Diablo 4 ‘ is one of the most expected titles of this year. Which is not a surprise, taking into consideration the fact that Diablo III was released more than 10 years ago and the latest release ‘ Immortal ‘ had pretty controversial reviews. Here is the most relevant information on the upcoming project.
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When is Diablo 4 coming out?
The official game announcement took place at BlizzCon 2019. However, for the next almost 4 years, the release was delayed several times, while the senior manager and the leading game designer were fired.
Diablo 4 trailer:
According to Blizzard’s official statement at The Game Awards 2022, the date of release is June 6, 2023. Although right now there are many gossips of a possible delay to a later date.
Diablo 4 classes
Right after the release you will be able to choose one of five classes, each different in unique fighting skills, mechanics, abilities. Besides, classes don’t mean the particular gender and you can customize the character’s appearance in a special editor. There you can adjust a plenty of parameters, such as complexion color, body type, haircut, scars, tattoos and accessories.
Rogue ‘ is the master of assassination, perfectly handling blades, swords, bows and crossbows. Rogue also uses shadow magic and shadow clones. Rogue can buff abilities with poison, frost and darkness, increasing the damage inflicted. This class is known for its increased speed and the ability to combine and quickly switch between melee and ranged combat.
Barbarian is a brutal close-range warrior, who mostly uses physical strength. Barbarian stayed almost untouched compared to its own version in the previous Diablo parts. This class has high stamina and physical strength, battlecries and powerful jumps. Thanks to the Arsenal system, the warrior can carry up to 4 sets of weapons, from double axes to two-hand swords and maces, all of which you can switch between during the fight.
Sorceress ‘ is a mage at its finest, able to control different magical energies. Thus, the hero combines some of them, quickly passing through the levels, using spells, and is able to incinerate crowds of enemies at once. Sorceress also has 3 special enhancement slots for the abilities. Once placed there, the special effect applies to the spells from time to time.
Druid is a class who gets energy from nature. Due to his abilities, Druid can transform into a wolverine or a bear and summon two wolves to help him. The higher level your hero has, the longer the beast’s form stays with you. Such a skill set allows Druid to combine physical damage with ranged attacks.
Necromancer is an adept of dark magic, able to control the army of the dead. Using two types of resources: essence and corpses, Necromancer summons skeletons and creates spells. You can use Book of the Dead to customize and rank up the summons as well as his own abilities. When needed, Necromancer can sacrifice the dead to earn some bonuses. Apart from magical attacks, this class can also handle weapons such as scythes.
When it comes to any extra classes, it’s highly probable that Diablo 4 goes the same way as its ancestors, increasing the number of classes gradually with add-ons. This is the common Diablo behavior pattern and some of the head manager’s phrases like: ‘possible appearances of the old heroes in the next patches’ only approves it.
Diablo 4 Gameplay
The gameplay basis of Diablo 4 remains the same: heroes are supposed to run through locations, eliminate crowds of demons, collect the loot and try to reach an ideal build. The only difference, now it’s going to be an open-world, where your hero can travel on foot or on a mount. Moreover, the mount handling is a whole new mechanic.
In terms of visual part, the developers transitioned from the cartoonish style to realism and brutality. The new source, which supports Physically Based Rendering technology, helps to render more realistic objects. The source also reworked NPC models, heroes and enemies.
A tree of skills also was reworked, now it’s more of a real tree with active skills on the branches and passive skills in the roots. Points for active and passive skills are different and you don’t need to choose between them anymore.
In addition to that, the game now has dynamic change of day time and weather, clan system, several new modes, such as hardcore, cross-platform support for PC and consoles. Due to that the new part is going to be the most macabre and cruel Diablo part for now. Just look: faster and more mobile heroes, terrain usage in fights, monsters, tearing apart, 18+ rating means the game is full of blood.
Single player is widely combined with MMO-elements. Apart from the main storyline and sidequests, the game is full of random activities such as team dungeon runs, fights with world’s bosses and everyday quests. After you complete it, you get Shards of Hatred, which you can use to get top equipment.
Sometimes, you can meet other players, when you play single player. After completing quests, cities will switch to social hubs, where you can even use a PvP mode. With active quests enabled, your hero earns more experience, but can also lose all of the collected resources to another player.
Accomplishing side quests is not necessary, as missing it doesn’t make any troubles with doing only the main story. Although, a big part of the in-game content goes past a player.
One would like to separately emphasize the fact the game hasn’t been released yet but the in-game store is already working. The studio promised it will only have outlook elements, which won’t influence the game balance. On the other hand, new side quests, dungeons and locations will be added for free.
What else do we know about the game?
Unlike the previous parts, Diablo 4 will be a fully seamless open-world. Your hero will be able to travel to any of 5 different unique biomes instantly, each of biomes will be several times greater than the biggest locations of Diablo III. All the locations will have their own conditions, types of enemies and quest chains.
Diablo LocationsKehjistan is a deserted area in the north. After the demon’s invasion, there are only ruins of local civilization and cultists, worshiping Lilith.
The Fractured Peaks are a cold and mountainous area with a lot of snow. That’s where the bloodthirsty sect members found a place to live.
Skosglen is a fertile, but dangerous land, covered with thick forest. It’s known not only because of a dark coast, but also as a home of Druids.
Hawezar is a poisonous and infectious swamp, inhabited by witches.
The Dry Steppes are its name itself. There are many hazardous creatures as well as barbarians, mercenaries, blood mages and cannibals.
It’s worth mentioning that in Diablo 4 the authors decided to draw the world manually, to fill up the locations with various interesting places and picturesque views. The only part of the world that was generated automatically are dungeons, around 140 ones.
Diablo 4 storyline ‘ who is the main antagonist?
Diablo 4 takes place 60 years after the end of Reaper of Souls. Exhausting and bloodshed war between Heaven and Hell cost a lot for all: millions of people and heroes died, angels stopped caring about Sanctuary and the world fell apart, becoming inhabited by monsters and undead.
Diablo 4 What is more, after a bloody ritual Lilith, Mephisto’s daughter, was reborn. Lilith is the queen of succubus, progenitor of the whole mankind and the game’s main villain. She possesses great power over mortals and wishes to plunge the universe into darkness and despair.
Previously, Lilith appeared in Diablo II and her story was described in Diablo III. According to the lore, she created Sanctuary with archangel Inarius and gave birth to nehalems race ‘ half demons, half angels, the ancestors of people. Soon, Lilith went crazy and was banished into the Void, where she kept making insidious plans.
The authors say it will take around 35 hours to complete the story.
Diablo 4 Platforms
The game will be available for all platforms, including PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. At the same time, the developers said nothing about porting the game to Nintendo Switch.
Diablo 4 Beta
The Closed beta testing of the game ended in November, 2022. It demonstrated the players the final content. However, the delays that happened later, also moved the dates of the Open testing.
According to the official info, the Open testing for Diablo 4 takes place for all platforms on March 24-26. The users who preordered the game, will have early access ‘ March 17-19. For consoles the process can be initiated via Playstation Store or Xbox Store, while for PC via Batlle.net only.
It is anticipated the players will be able to complete the Prologue and Act I, while the heroes will be able to only reach level 25 maximum. Besides the main story, it will also be possible to accomplish sidequests. Although remember that you won’t be able to transfer your progress to the full version.
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