Diablo IV
The clickfest returns, grimier and more online than ever.
Diablo IV’s crypts are more hateful than Diablo III’s. They’re darker and dustier with Bloody Piles that explode like popped blisters in slowmo. It’s also shinier, but in a dour way. Lightning shimmers across wet stone and fleshy creatures, and it sometimes rains, dynamically generating muddy puddles. Path of Exile feels cheerful by comparison.
I’m hesitant to draw any big conclusions about Diablo IV because I imagine it’ll be quite different whenever it releases, and Blizzard says that probably won’t be soon.
The demo was quite easy, for one thing. I’d guess Blizzard didn’t want players getting frustrated, especially those who had to stand in a long line at BlizzCon, so they outfitted us with strong characters. I played the 20-minute demo twice, once as the Druid and once as the Sorceress. In the latter run I was chewing through heavy enemies like the Drowned Juggernauts – big boys who slam down splash damage attacks – without much worry. My mouse-bound abilities, a little ice projectile and a bigger fire projectile, were more than enough to freeze or fry any slippery demons I encountered, so I only played with her hotkey abilities to spice things up. I used a health potion just once and I didn’t really need to.
Because Diablo IV is a ways off I’d expect things like ability cooldown times and damage numbers to be tweaked as development continues. I’ll focus more on the broader topics, then: the new art and engine, and the Destiny 2-like open world.
The art we’ve seen so far is certainly as gloomy as was pitched during the BlizzCon reveal. The piles of skulls remind me of pencil doodles I’d do in high school, where I’d get the thinnest mechanical lead I could and try to draw hyper-ornate horror frescos. There’s a choking haze over everything and the way the irregular stone walls glisten make the world feel unbearably damp. The boss in the demo, Merinth of the Deep, reminds me of a Remnant: From the Ashes boss. She’s a giant, shiny, jiggly drowned witch whose flesh lunges around after her as she swings a nasty, toothed mace and summons puke pools.
But while Diablo IV is far less of a laser show than Diablo III, I’m not sure it’ll totally satisfy Diablo II diehards when it comes to ‘darkness’. When I think about Diablo II I tend to forget just how ugly and clunky it was. The darkness and the 4:3 aspect ratio meant that you couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction, and movement was mechanical. Diablo IV ditches the Warcraft-like cleanliness of Diablo III’s art, but is still full of friendly quality-oflife features and modern slickness. You can dash-dodge. Animations cleanly blend together. Enemies are outlined in red when you mouse-over them, and have health bars, and damage numbers pop off of them. You’ve got a convenient quest tracker and minimap which guides you to waypoints you select. In a literal sense Diablo IV is not as dark as Diablo II. There’s more ambient light, more indicators and particle effects popping off all the time. It isn’t a total reversion to Diablo II’s grimy simplicity.
DEMON DAYS
Another case in point: Diablo IV is an open world big enough to warrant rideable horses, and whether or not you choose to party up for co-op, it won’t just be your world. It’s a seamless multiplayer experience now, and no, there’s no offline mode. While walking to a quest marker I ran into two other players at BlizzCon. They fought alongside me for a little bit, silently. During a moment of commotion while I zapped a horde of nasties, they ran ahead and I never saw them again.
One of the concerns discussed during
a group interview I attended was the challenge of balancing the sense of desolation Diablo’s landscapes are meant to evoke and the presence of random other players. As part of that thinking they don’t want multiplayer world bosses to require too many players.
I’m left wondering if these two ideas can really coexist. The world felt pretty desolate until I saw other players bolting around the first town I encountered and then running toward the same boss I was. When I encountered that boss – the jelly-filled Merinth – I thought about how they’d already slain her in their timeline. I thought of World of Warcraft and of Disneyland. There’s no queuing or anything, but seeing players who are clearly on the same quest, but aren’t a permanent part of my world, reminds me that this isn’t just my adventure in a way Diablo II’s multiplayer didn’t.
Because the overworld is shared, there are no game-wide difficulty settings. Enemies will scale for each player, but they won’t necessarily scale to your level – some parts of the world will be scarier than others. Dungeons, however, will be private to you and your party and will have their own difficulty options, which I’m told will be exceptionally granular. Places important to the campaign will also be private to you and your party when you first enter them, though other players may show up in them later as the world changes over the course of your journey. At least we won’t be running into Goku420VapeGod69nice and squad while chasing a dramatic narrative event.
Aside from running into other players, the explosions of loot are another reminder that I’m chasing numbers in a compulsive loop, but maybe I’m immunised to their moodbreaking effect after playing so much Diablo II and III. Legendary items were plentiful in the demo and had the silly names I expected. The Sheltering Highland Trousers of Grounding gave me +6 damage reduction and the Stone of Jordan is a ring that gave me +1 Rank to all equipped skills.
Visual character customisation is new to the series, but we got preset characters for the demo with two looks and a few abilities chosen for us. For the Sorceress I had the Frostbolt and Fireball abilities I mentioned bound to the mouse buttons, plus Blizzard for AOE damage and slowdown, Lightning Spear which bounces a bolt around, Meteor for a high-damage AOE attack that has to be timed just right, and Conduit, which turned me into a supersonic lightning god who takes no damage and zaps around the map killing things just by existing.
I had fun dodging ranged attacks and targeting big globs of beasts with Meteor and Blizzard, catching them bunching up like a kid’s soccer team. Lightning Spear was a fire and forget type of ability that bored me. Turning into ‘lightning incarnate’ with Conduit was fun for showing off to the two players I encountered on the road.
The Druid, who returns from Diablo II, was more fun. His mouse-bound abilities temporarily transform him into a werewolf or werebear as he attacks and the latter slams his paws into the ground to gore big lumps of enemies (it’s kind of cute, in a bloody way). I was a little disappointed there’s no grotesque transformation sequences – it’s basically instant – but I like how huge the bear form feels.
INFERNAL AFFAIRS
Diablo IV is the embodiment of the phrase ‘we’ve heard your feedback’, but with some concessions for modernity, in that it’s an always-online game again (hopefully without Error 37) and answers about in-game monetisation have been vague. There’ll be expansions, and beyond that, they say they “won’t sell power”.
Otherwise, though, everything that kicked off disgruntled forum threads when Diablo III released has been addressed to varying degrees. There are currently no plans for the same kind of auction house Diablo III launched with. There’ll be guilds and player trading. PvP was planned from the start. The art is nasty and serious.
Pulling off a modern, Destiny 2-like shared world while also satisfying nostalgia for a much simpler 20-year-old game won’t be easy. Already some fans are rankled by the mandatory online. But if encounters with other players are meaningful, and don’t intrude too heavily on Lilith’s blood-soaked return to Sanctuary, it may not sour the mood in the end. TYLER WILDE