With years of updates since it was released almost eleven years ago, Diablo III is still one of the best examples of its genre. Challengers to its title have come and faded into the background, but now we’re on the cusp of a full sequel. At one point there were doubts about the form that Diablo IV might take – would it be riddled with microtransactions, for example? – but after playing this past weekend’s beta, there’s just a few issues to iron out before we could declare it a true heir to the throne.
The intro cutscene is as stunningly gorgeous as you’d expect from Blizzard, setting the stage with the return of Lilith, the Daughter of Hatred (i.e. the daughter of the demon Mephisto), to Sanctuary. It’s delightfully dark, and not just literally. The tone is grim, what with all the corpses and blood rituals and whatnot. Most importantly, Lilith doesnt monologue and tell you her plans like enemies in the previous game – looking at you, Belial. What’s here is much more interesting and subtle than any plot points in the previous game.
This darkness seeps into the rest of the game as well. Diablo 3 might have had plenty of blood and gore, but it was visually brighter than the previous games in the series, initially earning Blizzard some criticism for making it look a little cartoony and lighter, more like World of Warcraft, than the intense grimdark broodiness for which the series was better known. Diablo 4 is a definite step back towards this original aesthetic. The world feels bleak, whether it’s the hopeless attitude of some quest-givers’ voices, the fact that you’re almost immediately betrayed upon starting the game, or that sometimes side quests are acquired from a person using their dying breath to warn of a nearby demon.
The shift in tone is accompanied by perhaps the best graphics I’ve seen in an isometric game. Occasionally in-game cutscenes actually move into the scene, using camera angles that, shockingly, aren’t isometric views of the area at all! Breaking the divide between the cutscenes and the isometric view felt curiously revelatory as someone who has played Diablo-likes for at least 20 years, and it really shows off the detailed character models and environments. This only makes it feel weirder when other cutscenes just zoom the camera in a little bit and hover overhead during emotional moments. Hopefully they’re just not finished in time for the beta?
This is all great, but what’s more important is retaining and improving upon the gameplay of the previous game. That’s what really sets this series apart, and Diablo 4 feels almost effortlessly better than the competition. That fluid, responsive gameplay is still here, tearing apart a group of ghouls is so satisfying and the chaos that erupts when an elite enemy with a mortar affix is so sudden and over the top it almost seems at odds with the game’s sombre tone.
While the combat will feel familiar, there’s plenty of changes underneath. Characters have skill trees again, allowing you to choose which abilities to unlock as they become available to you rather than unlocking them automatically and simply choosing whether or not to use them. Mercifully, you’re also able to refund your skill points for gold, either doing a full respec or trading them in one at a time to fine tune your build. This seems like it will allow you to experiment just as much as you can in Diablo 3, which allows you to freely change your skills, whilst also introducing a little more choice and depth into the process. This does come with some skills having multiple tiers to unlock with more skill points, re-introducing small incremental upgrades, which is one of the least exciting things in video games.
Dungeons work a little differently now as well. There’s apparently always a door to open or a barrier to break, which is done by either collecting a key from enemies or killing a bunch of elites and collecting spirit animus from them until you have enough to fill a receptacle near the barrier. I have mixed feelings about this. It makes the dungeons feel a little same-y, which is strange when compared to the less objective oriented nature of before, where you could just work through to the end of the dungeon or the next floor. It also forces backtracking, which is poor, because if you’ve already been there, there’s nothing to fight and you’re just strolling through an empty cave. Neither of these issues are huge, but you’ll probably notice them on, let’s say, your third dungeon, and once you’ve noticed it you can’t forget it. then every one afterwards they’ll be minor niggles in the back of your mind.
This isn’t the only place with lots of walking either. In fact, sometimes the world outside of the dungeons has an inexplicably low mob density, often leaving you wandering across an arctic tundra trying to extract conversation from your summoned minions because there’s nothing to fight. This was most clear when I was tasked with collecting anima from undead and I had to circle around the same area repeatedly so enemies could spawn off screen.
What makes the sometimes sparsely populated world more of an issue is that the first part of every story quest is always to go somewhere, but that was previously disguised by fighting your way through hordes of enemies. When you’re instead wandering through a mostly empty vista saying “where is everything?” you’re going to feel bored. Hopefully this will be intensified through the full game, because the you’re sent back to previous non-waypointed areas at least a couple of times just in Act 1, which is all the beta covered.
Of course, it’s actually always online now, as in you can see other players running around. Events that randomly occurred can now be completed with other random players that happen upon it at the same time as you. Whether or not this bothers you is a matter of personal preference, but the lag in the beta was always bad. There’s almost always brief rubber-banding when stepping into a new area, which isn’t too egregious even if it is distracting. However, when I endured ten minutes or so of unbearable lag that had my character endlessly running regardless of my inputs and enemies absolutely slaughtering me with nothing I could do has made me very wary of playing a hardcore character with this always-online system. What’s the point of investing so much time into something that a lag spike could destroy in seconds?
Outside of these niggles and a few visual glitches in cutscenes, like cups or weapons floating a few inches from a character’s hand instead of being held in it, Diablo IV is shaping up to be very exciting indeed. If it stays on this path it might just unseat its predecessor at the top of the entire action RPG genre.
