Gameplay trailer:
Lilith appears to be the main villain now and the Druid is back. Also there will be PVP and the game is supposed to be “dark” like Diablo 2.
I still need to see more gameplay aspects and possible new features to see if the game will actually be interesting and not be like Diablo 3…
I am a big fan of D1 and D3 (I didn’t play D2 because the graphics gave me motion sickness - I have the same issue with all first person games). If I hadn’t have been I would never have discovered Grim Dawn, a game I’ve come to love as much as D1/D3. I am really looking forward to D4 because both the opening cinematic and the game play look wonderful to me.
This couldn’t be better news. It means between all four of these games still being playable (I still have my original d1 discs and an old PPC Mac that I run it on :D) it just means I’ve got hours and hours and hours of fun to look forward to.
They have my money when it arrives.
I will have to see / learn a lot more to get interested, D3 is a lot to overcome 
The environment and character models appear to be more in line with what I want from a Diablo game. The cinematic was awesome. Gameplay trailer looked cool but watching some guy stream the demo on twitch was less impressive.
The skill system seems to be a lot like D3… just pick 6 skills but without rune modifications… runes apparently are world drops but what exactly they do right now I don’t know, could be like the beta D3 runes or like D2 runes? There is a passive “talent tree”, two lines with 5 or 6 “tiers” each with 2 nodes at each tier. Looks like 5 points invested total in tier one unlocks tier two. I suppose that is improved from Diablo 3 passive system. The itemization has to be really good fi they want to stick with a barely modified D3 skill system. Part of me wants to get really excited because I love Diablo but the other part sees a lot of Diablo 3 making its way in.
I knew that they would have to do either Lilith or Tathamet as the antagonist (and hey they might still do Tathamet for all we know).
I will definitely keep an eye on Diablo 4 but due to the past that eye will be sharper and more critical. I will most certainly not buy the Collector’s Edition like I did for Diablo 3 because that game changed from what was shown and it’s release was beyond a failure.
Real Money Auction House. Abysmal Drop Rates, Incompetent Developers, Cartoony Graphics, Zero Communication/Updates, Terrible Dialogue, Deckard Cain dying to Butterflies, Beyond Ridiculous Bosses, Sheablo, etc… etc… etc…
I will not be swayed by a cinematic or gameplay video that may very well not represent the game itself because that is exactly what they did with Diablo 3’s gameplay video.
Shakes fist violently
Looks just like D3 gameplay but “darker”.
Blizzard is terrible and nothing like it was back in the day. Big no thanks on their products from me. Disappointing.
Well for me it will definitely be a instabuy. I simply love this Series, and while i was “dissapointed” at first with Diablo 3, after the years they put work into it, it become my most favorite entry in this series. Diablo 4 however have a huge advantage / potential to bridge Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 together… still having an artistic “Artstyle” which might like Diablo 3 be timeless, while give it a even darker tone / more realistic approcah. It really feels / looks like mixing D2&D3 together… and i hope that will reflect in terms of the rest of the Game as well, so they take the good stuff of D3 and mix it with the good Stuff from D2.
I’m also kinda interested in their approach in the World, because i hear details about being a (somewhat) huge Open World, that’s why there will be “Mounts” and they want the Campaign be less “linear” (Story) but rather more open.
/Edit: TBH as a ARPG Fan it’s really like amazing time to be here… GD still getting support and having Content (which atleast for me will lasts for some years). Last Epoch and Wolcen as Upcoming Project(and Lost Ark i guess), and now even Diablo 4…
@PlentyFoldsInTheGrey
Though i’d argue we’ve to wait and see, because alot of stuff could be not final yet and it’s only a demo… i remember D3 where it at first had also an (amazing) Skilltree but scraped it later…
/Edit: I look rhykker videos and there is a skilltree… the window where you pick your skills you can level your skills with skill points… and than there is the mentioned talent-tree.
Yeah, I think a lot of people are getting this confused with ‘forced’ multiplay. By open world they talk about how numerous NPCs will gather together to help you for big world events and random ones may join you along the journey for a while before they go off on their own. I LOVE this idea because it gives the feeling that the events that are happening are effecting things everywhere.
This was the thing I found really interesting. I’ve been playing the Last Epoch since Alpha and this looks very similar to what they have. Now, what Last Epoch is doing could’ve been borrowed as well as my only experience with ARPGs is D1, D3, PoE (which I never liked), Grim Dawn and LE.
I fucking love the druid in d2 was sad they didn’t have it in d3. All ways wished grim dawn had a shapeshipter class. My only problem with d3 was I could only use 5 skills total hope they don’t do that in d4. Plus I love a skill tree just saying
Okay no Offline-Mode - not even on consoles… could be a big no for me, even if i love what i’ve seen so far, i don’t want to rely on blizzard to being able to enjoy this Game.
Looks great but yeah, no offline mode is just the tip of the iceberg.
Blizzard don’t make games anymore, they make services.
Let’s see what other bs they’re gona nickel and dime us for before you get excited.
always focus on the gameplay trailer, demos, and preview. cinematic trailers are just the bread and butter of aaa companies. i’ve witnessed so many games (especially mobiles) making a big deal of showing ads of their cinematics/pre-rendered artworks with lots of embellishment, and some of them only put 1 screenshot of real in game stuff.
I liked how the cinematic started and ended, but to be honest I was skipping bits, it just dragged on. Seemed pretty easy for them to undo Rathma’s seals…
Gameplay I only assume they reused a lot of D3 assets with some darker aesthetic due to being early in development (going by reasonably recent key hires).
Right now, looks like Diablo 2.3/3.2 where they’ve just smashed out fan service as hard as possible. We’ll see if they can actually push the genre forward rather than Diablo:Greatest Hits…
Atmosphere and styling reminded me a lot of D1, which is one of my all time favorite games.
My hopes are high on Diablo IV, let’s see what it will look like on release (whenever it will be).
Loved the cinematic trailer too.
So from what I’ve seen of the gameplay it looks like the world will be a bunch of zones stitched together consisting of an outer world that can have more multiplayer instances such as events/bosses and so on. I think the dungeons themselves you’d have to organize a group to play together though that is merely speculation.
Most likely throughout the world there will be a certain region or biome that will then consist of these zones which will have the over world events (bosses/events) and some quests for both dungeons and the over world as well. As an example you could have like 4-5 regions showcasing different sanctuary locations and then each of these regions would have maybe 5+ zones each. Each zone would have an over world consisting of maybe 3+ events (boss fights / events), quests and then dungeons interspersed with enemies to kill, chests, and the fantastically new and never before seen feature: Climbing/Horseback Riding. Please note this is just my guess but if that is the case to me that kinda sounds rather generic and rather boring but hey we’ll see what happens.
World boss I saw like 10 or so players clustering around 1 large boss with attacks that weren’t choreographed well. What I mean is that with 10+ players fighting this boss you’ll have a ton of effects going on and it can be difficult to gauge what the bosses move set will be. Lost Ark I found an example where some hard hitting attacks would make a red highlight on the ground giving the player knowledge of what is to come. To me having 10+ characters surrounding a chunky monster wouldn’t look good and wouldn’t play good either (monster aggro harder to read, attack difficult to see and so on). I could see there being a way to do this but it would be rather unique and unsuited for the Diablo Universe.
Current concerns:
Music being like D3 where it’s all in your face orchestra and dramatic rather then in the background emphasizing the actual game when it comes to atmosphere. For boss fights yea I can see D3 style working well - in a random dungeon no. This is just in general. I’ll probably recheck some gameplay videos to get a better sense on the ambient music.
Lighting. Rather minor but it kinda bugs me when I see random candles lit around a dungeon and yet there are zero humans around so… why the candles? Ambient lighting, monster influenced lighting (bonfires and the like), and environment (bugs, plants, animals), magic lighting can all work but seeing repeated candles lit like your on some sort of walkway doesn’t make any sense at all.
Color pallet being a bit too gray or brown in the environment. While I don’t want rainbows like D3, color can be used even sparingly to add a bit more contrast in an environment.
Druid and Barbarian having some odd sort of combo system when it comes to shape shifting or using dual wield / 2h. This is from what I saw with pre-determined skills so hopefully that won’t be enforced with the skill builds.
Narration / Dialogue / Story. Major concern if anyone remembers Diablo 3’s dialogue - it was rather bad most of the time and borderline atrocious the rest of the time. I’m not sure if Diablo 3’s dialogue was done in the way it was done to emphasize a more immature crowd but if it was I wouldn’t be surprised (much like the cartoony look). Hope we won’t get some stupid villain telling you his most nefarious plan and how you can stop him…
In any case, just some thoughts. I will remain skeptical when it comes to whether Diablo 4 will be good or not. I hope that it would be but this is Blizzard Activision and we have Diablo 3 to remember.
edit: I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Blizzard back in 2018-19 used Diablo 3 as a base for Diablo 4 in order to try and copy other more current ARPG’s (Lost Ark 1 example). Backlash from Diablo Immortal making Blizzard scramble to not lose their fanbase resulting in Diablo 4’s development being super quick.
The shown gameplay video could easily have been cobbled together much like Diablo 3’s to give the false impression that they have a ton already done. And yet Diablo Immortal backlash with Blizzard giving zero reassurance of a PC Diablo game. And yet when asked about a release date it was heavily implied it would be longer then Blizzard’s idea of soon (so like maybe 2 years from nowish).
They definitely don’t have a ton done already. It seemed clear that this game is at least 2 years away. I get that they’ve said they’ve already done X, Y, Z dungeons and areas, but things looked sparse as hell. Gameplay also didn’t look fluid to me at all. Seems like they have a long, long way to go to make this into a legitimately great game.
This is why I assume that they used Diablo 3 to jump start Diablo 4 which would save a ton of time and allow them to tailor make the Demo Area and Gameplay Video.
Remember that Diablo 3’s gameplay video was a complete fabrication.
Perhaps… however:
GamesBeat: How long has this version of Diablo IV been in development?
Murphy: We’ve been working on it for a few years.
GamesBeat: How much new tech is there with the lighting in the game?
Murphy: It’s a brand new engine, brand new renderer, brand new lighting tech. We have dynamic time of day that happens when you’re in the overworld. We even have dynamic time of day in the random exterior dungeons we’re making.
We have dynamic weather systems. When it starts to rain, things get wet. Ripples start to happen after it’s been raining for a while. Water accumulates. Your hero gets wet. All these things happen, and that affects lighting. It’s PVR, so this is the first time we’ve had that in Diablo. It’s a completely new lighting pipeline. It’s actually been really cool to build it.
So it appears they’ve had enough time to get as far as they have, unless they are lying.
And since they demo’d it at this Blizzcon we know at least that the gameplay so far isn’t a fabrication since it was widely streamed by numerous sources.
The Blizzcon Diablo Immortal fiasco and the lack of response/hope given to the community heavily makes me doubt that claim.
Remember the massive negative backlash? Remember Blizzard immediately making a statement about a large Diablo PC project in the works? I remember the first but not the second.
All that negativity and stock decrease could have easily be avoided if they mentioned anything about a PC Diablo game that was currently in the works - but they didn’t because imo they had nothing at the time.
It just doesn’t make sense.
edit: Grim Dawn uses a far older system with TQ and made massive changes. It could be possible that they also did the same with Diablo 4 in using parts of Diablo 3 - even with assets such as models/skeletons/animations and such could be reused and simply tweaked when it came to changing the model a bit while vastly changing the texture to fit the darker look.