The genre of dungeon crawling that Diablo helped pave the way is not known for getting up close and personal with its characters. The overhead perspective and point-and-click control scheme allowed us to act as disinterested observers, tracking a deep picture of humanity’s struggle against the Hells. Diablo IV is different. It pulls you close and requires you to sit in the front row, and it makes a big difference in how the game feels and plays.
This is most immediately apparent in one of the earliest cutscenes featuring your hero. After doing the heroic thing and clearing the dungeon full of demons, you return to a small village demanding to celebrate with a delicious drink. The camera pulls in closer to see your created character, which looks as finely crafted as any NPC, becomes dizzy and passes out. The crowd murmurs and then silences itself, another villager prepares a stretcher to arrive, and you quickly get the feeling that this has always been the plan.
The opening sequence helps illustrate something core about this story: More than other Diablo games, it is humanity that is the central threat. From the very first scene, Lillith showed an uncontrollable temptation. From a scholar reluctantly agreeing to perform a summoning ritual to a group of bloodthirsty villagers digging a burrow in the skull of their local priest, this game’s villain has a way of driving people towards their worst impulses and outrageous behavior. This doesn’t seem to be the story of heroic humanity standing up to the demons with you as their avatar. Humans are greedy, violent, selfish creatures, and that trustworthiness factor drives the horror house even more. Closer camera angles in cutscenes featuring your own characters will help serve as connective tissue to other cinematic scenes featuring Lillith.
A closer look at the world also extends to the game itself. It’s not an over-the-shoulder adventure game, but the camera is closer to your hero and they take up significantly more screen space. The color palette is off compared to Diablo III, which goes with Diablo 2’s more earthy colors. And the close-up camera angle gives us a better view of the world, which is stunning. Everything from creatures to world design creates an environment that demands exploration. At one point, between slaying bloodthirsty warriors and rattling skeletons, I saw a pair of squirrels chasing each other around a mountainside, leaving small footprints in the snow behind.
As terrifying and painful as the storytelling is, the dungeon crawling loop is equally enjoyable. I picked a Wizard, my favorite Diablo class, to put this version through its paces and almost immediately started building Lightning. I especially like the new version of Chain Lightning, which has less bloom effects than previous versions. Instead, it flew around the battlefield like a dodge ball fired from a cannon, clearing a crowded room in an instant. Diablo IV seems to understand the importance of granting modding options early, as each of my abilities almost immediately opens up access to enhance or change them. For example, the aforementioned Chain Lightning, let me modify it with a power that can deal extra damage if it bounces back and pierces me again.
Another big change came to scroll dodging, which was introduced into Diablo III’s console portal and represented a major shift in the sense of motion in that game. In Diablo IV, that move was available, even on PC, but now comes with a relatively high cooldown. As a result you are planted more in place and dodging means a last resort. My build is resilient enough that this doesn’t affect me too much, and I suspect that’s partly to make room for other moves with the same purpose. For example, the Lightning Sorc build finally has access to the Teleport ability that serves both combat and evasion roles. You can reduce the cooldown or get extra roll points with other items, but the default ability can be difficult for fans of the more agile classes who may feel like their feet are broken. nailed to the floor.
Diablo IV makes it very easy and cheap to re-evaluate a character and try different builds. Instead of just letting you unlock everything, Diablo IV has various connected spokes to unlock in sequence, much like a bicycle wheel. When you fill one says enough, another opens. (This also has an interesting thematic connection to the opening cutscene, which evokes the symbolic system of blood runes that summoned Lillith.) It’s unclear how the respect feature works. throughout the game, but having this option is a smart move. I tinkered with some other Wizard builds, but didn’t like them with Lightning. That said, some builds are naturally better built for different purposes–the massive flare available for Fire Sorc would be ideal for facing large single entities like boss, and similarly, Frost seems to aim for crowd control. Lightning is my happy medium, allowing me to destroy a crowded room and also a punch on bosses.
In fact, this time the overhaul of the entire skill tree system seemed very elegant. The spokes of each part of the skill tree spread out to allow you to mix and match at will, experimenting with a number of different abilities. Fully upgrading a particular skill will always be more powerful than a partial upgrade with some other skill, but there is value in flexibility. I hope that smart Diablo players come up with some really spectacular concoctions with these tools.
All of this is complemented by the real reason any of us come to Diablo, or any other loot game: fashion. Diablo IV seems to be learning from its predecessor to give you meaningful loot and a limited amount of trash, striking the right balance right from the start. Even more impressive, however, is that the different types of devices look very cohesive regardless of whether they belong to the same series or not. Aside from one or two items that look awkward to my Sorceress, I’m having trouble finding two items that don’t look right together. Somehow they seem to get along, even when I know they really don’t.
Of course, this is a beta, I’m not testing higher level Legendary gear sets or class sets that serve as templates to build skills around. But if random drop items look that good, with such high fidelity, then I’d love to see what kind of full drop items there are to pursue throughout the game.
Diablo IV seems to be honoring the lineage of the series, borrowing influences from previous Diablo games and building on it using modernized storytelling methods with realistic visuals and setting designs. impression. It’s a solid foundation, and with another beta test coming up for Druid and Necromancer classes, I can’t wait to sit somewhere else–front and center.
Read more about Diablo IV beta and how to join.
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