I had my doubts. I had questions circling in my head since I first played Diablo 4 at BlizzCon 2019 – was it really that long ago? – and I’ve had questions about the need for a big new Diablo at all. But after 10 hours with it from the beginning of the game, I can see what kind of shape it’s taking, and I like it. I like the tone, I like the mechanics, I like the world. There are some things I can’t see but overall this is, plainly, the next generation of Diablo.
Curiously, it’s the world that really stays with me most about it. Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise given that an open-world is one of the big new things about Diablo 4, and at every PR-beat, Blizzard has told us how much it wants the world to feel dark, like the earlier Diablo games. Diablo 3 had a more cartoon edge to it, a kind of Warcrafty tinge.
And it’s true, Diablo 4 does feel darker, not in a literal lighting sense, but in a moodier sense. It’s grim and unsettling. It’s dour and desaturated. It’s a fantasy world that’s always raining and windy – a grey-hued world of mud and weather-beaten people. A harsh world of harsh realities. I can’t think of a better comparison than Game of Thrones in the North in this regard: an unflinching place where people don’t smile much. It feels like that.
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