Blizzard Entertainment has announced that Diablo Immortal will release into open beta on 2nd June, the free-to-play hack and slash action RPG coming to Android and iOS and to PC as well! It comes with full cross-play and cross-progression, so you really can play however you like.
Diablo Immortal’s PC release is a big surprise given that the game’s mobile-only announcement kicked off a huge backlash from the community in 2018. It was met with a cold reception from diehard Diablo fans who, at the time, were pining for info on Diablo IV or the rumoured Diablo II remake. The reaction really wasn’t helped when Blizzard’s Wyatt Cheng confirmed that the game would not be coming to PC, with a fellow developer saying “Do you guys not have phones?” over a chorus of booing.
Things have obviously changed in the last couple years, but why? Writing about the decision, Blizzard said:
The decision to develop Diablo Immortal for PC was one that the team went back and forth on for a large part of the development process. On one hand, we felt that we wouldn’t be doing the title justice by releasing a game originally designed for mobile on PC; on the other hand, we wanted to make sure the game reached as many players as possible—especially our most dedicated PC fans. In the end, the deciding factor was that we knew many of you would attempt to play this game through an emulator, thus leading us towards building a better experience.
While the game has been designed first with mobile and touch screen play in mind, the PC version will have the series’ classic keyboard and mouse controls. You can also play direcltly with WASD directional controls, and there’s native controller support across both mobile and PC versions. This begs the question: Is there a console release on the cards as well? No word of that yet.
Beyond that, the UI has been rescaled, the menu interface rejigged, and there’s integration with the Blizzard.net chat systems. That last point is important, given that this is the first “MMOARPG” in the franchise, with more social elements built into the game than previous entries in the series, the ability to create Warbands with up to eight players for group challenges like Helliquary raid bosses, and Clans with up to 150 players.
There’s a little while before this new game comes out, and even longer before Diablo IV might get you clicking your way through its dungeons. So, if you’re looking for your next dungeon crawling fix, we’ve created a list of the best games like Diablo. There are some greats picks including Path of Exile and non isometric RPGs such as Borderlands 3.
In the meantime, we recently delved into the Diablo series. Our feature explores how Blizzard created the first games in what would become a flagship PC franchise, what features were ultimately left on the cutting room floor, and how Diablo 3 managed to recover from its train wreck of a launch.
Source: Blizzard
