Diablo 4 Hands-On Preview - Redefining Hell

From the moment I took my first steps onto the frigid mountaintops outside the city of Kyovashad in Diablo IV, it was clear that Blizzard was serious about responding to some of the complaints of Diablo III. While Diablo III contrasted pops of bright colors against the grotesque horrors of the world, Diablo IV is immediately more oppressive and dire in its presentation. Its hues are muted and gray, its world uninviting and harsh, its stories seemingly primed to expose the worst parts of its characters. And yet, it doesn't seek to leave everything of its former entry behind. In many ways, this early slice of Diablo IV offered a good sense of how most of the mechanical changes introduced in Diablo III, and more recently Diablo Immortal, have been smartly iterated on to maintain exciting action with the satisfaction of flexible character construction.

The opening moments of the preview we had access to, which encapsulated just one of the five regions that make up Diablo IV's massive map, were surprisingly slow and measured. After escaping a deadly snowstorm and suffering haunting visions, my Sorceress wandered upon a tiny village in need of aid. The villagers were gracious to receive my help and pointed me towards some enemies to dispatch, which was a straightforward task with a potent frost-based starting spell making quick work of most enemies. Upon returning, I was treated to a short cutscene of celebration, the camera swooping down and close to each character to provide a more intimate view of the party. It didn't take long for the sinister underpinning of the soiree to reveal itself, however, with the villagers poisoning me and quickly attempting to offer me up as sacrifice for Lillith--the creator of Diablo's world, Sanctuary, and main antagonist for this fourth main entry in the series. Suffice it to say that my Sorceress managed to just escape death and exact some well-deserved revenge for the deception, setting the stage for the overall tone of the story to come.

Lillith didn't feature significantly in gameplay at all during my limited time with Diablo IV, which totaled around 10 hours, but her influence could be felt everywhere. Her appearance in Sanctuary has changed people; some have lost all sense of morality, seeking to appease this new god with blood sacrifices. Demons have emerged in other areas of the land, enforcing their own sins on humanity that lead to some gruesome side stories. One that stuck out occurred when a distressed villager asked me to help track down her missing husband, who was last seen heading towards the woods with another woman. A typical story of infidelity resolved in the husband in question being found maimed and dismembered, hanging between two rocks and being kept alive by his lust for a demon nearby. Despite slaying the demon and bringing about an end to the spell, the story had no happy ending. The grieving widow was left to question whether her husband's misgivings or the workings of a foul creature had ultimately left her alone, with no simple answer offered by my Sorceress. This theme seemed prevalent in this latest interpretation of Diablo's world, acting as a distinct departure from the far less dreary tone of its predecessor.

Atmosphere is just one facet where Diablo IV is immediately distinct from the series' previous entry. Diablo III's approach to class builds was divisive, with the far more streamlined approach to ability choices. There were significantly fewer abilities to choose from, with the system instead depending on free and unlimited respecs to encourage experimentation with interesting combinations. This removed the consequence of choice from the equation, inadvertently making Diablo III builds more about specific pieces of gear that could distinguish your character from another more meaningfully. It was a design choice that made builds rest entirely on one or two pieces of gear, limiting the creativity once offered in the series to that point..

Diablo IV rectifies this in some smart ways, while still retaining approachability. The skill tree is made up of distinct nodes, with each one splintering outwards with numerous abilities and associated upgrades. Investing points anywhere in the skill tree works towards unlocking the next node and more abilities, giving you flexibility in how you reach each one. Each node usually offers options for a variety of builds specific to your class. For my Sorceress, each node usually featured a new ability for Frost, Fire, or Lightning builds, with ones further down sometimes swapping out options for one element for passive abilities instead. I was limited to just the first 25 levels in this version of the game (the final release will have a level cap of 100), but even with that limitation I found myself constantly looking to find ways to refine my skill choices between tough fights.

Being able to easily respec is core to the freedom that Diablo IV is designed to give players. At any point you can choose to use gold to refund points spent on a specific ability, or redo your skill tree entirely. There's no special merchant you need to visit, or scarce resources you need to gather. While the cost is still being iterated on, game director Joe Shely explained in an interview that this decision was made to encourage players to personalize their builds throughout their time with the game.

"We think that having your character feel like a compilation of choices you've made leads to interesting decisions; it leads to interesting opportunities to play with other folks. But we know that as you're engaging with the game, especially early on, you don't have a full understanding of the game. You're going to want to experiment and try things out. When you look at our respec systems, which apply to both our skill tree and Paragon for later levels, which is our endgame progression system, we really tried to approach it in a way that yes, gives that sense of making a choice that matters and [that] your character is not the same as everyone else's character. It's a sum of decisions you've made, and we want to make you think about those."

"It's a really good change when looking at the differences between D2 and D3. In D2 it felt like you were locking in, you had the ability to respec once per difficulty, and in D3 you kind of changed your build by changing your clothes. Everything was gear-based as opposed to skills-based," added executive producer and head of the Diablo franchise, Rod Fergusson. "I think the notion of the fact that we have skills on equipment is really nice. To Joe's point for experimentation, all of a sudden as a Sorceress I can get Blizzard three levels before I normally should and I can try Blizzard to see if I really want to use it or not, and when I switch my boots, I have a different thing and what have you."

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It's easy to think of this system as an intersection of Diablo II and III. While the former offered a detailed way to build some complex classes, it was overly strict with being able to take back early game decisions, limiting you to just a single respec per campaign. Diablo III, conversely, took away most of the choice entirely, handing out abilities linearly and only really allowing you to make some choices (albeit limited ones) near the end of your first campaign. With Diablo IV's approach, you can enjoy experimentation without the fear of looking into choices that might have undesired ramifications hours down the line. I found early on that the combination of Frost spells I had chosen wasn't working for strong, single enemies, and it was easy enough to entirely redefine my build after reloading a checkpoint. A few hours later, it was just as easy to switch entirely to a Lightning-based build and experiment with a whole other side of the skill tree, which injected a satisfying new kick into the familiar action role-playing combat that still looks and feels great.

Player choice is extended to overall progression through Diablo IV's story, too, with Blizzard adopting a non-linear approach to how events unfold. Once I had reached the first main town of Kyovashad and linked up with some key characters, I was given the choice of three main story missions to pursue. Two of them, which weren't available in this build of the game, were situated quite far away, in entirely new regions that required a slightly higher-level character than I was currently at. The other was conveniently close by, but this approach demonstrated that Lillith's influence and the order in which you experience its spread doesn't have to be the same as another player's. While you are pushed to play them in a specific order according to the character level that each one suggests, there's nothing stopping you from not engaging with the most readily available one, leveling up through other content, and continuing down a different path.

It’s an approach that acknowledges that many Diablo players don't always perceive the game’s story with the same importance as others, and it’s a fact that Blizzard is acknowledging--so much so that once you complete the story at least once with a single character, subsequent runs with any of your characters won't require you to engage with the story at all. Instead, you can opt out of it entirely once you start a new campaign, immediately opening towns to other players you'll encounter dynamically online and freeing up dungeons for you to explore that might have otherwise been tied up in story-specific encounters.

To supplement this playstyle, Diablo IV offers a wealth of additional content you can engage with to level up and acquire critical loot. These are broken down into numerous categories, each of which describes the level of challenge they provide and the potential rewards they offer. Cellars, for example, are short combat encounters that could have been mini-bosses in larger dungeons, offering small but sometimes important pieces of random loot as rewards. Dungeons, which were plentiful around just the small areas of the Fractured Peaks that I was allowed to roam in, are much more involved. They're familiar mazes with multiple levels, all of which you can now explore seamlessly without loading from one portion to the next. They culminate in tough-but-satisfying boss fights, many of which tested my current Sorceress build the most throughout my time. Dungeons seem to offer some of the best loot rewards, but also additional Aspects that can be augmented into offensive, defensive, and accessory equipment. Each dungeon contains a unique one that is rewarded on first completion, incentivizing additional exploration throughout each region to find the ones that synergize best with your gear. These prolonged combat areas already provide one of the best sources of experience for quickly leveling up, making them seem like critical stops along the way if you choose to ignore the main story quests.

Diablo IV's open-world structure supports the litany of side quests and events that it has to offer, with a much stronger sense of exploration in just the first portion of the map I was allowed to move through. Each of the game's five larger regions is segmented into multiple smaller ones, each with its own twisting routes that funnel you in one cardinal direction or another. Moving through these spaces provides some nice visual distinction between each area, from wet and rainy bogs to snow-covered peaks and gloomy, barren forests. They also let you poke and prod at each corner, uncovering pockets of tough enemies to challenge, new dungeons to explore, cellars to pillage, and a variety of public events that you can share with other players. You also earn renown, an alternative resource to experience, simply by interacting with the world, whether it's finding new towns and waypoints, completing public events, or engaging in side quests. Renown unlocks rewards once you've accrued enough, with instant gold and experience bounties but also more permanent upgrades such as the number of healing vials you can carry. These unlocks persist between characters, meaning you won't have to uncover the entire map again or engage with loads of world events with a new character when you're just trying to quickly get to the endgame, which seems like a good decision.

The density and intricacy of Diablo IV's world feels drastically different from the linear design of Diablo III's, which, despite having some open areas, always felt like it was pushing you in one direction towards the next big story beat, never mind the drastic cuts between regions when shifting from one act to another. The entire map of Diablo IV is described as larger than most previous maps combined, and just this small taste of the Fractured Peaks strongly suggests that to be true.

Diablo IV's dynamic open-world events, which act much like public events that you find in a game like Destiny 2, are shared with other players that seamlessly pop in and out of your server. Unlike Diablo Immortal, for example, you won't choose a specific server to play on. Rather, Diablo IV's regions are all their own separate instances with varying numbers of players in each, meaning you'll gracefully transition from one densely populated area to a more sparsely populated one without realizing it. As Fergusson explained, a lot of effort has gone into ensuring that regions are well-balanced, so that you don't end up with queues in front of quest-givers like so many other games with similar systems.

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"As you move through the world, you will enter different places that have different population caps," explained Fergusson. "So like Joe was saying, a town will have a high population cap because it's a social area and you want to have lots of people to make the town feel alive. But then as you cross out into the world, the population cap goes down so now there's fewer people there. Or if you go into a place where a World Boss will show up, the population cap goes up again to allow for more people. The density of players is dependent on what you're doing and where you are in the world, as opposed to 'this server holds X people.' That's not how it's architected."

The populated regions and presence of other players feeds into open-world activities that require more cooperation. Strongholds are challenging combat instances with distinct objectives that take place in camps with enemies a step or two above your current level, encouraging a group of players to tackle it as opposed to solo play. Without the chance to link up with other players during this preview, I attempted a Stronghold alone but didn't find much success. The gulf in power between my Sorceress and the large parties of enemies being thrown at me was initially manageable, but as the quest continued stronger single foes ended up being my undoing, dealing far too much damage and not taking enough from my attacks. Other events, such as endgame World Bosses (which weren't in this build), indicated that Blizzard sees value in weaving these larger, social experiences into the most important facets of Diablo's core loop, and that they're activities you'll likely need to engage in if you're interested in play beyond just the story. If you are focused mostly on narrative, however, you can take solace in the fact that those missions are only open to you and your selected party, so you don't have to worry about a random player joining for the ride.

It's these live-service elements and some of the hints at endgame content encounters that suggest a long tail is being planned for Diablo IV, which should come as no surprise given how long Blizzard has actively supported its predecessor. Yet Fergusson seemed apologetic for how he felt Blizzard underserved the Diablo community at the time, vowing to change that over the many years the developer plans to support Diablo IV with new content including expansions, season events, and more.

"[Diablo III] had seasons, and D3 has been out for 11 years, but we really felt like we underserved our players and underserved our community," Fergusson explained. "People wanted to play more Diablo experiences and you saw that with the Necromancer expansion. So, this is something that is really a promise from us to the fans and the community; Diablo IV is bringing with it not only the biggest world and the most character customization and the most freedom of choice of how to play the game, [but] it's also bringing this live service. We're going to support Diablo IV for years and years to come with new content, with very rich seasons, with expansions, and those sorts of things that I can't wait to talk about at a later date."

If this brief slice is meant to serve as a teaser for the foundations of that ambition, then Diablo IV seems on the right track. It's so far delivering on its promise of giving players far more agency than before in how they both play and build their favorite characters, while also providing more ways to tackle content and choose the activities that interest them first. That might not sound overtly original, but within the context of the series over the last decade it's a drastic and, so far, welcome departure that I'm both curious and excited to explore more of when Diablo IV releases on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, and PS5 in 2023.