WWith a click of the right mouse button, my brawny barbarian plunges his ax into the ground behind him, sweeping it forward, creating a shockwave that destroys everything in its path. Ahead, a horde of undead creatures is repelled by the blast, zombies flayed by the force of the air, skeletons scattered across the ground, wraiths dissipating into spectral dust. Furniture in the room flies with them, chairs, sconces, and barrels smash against the far wall. The ground itself is scarred from the attack, a conical depression left in the ground as if it had been struck by a midair meteor.
I did this fit countless times over the last weekend, and it never fails to light up my brain like Blackpool in September. The Diablo series represents video games in their purest and perhaps most reductive form and has exploited these feedback loops to enormous success over the past 25 years, reworking the complex rulesets of RPGs into something less cerebral and more sensory. While there’s some discussion about how intellectually nourishing these games can be, Diablo 4 packs a lot of seductive power. Clicking monsters to death in this game feels dangerously good.
However, having spent 48 hours with the game during its beta phase, it’s clear that there’s more to this than mindlessly bashing monsters. Diablo 4 sees the series return from a lengthy hiatus after a third game that proved controversial in more ways than one. In part because of this, it looks both backwards and forwards, addressing some criticism of Diablo 3 as it struggles to compete in a world that has changed dramatically since 2012.
After a mixed reception to Diablo 3’s colorful visuals, Diablo 4 returns to being the moody goth kid of your social role-playing group: pale, dressed in black, and obsessed with death. The opening area, called Fractured Peaks, is an oppressive place where muddy, monster-ravaged villages cling to the edges of a snowy mountain range, with labyrinths of caves and dungeons hidden beneath the icy surface. Said dungeons revel in their own filth. Painted in copious amounts of dark tones, much like FromSoftware’s Bloodborne, the blackened walls and floors are slippery with decaying gore and often writhing with strange tendrils that cling to you from the masonry.
The appeal of Diablo 4’s past isn’t purely stylistic. As your character builds power throughout the game’s dark fantasy adventure, you must choose how to channel that power, choosing skills and abilities that complement each other to make your chosen warrior an unstoppable destructive force. Diablo 4 ditches the overly simplified approach of the previous game and returns to a more traditional skill tree that shows your character’s entire power journey at a glance.
I tried two of the five character classes available in the open beta: the barbarian and the sorcerer. What became obvious during my time with them is how intuitive the character progression is. My Sorceress, for example, offered a variety of elemental powers to choose from. He could have turned her into a glowing pyromancer, or a weaponized Elsa that froze her enemies to death. Instead, I focused on electrical abilities, Emperor Palpatine blasting my way through dungeons hitting demons with bouncing bolts of lightning. This was not the limit of my options either. Diablo 4 allowed me to further tailor these attacks to produce a collectible known as “Crackling Energy”. While drawing these orbs of static electricity from downed enemies, they would automatically discharge when approaching new enemies. Therefore, my sorceress could fry entire groups of demons before casting her first spell: a delicious sensation.
Structurally, Diablo 4 is different, as players now fight their way through a huge open world. For the beta, only the Fractured Peaks area was available to explore, but this nonetheless represents a sizeable and impressively free area. While there’s a central story to follow, it’s easy to get sidetracked into some side quest, helping a villager find her missing husband in a bleak forest, or delving into optional dungeons with foreboding names like Black Asylum. These side activities are linked by “Renown”, a currency that, when accumulated, periodically rewards players with additional gold, skill points, and other bonuses.
The looser structure creates a more cohesive world, but it doesn’t radically change the way Diablo plays. Instead, the open world exists primarily to facilitate Diablo 4’s new status as a persistent online game. Diablo 4 has extensive multiplayer features, with other players roaming the game world freely and can fight together periodically while exploring individually, or actively join clans and embark on quests together. This ever-present multiplayer element could prove controversial, but interaction with other players isn’t required, and you can happily loot dungeons and follow the central story solo.
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While history has always been a part of Diablo, its role is small compared to other RPGs, largely an excuse for players to slay monsters by the millions. But Diablo 4 makes a more concerted effort to grab the player’s attention, breaking up the action with more elaborate cutscenes and dialogue that focus on individual characters, and takes more time to explore the game’s pseudo-Christian lore. These sequences bring with them all the flair you’d expect from Blizzard and an impressive cast that includes veteran voice actors like Troy Baker and Jennifer Hale, along with Hollywood names like Ralph Ineson.
Generally speaking, it’s a typical fantasy adventure, a great battle between good and evil. There are cults. There are prophecies. There are more helpless villagers than you can shake a pitchfork. But there is also an attempt at a more nuanced characterization. The main antagonist, the demon goddess Lilith, is not entirely evil, while the fallen angel Inarius, a central figure in the religion of the game’s long-suffering humans, is not entirely good. There’s just enough interest to be audible over the sound of the battle, and it helps the game take itself seriously, avoiding the temptation to weave the narrative together with leering glances and wry banter.
Some questions remain. While Diablo’s character progression is slick and intuitive, will it offer the same level of flexibility as other RPGs, especially Path of Exile, which stepped in during Diablo’s long absence? Also, what does this new multiplayer structure mean for Blizzard’s long-term monetization plans? Will we have to pay a subscription? It seems inevitable that it will continue to evolve after launch, and the question is what form that evolution will take. This is a game that could change shape substantially in the years to come. At least in its current form, Diablo 4 looks like a worthy ascendant to the throne of destruction.
