There’s now an accompanying Blizzard interview to go with this piece, in which we talk about the build I played and much more besides.
I had my doubts. I had questions circling in my head since I first played Diablo 4 at BlizzCon 2019 – was it really that long ago? – and I’ve had questions about the need for a big new Diablo at all. But after 10 hours with it from the beginning of the game, I can see what kind of shape it’s taking, and I like it. I like the tone, I like the mechanics, I like the world. There are some things I can’t see but overall this is, plainly, the next generation of Diablo.
Curiously, it’s the world that really stays with me most about it. Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise given that an open-world is one of the big new things about Diablo 4, and at every PR-beat, Blizzard has told us how much it wants the world to feel dark, like the earlier Diablo games. Diablo 3 had a more cartoon edge to it, a kind of Warcrafty tinge.
And it’s true, Diablo 4 does feel darker, not in a literal lighting sense, but in a moodier sense. It’s grim and unsettling. It’s dour and desaturated. It’s a fantasy world that’s always raining and windy – a grey-hued world of mud and weather-beaten people. A harsh world of harsh realities. I can’t think of a better comparison than Game of Thrones in the North in this regard: an unflinching place where people don’t smile much. It feels like that.
Diablo 4, more than any other game in the series, really takes the time to root you in it, too. There are flashy cinematics at special moments that can be quite disturbing, but it’s the in-game cutscenes, where the camera flies down to better frame what you’re seeing, it really comes from. Honestly, I never normally pay any attention to these in Diablo games. They’re just flavour against the backdrop of mass slaughter. But it feels like Diablo 4 wants us to spend a bit more time with them here.