Ryder described the “dual pillars” of Diablo 4‘s aesthetic as “old masters” and “a return to darkness.” The former refers to the techniques of painters like Rembrandt and how Blizzard sought to integrate the attention to detail, range of tones, and variety of colors seen in classical works. Today’s art blog may not be the best showcase for that last one because most of the featured environments are as brown as the shooters of the 2000s, but varied and lively too. 

The “return to darkness” motif will likely ring more bells for longtime Diablo fans. Blizzard wants to recapture the dangerous, dark, medieval Gothic atmosphere of Sanctuary, and it’s beefed up its lighting and weather tech, among others, to help flesh it out. Ryder says Diablo 4 is aiming “for believability, not realism” by giving regions and biomes clear, consistent, but fantastical themes, and stresses that “weather and lighting play a more prominent visual role” than in previous games. 

This update features environments like the soggy Scosglen Coast, the Orbei Monastery maintained by Zakarum followers in the Dry Steppes, and the frigid militaristic settlement of Kyovoshad, where even high-class districts look like slums. With all these new and improved assets at its disposal, associate art director Brian Fletcher says Diablo 4 will deliver more and more varied dungeons “than ever before.” 

“In order to support over 150+ dungeons, we’ve had to shift the way we make environment art so that it’s flexible enough to be used in multiple locations and not just in a single dungeon,” Fletcher explains. Diablo 4 uses dynamic dungeon “tile-sets” that can be rearranged to create a broader range of environments, meaning Diablo 4 should feel less same-y as you grind your characters to infinity. 

“New dungeon features such as seamless floor transitions or traversals are exciting, but my favorite new feature is what we call tile-set transition scenes,” Fletcher says. ‘These are scenes that allow us to connect two different tile-sets together in the same dungeon. Imagine running through a crypt, only to find a hole in the wall that seamlessly leads you deeper into a vast underground cave network. All while keeping the randomized layouts that change with each dungeon run.” 

In the last Diablo 4 update, Blizzard outlined how loot and endgame grinds have evolved, and at the time it teased “a significant milestone” for the game’s development. More recently, global community lead Adam Fletcher acknowledged player feedback that blog posts like these can leave big questions largely unanswered and assured fans that Diablo 4’s testing phases will be more informative. 

Last week, a judge said they are “prepared to approve” Activision Blizzard’s $18 million harassment settlement, but the company remains legally embattled. Here are the ongoing Activision Blizzard lawsuits and investigations explained. 

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In a tweet (opens in new tab), the Ybarra said: “Blizzard is a big studio and we have talented and growing teams supporting live games as well. Over the coming weeks, you’ll be hearing more on that from Warcraft and Overwatch. Diablo will follow. Stay tuned!”

Blizzard is a big studio and we have talented and growing teams supporting live games as well. Over the coming weeks, you’ll be hearing more on that from Warcraft and Overwatch. Diablo will follow. Stay tuned!January 25, 2022

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Ybarra’s tweet was in response to a fan who criticised the fact Blizzard is working on a survival game set in “a whole new universe.” This new project was announced yesterday alongside some concept art and job listings in a blog post on the official Blizzard website.  

Updates on these beloved Blizzard franchises has got to be good news to fans, especially considering we haven’t heard too much about Overwatch 2 since it was announced in 2019. It was recently claimed that Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick contributed to delays with months of lost dev time and that not only Overwatch 2 but Diablo 4 have been pushed out of 2022 so they reach their “full potential.” Last we heard about Diablo 4, the game had reached “a significant milestone,” but we still shouldn’t expect the game to release this year.

In case you missed it, Microsoft recently announced that it was buying Activision for almost $70 billion. This means any studios under the Activision brand – including Blizzard, King, Toys for Bob, Raven Software, and more – will soon belong to Microsoft. Don’t worry just yet though, Activision games will still be enjoyed on a variety of platforms despite Xbox takeover. 

Want to find out what else you can look forward to this year? Take a look at our new games 2021 list. 

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“We’ve made big strides, with every build of the game containing a host of expanded content, new art, balance changes, and other iterations,” says game director Joe Shely. “In fact, the team is currently playtesting an internal release of the game that represents a significant milestone.” It’s unclear what this milestone represents, especially with Diablo 4 pushed out of 2022 (along with Overwatch 2), but any production update is welcome. 

The more granular bits of the blog post focus on acquiring and modifying loot, as well as how the endgame Paragon system has been overhauled, and by overhauled we mean turned into a board game.

For example, while unique items in Diablo 4 are locked to certain traits, legendary items can be customized through an essence system overseen by the new Occultist NPC. This vendor lets you sacrifice a legendary item to rip out its legendary power as an essence, and you can then slot that essence into another legendary item to replace its previous power. You can also just hold onto essences if you’re thinking of using them later, plus you can slot any essence into any legendary item type – not just rings, helmets, weapons, and so on. “There’s no need to hunt for a specific item type any longer,” explains lead systems designer Joe Piepiora.

Speaking of specific items: while Diablo 4 is working to “place a stronger emphasis on character power” as opposed to gear-based power, it’s also improving the gearing process by making specific items easier to acquire. Simply put, different enemies and monsters will be more likely to drop certain item types, letting you farm them to more reliably acquire certain pieces. Piepiora offered this example: “While bandits are fond of Maces, Crossbows, and Boots, if you’re hunting for a new pair of Pants, you’d do well to kill some of the Drowned instead.” 

A key part of filling out the character power fantasy is Diablo 4’s updated Paragon system, dubbed the Paragon Board. By earning XP and placing tiles on a board, you can gain stat boosts as well as more bespoke passive abilities. That’s the pitch anyway, and the Paragon Board does sound cool at first blush, with normal tiles granting standard stat buffs, magic tiles offering stronger benefits (fire resistance is the example shown), and rare tiles empowering specific builds, resources (like the Barbarian’s Fury), and combos. Some tiles can be enhanced with glyphs that buff nearby tiles as well, and you’ll acquire new glyphs as you explore the game. 

There are also immensely powerful legendary tiles on the Paragon Board, but to get those, you’ll need to level up enough to reach a gate tile at the edge of your character’s starting board, choose and attach another board to that gate, and then build over to the legendary tile in the middle of the new board. It sounds complicated, but still more straightforward than the byzantine skill trees of some RPGs, and far more nuanced than Diablo 3’s stat-boosting Paragon grind. 

Diablo 4’s previous director left the project not long after the Activision Blizzard lawsuit first surfaced.

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