Diablo IVremains to this day the undisputed king of the ARPG genre. A throne that remains in his possession thanks to an excellent fourth opus that has not yet said its last word. During Gamescom in Cologne, we had the opportunity to enjoy a short conversation with Gavian Whishaw (Executive Producer) and Rex Dickson (Lead Designer). During this conversation, we went into the details of new DLC Diablo IV, Hate Container. This new content will take us to a biome unpublishedin addition to develop the story in the footsteps of Mephisto. In addition, a new class from which we were able to learn new details.
Without further ado, we began the interview, of course, by first greeting each other properly.
AreaXbox (hereinafter, “AX”): Thank you very much for having us today, we have a few questions we would like to try to answer as we and the fans are eagerly awaiting this expansion.
Blizzard (hereinafter, “B”): Thank you very much for coming, we are delighted to be able to chat with enthusiasts like you and we are here to answer all your questions.
Mercenaries and Diablo IV Gameplay Changes
AX: To begin, we would like to comment on one of the new features of the expansion that most catches our attention. We are talking of course about Mercenaries. What impact will the mercenaries have on Diablo IV Hate Vessel?
B: Mercenaries is intended to be a fully cooperative experience.They work with you to achieve your goals. Even if you play alone, you will never feel alone again, because they will be there to fight the hordes of evil alongside you.
However, the most important thing about mercenaries is that They have a complete skill treeeach of them has one that won’t differ much from the one of your chosen character or class, since extensive features give you the ability to complete flaws in your skills build what you do to your mercenary.
This is a deep relationship that develops over time. The more time you spend with your mercenary, the more mercenary-specific rewards you can earn. Additionally, we have a feature called “reinforcement”with which, perhaps, you don’t want to go out with a particular mercenary, but at a specific moment you need a skill that he has. At that point, you can call for reinforcements to come, use one of his reinforcement abilities and leave. We have all of these and we think they are very useful options.
In addition, there are four mercenarieseach with their own history missions, their own quest that must be completed in order to recover the mercenaries. We think this is a very interesting and fun feature. Like an offline co-op.
AX: Will we then have access to Mercenaries in a cooperative gaming environment?
B: The way we made the mercenaries work within a group of people is as follows The group leader can bring his own Merc, but no other playersso there is only one mercenary per group.
The Spiritualist. The New Class We’ll All Want to Use in Diablo IV
AX: About the new class, the spiritualist. It was presented with an interesting gameplay, which mixes powerful melee attacks and the support of animal spirits. In your opinion, what are the main points on which this class differs from the others we already have?
B: There are many things that make this class unique. The fact that we have four spirits means that we can perform virtually any build that we want, because you can, for example, go to everything with the eagle and you have a kind of buildbut you can mix the eagle with the centipede, and then you would have a build very different, in which you will have a station that poisons as it moves.
If you want to focus on defense, maybe you can develop the Gorillabut the interesting thing is that you can mix them as you like and get as many varieties as there are players. One skill that everyone likes is the Eagle, which in English is called “Sore” and is a mobility skill and looks like a teleport to which you can add even more power.
And we think that’s what makes this course really great.
AX: The way you approach the spiritualist is that he already has a fully developed skill tree, or is the idea to improve it over time?
B: The spiritualist is as developed as any other kind of devil you have encountered so far.. We believe that the Spiritmaster really has the potential to create completely different characters depending on who plays him, and his skill tree reflects these possibilities.
AX: We also saw new Legend abilities coming to all classes, right?
B: That’s right, Each of the base game classes will get new skillsas well as new equipment and items that can be found in the world. And all current players will have access to these abilities.
The Jungle, incredible and devastating
AX: We have already seen the new biome of the game, the jungle What was the main motivation for such a big change in the gaming environment?
B: Mainly for two reasons. One of them is that people remember a lot Diablo 2 and the large number of memorable environments it had, This is why we wanted to reinvent this concept. But also, the main game, as you know, was very dark and the colors weren’t very bright, you could see how much everyone was suffering.
Well now everyone is suffering too (laughs) but our team is super excited about this new biome. We did a lot of cool stuff, you have a lot of new areas, like the totally red canyons, it feels like we’re playing Diablo in the Grand Canyon of Colorado, which we found quite interesting.
So, well, we mostly had a great time creating these new environments and playing in them, and we also think that the new color palette brings new sensations to the game.
Mephisto
AX: Regarding the story, we have already seen that Mephisto and Neyrelle will be present. How important will the two characters be in the story?
B: Very important. This story follows Neyrelle and the impact she has when faced with Mephisto’s prison and the effect it has on her. We believe that the player’s main motivation will be to save her, as she has put herself in this impossible situation, which slowly consumes her soul and changes her.
And you must somehow snatch her from Mephisto’s clutches, or we will lose her forever. As you can see, the story will take you back to dark places of the mind and the game.
Endgame and PVP
AX: Finally, we would like to talk about the importance of end of game for a saga like Diablo. Diablo 2 already contained a significant amount of content end of game and we would like to know what changes will happen with the release of the expansion Hate Container has Diablo IV.
B: For us the end of game It’s more important than ever. What we realized is that a lot of people play just for the story. Once they finish the story, they leave the game and it really feels like they’re missing out on a really important part of the game.
Once the story was complete, we decided to add a ton of new features to help people get started with the game. end of gamebecause we really think that’s a big part of our effort, and how to continue the story after we finish the campaign.
We feel like a lot of our best content is therelike the Dark Citadel, a mode totally exclusive to the end of game. Or the Pit, which is a great opportunity to test your build.
We believe that from now on, more people will join and play the content we have prepared for them in the end of game.
AX: Will we see any changes in PVP?
B: No, but mainly because people decided to play the game in a different way, and as I said before, we really want to go where our users ask us to. We prefer to invest in improving our gameplay or our way of telling stories.So that’s what we decided to work on.
Farewell and closing
AX: We can’t wait to play this expansion and we honestly think this game is on its way to being considered the best. Diabloincluding Diablo 2because of the way people like it.
B: We can’t wait for you to play it!
From the Xbox Zone, thank you Activision Blizzard Already Xbox Europe for giving us this incredible opportunity to chat for a moment with the developers of Diablo IV Hate Vessel and we hope to see you soon in Santuario.
Diablo IV It is available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4 and PC. As you already know, you can also find it included at no additional cost in the extensive Xbox Game Pass catalog.
Psychologist who enjoys cooperative games, RPGs, and shooting anything that moves.
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