“There is no light here.”
Blizzard Entertainment revealed the next installment in the storied dungeon crawling franchise Friday during BlizzCon 2019.
The existence of a new Diablo game isn’t exactly a surprise — not only has it been teased and leaked, a Kotaku report notes that the sequel has been in development for long enough to have its direction rebooted at least once. From the onset, the plan for Diablo 4 has been to take the series back to its roots, particularly when it comes to the art direction. The hope is to make Diablo 4 darker, gorier, and more sinister, like Diablo 2 before it. Inspiration was taken from old medieval paintings, and the trailer showcased during BlizzCon featured plenty of blood. Visible classes seem to include mage, druid, and barbarian. The trailer also showcased Lilith, mother of the Nephalim — in other words, a female Diablo.
Diablo 3, which was released in 2012, had a rocky launch that began with widespread connection issues. From there, controversy spurred thanks to a combination of balance issues, as well as a troubling implementation of an auction house that encouraged players to spend real-world money to acquire better gear.
As the years went on, Diablo 3’s developers ironed out the loot kinks, released some beefy expansions, and closed the auction house. Ultimately the game went on to sell over 30 million copies, and is now available on consoles. Last year, a mobile MMO version of the franchise was announced with Diablo Immortal, but the lack of Diablo 4 news at the time meant that the announcement was met with swift backlash. But now fans can rest easy knowing that yes, Blizzard is working on a new mainline installment of its loot-centric RPG.
Source: Polygon