explore the Fractured Peaks area of Sanctuary, but that doesn’t mean content was lacking in this early portion of the game. Content is allegedly so plentiful inDiablo 4’s open worldthat Blizzard states players can skip the main story altogether and do whatever they wish inside Sanctuary. There is a big focus on player freedom withDiablo 4,and the open world showcased in the preview build routinely demonstrated that this game will let players do what they want, and even felt like an MMO at times.
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Indeed, content is plentiful inDiablo 4. From bite-sized pieces of content like the Cellars, which play out like 90-second arenas perfect for getting a monster-killing fix, to the robust dungeons and co-op-centric Strongholds that will take some time to complete,Diablo 4seems to have plenty in stock.Diablo 4also seems to have all the hallmarks of a well-done open world with plenty of side-quests to discover, chucks of lore to find here and there, and plenty more to uncover with friends and other players asDiablo 4now features a shared open world. The shared open world, in combination with its social aspects and incoming PvP, has given the game an almost MMORPG feel to it so far.
Builds, classes, and gameplay aside,Diablo 4does turn things up on the cosmetic side to further bolster its vision of letting players play how they want. In another first for the series,Diablo 4features a character creatorthat - while not super robust in its preset faces and body types - lets players make a character that looks cool and interesting regardless of what class they play. Barbarians will look like massive hulks worthy of wielding two massive weapons, while Rogues look nimble and sly to strike damage underhandedly and quickly. After making a custom character, there is the eventual hunt for build-defining loot, and that loot looks great so far.
As one of the biggest draws toDiablo, loot has also had a few changes inDiablo 4. Now, instead of totally doing away with a piece of gear and its special innate effects, players can transpose those effects to new pieces of equipment while keeping that armor’s look using the new transmog system. What’s more, even though this preview build capped players at level 25, each new piece of loot at these lower levels still looked great and had a knack for naturally blending with non-matching pieces of gear to create a character that always looked like Sanctuary’s most fashionable demon slayer. How higher-level loot will look atDiablo 4’s full releasewill be something to keep an eye on because it’s already worth getting excited over.
Even thoughDiablo 4has left a great first impression with its graphics, gameplay, class building, and open world, it’s the story that has left a lasting impression upon completing the preview build.Diablohas always been known for having some of the industry’s best ARPG combat and loot grind mechanics, and it would take a lot for Blizzard to undo such refined mechanics after 26 years. However, historically, the story is where both Blizzard and the players have always turned their attention away. That seems to be changing this time around, withDiablo 4’s storyfeeling like something players can really dive into and fully invest themselves in, thanks to the game’s outstanding prerendered cinematics and in-game cutscenes and dialogue.
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Diablohas always been excellent at telling the broader story of angels vs. demons and how they fight over the souls of Sanctuary’s inhabitants; however, it has never truly told a story about those living in Sanctuary and their plight as supernatural forces from Heaven and Hell decide their fates. This is the storyDiablo 4is seemingly trying to tell. A grounded story about the lives of those who are at Hell’s mercy. From its opening chapters, it seems like this is thebest direction forDiablo 4to take its story, and players may find themselves more compelled to pay attention to the narrative than ever before.
While the main story is best left for the players to discover when they get their hands on the game, the side quests present in this preview build were fantastic and could easily leave players wanting more. One such quest involved helping a woman who was looking for her cheating husband, only to find him mangled, chopped in half, and barely breathing at the hands of the ghoul he ran away with. It was a simple quest, but it did a lot to add to the gruesome atmosphere of the world and gave the main story the push it needed to let players know thatLilith’s hatred and corruptionare omnipresent in Sanctuary.
Diablo 4seems to be in a good place, even this early in the development process. Blizzard is fine-tuning what it has already refined over the course of 26 years in gameplay but is also making some good changes in class building and character development to improve accessibility, player agency, and player freedom. With a more significant focus on the story and an already solid foundation meant tobring theDiablofranchise into the future, there is much to be excited about withDiablo 4and, hopefully, plenty more to be excited about in the coming months.
Diablo 4is currently in development for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
