Diablo 4 shaping up well for June launch

Diablo 4 has been given a release date, and we got to go hands on with an early build of the game and chat with the developers

The Game Awards on Friday revealed that the next game in the long-running Diablo series, Diablo 4, will be released in June.

Blizzard provided us with an early build of the game, as well as the opportunity to chat with the game’s director, Joe Shely, and series general manager Rod Fergusson. Fans of the series certainly don’t have to worry – Diablo 4 is shaping up to be the series’ best.

The build of Diablo 4 we were able to access let us check out three of the game’s five classes, the Rogue, the Barbarian, and the Sorcerer, all fan-favourites, but sadly not the Druid or the Necromancer. We went with the Sorcerer, which lets players choose from three different combat paths focusing on fire, electricity, or ice skills.

Each class will have different skill paths like this, and each skill path lets players finely customise the way they want to play. Fergusson tells us that this feeling of choice and freedom is at the core of the Diablo 4 experience.

“With a sorceress, you can unlock a specialisation that lets you have not only your active skills, but also a passive skill that triggers either based on a hit or after a time or what have you,” Fergusson told us, “It just makes it so much richer, and there’s so much more choice. You can choose how to play; do I want to play solo? Do I want to play couch co-op? Do I want to play with strangers or friends? As you get familiar with those systems and familiar with the game, there’s so much left, more richness to explore”.

Each class in Diablo 4 has different skill paths to choose from, which can massively change the way you play. Picture: Blizzard

Wandering the world in Diablo 4 gives a real sense of dread, with the environment and audio design creating a tense and hostile atmosphere. It’s an open-world, nonlinear game, meaning players can go wherever they want and do whatever they want, almost from the get-go.

That freedom of choice, the ability to forge your own path, can be a little paralysing at first, but as with any open-world game it’s more about the journey than it is the destination. We only had access to the game’s first zone, Fractured Peaks, a mountainous area filled with danger, but that alone is vast and filled with secrets and places to explore.

Because the world is so big and so open, Blizzard says players will have access to mounts like horses to help quickly get around, but they won’t be able to access them right away. That’s because, as Shely tells us, there are a lot of interesting places in the world of Diablo 4, and the developer team wants players to explore the world rather than quickly moving from place to place.

“With Diablo 4, we looked at how we were going to build this huge continent as part of the world of Sanctuary, and that players will be able to ride across it,” Shely told us, “At the same time, we didn’t want to create an experience that just felt sort of desolate like, ‘I guess you better ride across this because there’s nothing going on anyway’. We wanted to have a world that was teeming with life, in addition to having lots of action combat”.

That combat is incredibly good, too. It takes a little bit of what made every prior Diablo game good, with the flashiness that made Diablo 3 such a joy to play and the punchy impact that made Diablo 2’s combat feel satisfying.

Diablo 4’s combat takes inspiration from every prior Diablo game to make something excellent. Picture: Blizzard

Diablo 4 is clearly leaning on the series’ history, picking and choosing the bits that players have come to love over its 25 years. Fergusson said that Diablo 4 is “the dark tone of Diablo, paired with the progression systems of Diablo 2, paired with the visceral combat of Diablo 3”, and that pretty much nails the moment-to-moment gameplay. No matter if players started their journey in Diablo 1 or 2, or only jumped in with Diablo 3, there’s likely to be something here that will appeal to everyone.

Still, it won’t be a game for everyone, with the game’s marketing motto, “Return to Darkness”, really signalling that unlike Diablo 3, which took a lighter tone with its storytelling, Diablo 4 will not be for the faint of heart. It’s dark and confronting, and anyone who’s seen the story trailers will know that cutscenes can get very intense. As for why now was the right time to take a step back towards that darker tone, Fergusson says that the media landscape is a lot different now compared to what it was in 2012 when Diablo 3 launched.

“The industry and pop culture has changed, where now that sort of darkness of tone and theme is now mainstream,” he said, “When you look at Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead or Squid Game, that notion of these darker, edgier stories and visuals are as popular as anything else out there. It felt like the right time.”

Still, it might be a tough call for some to buy in. Diablo 4 will cost $109.95 in Australia for the game’s standard edition, with $140 and $155 editions available too. On top of that, there’ll be paid seasonal battle passes and microtransactions when the game launches, and that might become a bit much for some players.

Diablo 4’s open world will have players exploring all kinds of environments and biomes. Picture: Blizzard

Blizzard assures us that these paid extras will be “purely cosmetic items”, and that there won’t be any “pay for power” choices. The paid cosmetics will be for things like costumes and emotes, as well as mounts and mount customisation options such as saddles.

Given the base game seems to be shaping up so solidly, it doesn’t feel like players will be pressured into buying these things or even paying for the seasonal battle pass. That could change before release, but it’s certainly off to a great start.

Diablo 4 is scheduled to release on June 6 2023, for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S and X, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. Unlike Diablo 3, it doesn’t look like this one will be making its way to the Nintendo Switch, but you can never really say never when it comes to Blizzard.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.