Open world activities
While Diablo 4 still features a linear story campaign, its new open world allows for a variety of side-by-side activities: the game test revealed that those who didn’t star in the story campaign ended up playing about twice as long as those who did. . Side events include crafting, world events, PvP, and side quests.
However, the most popular test activities were Camps, cleanable outposts spread throughout the game world. Each camp has been invaded in a different way (one has been cursed and turned the villagers into salt, another is chased by a spirit that has multiple bodies in a crypt) and, when cleared, will be populated with friendly NPCs and become at a reference point on the map.
Shared world
While Diablo 4 will have a shared world. Blizzard makes it clear that it has tweaked the game so that it doesn’t feel like a traditional MMO, but instead makes encounters with players rare, with larger groups only appearing where contextually expected.
Dungeons and key moments in history are always private for the game party. The cities will have a few other players, and the open road will also be dotted with them. Cooperative world events sound like they feature the largest number of players gathered, fighting hordes of enemies or world bosses. The new tools will allow solo players to find open groups or join groups close to them.
Cutting scenes
Diablo 4 will feature three varieties of scene, aiming to make sure it rarely breaks the game’s isometric camera angle, but still feels cinematic in some way. Normal NPC conversations will see the camera zoom in, using canned animations. Major conversations will use the same camera angle, but will use hand-made animations to convey the story in the most effective way possible.
The most important moments will use scenes in real time, which take a more cinematic camera style, but will include your character, in his current armor and with the chosen graphics settings, to make the game feel perfect.
These are the main new details announced in the Blizzard update, but there’s much more included in the report on the overall game testing results.
Diablo 4 doesn’t have a release date yet, and you shouldn’t expect it any time soon. However, we already know a lot about the game, including how Gears of War’s Rod Fergusson runs it, how it will feature cosmetic microtransactions, and how he was inspired by Junji Ito.
Joe Skrebels is IGN Executive News Editor. Follow him on Twitter. Do you have any advice for us? Do you want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
