The Diablo 4 Beta Demonstrates the Horrors of Modern AAA Design

Blizzard Entertainment has had a hard couple of years, moving from one of the world's finest companies to one steeped in controversy, scandals, litigation, and squandering years' worth of goodwill with its fans. The release of Diablo 4 — the newest single-player game in a popular series — has been seen as an opportunity for the firm to regain favor. After playing the test, I'm not impressed with what I saw or what will be accessible when the game is released. Diablo 4, at least in its beta form, exemplifies what AAA games have become, for better or worse.

Diablo the Destroyer

Diablo 4 begins by removing much of the color and more cartoony vibes of Diablo 3 in favor of the deeper greys and browns of the previous games. While this may polarize, I honestly enjoyed it, since it offers Diablo 4 more of a horror movie vibe compared to earlier releases. The highly stylised cutscenes have a tone reminiscent of Evil Dead or Hellraiser, with the new adversary Lilith taking center stage.

There's a new evil on the loose, and it'll be up to us, and maybe some allies, to put a stop to her ambitions for refuge. While the beta does not include all of the classes that will be available in the complete game, it does contain a kind of homecoming for Diablo 2 archetypes. However, if you're expecting this to play like D2, or even D3, you'll be disappointed.

Trees of Life

The skill trees accessible to each class have been slowly pruned by the creators with each Diablo game. Diablo 4 has the most barebones of any game, and certainly among its ARPG rivals. Each class, like previously, has its own skill tree, however developers have broken the trees down into groupings of abilities. Each group symbolizes a unique set of skills – defensive, offensive, energy producer, and so on. There are also passive generic abilities inside each category. The skills are unusual in that each equipable skill has three passives — one that improves the attributes of the skill and two that affect the overall ability. However, only one of those two may be active at the same moment, requiring you to choose how you wish to improve that talent. You'll have access to the class's ultimate grouping at the conclusion of the trees, when only one skill may be active, and the last portion is a "ultimate passive" that opens around level 30.

While the options are intriguing, it also means that you can't start putting together a build until you reach the last unlock tier in order to attempt to synergize active and passive abilities, but you can respec by paying gold.

Personally, I preferred the skill modifiers introduced in Diablo 3 since each one might drastically alter the usefulness and usage of a skill, despite the fact that you are still restricted to one energy generator and six active talents. One feature I enjoy is that beyond level 15, each class receives particular upgrades and perks, providing a supplementary progression and build-focus for each class.

You'll be putting those talents to use in the rebuilt game world, and whether you like it or not, it's a world in which you're no longer alone.

A Lifeless Service World

Diablo Immortal has been extensively discussed, from its pay-to-win features to its efforts to create an MMO-lite game for the Diablo brand. With Diablo 4, they have gone all-in on the MMO aspect. In contrast to Diablo 3, you cannot play the game offline, even if you just wish to play in single-player mode. This might cause issues, like as latency, which lost me a hardcore character during the test. This implies that you may encounter other gamers both within and outside of the different settlements.

There are a lot more side tasks and mini-events in the field that neighboring players may accomplish together. The environment will scale to your level, and all loot will be instanced to you. The game is clearly influenced by MMO design, and probably even more so by mobile games. There are a lot more services and functions behind leveling gates, such as upgrading gear, applying affixes, upgrading your health potions, and so on. While it was unable to view the end game directly, glancing around the many services and stores, one key feature will be producing tougher varieties of dungeons, which I believe will drop the best gear or resources required for the end game.

The whole experience has a live service sense to it, as though the makers want you to play on a regular basis. At this point, I'm wondering whether the retail edition will have daily and weekly tasks. Major events in the beta included "world battles" that consisted of a raid boss fight, although I've already discussed my antipathy to having to check into games at certain times.

A Subpar Roller Coaster

I wasn't going to purchase Diablo 4 with all of Blizzard's difficulties and negative PR, and after spending two days in the beta, I'm no longer interested in the game.

Whereas indie ARPGs have attempted to take the genre ahead — Grim Dawn's vast character creation and build diversity, Path of Exile's skill tree, and Warhammer 40K Inquisitor Martyr's variety of gear are all examples — this game seems sterile to me. Outside of dungeons, the gaming environment is bigger to enable more people strolling about, but it also means there is more dead space (no pun intended) to sprint through.

There are now collectibles to locate that build up to permanent benefits for the whole world, as well as a greater focus on the distinctions between the difficulty levels in terms of what they unlock, changes to the adversaries, and item rarities accessible.

All of the important decision-making around alternative builds and skill adjustments seems to have been backloaded to the goods themselves. Legendaries now feature class-specific boosts that may be removed and reapplied to another item provided it fulfills the prerequisites. Although I couldn't see it, I think that end-game builds will be fully dictated by obtaining set pieces and the ultimate tier that opens in the harder-difficulty areas. My issue is that the rest of the game and treasure seeking are just uninteresting in comparison to what's there. The distinct characteristics of the classes are intriguing, but like Diablo 3, I view this as just window decoration for pursuing set pieces and build-defining boosts.

This poses another issue. Given that Blizzard is going all-in on the live service paradigm, what will be there to keep people interested? Will this become a World of Warcraft-lite or a $69.99 USD Diablo Immortal? There were no features of commercialization in the game that I could see, but that doesn't imply there won't be any in the live edition.

Finally, what's old in Diablo 4 isn't enough to keep me engaged, and what's new is turning me off. I can tell you that, barring an unforeseen scenario, I won't be there on Day One battling demons and gathering shiny stuff for the first time in a long time.

As usual, things are subject to change, and we'll have to wait and see how/if the retail edition differs.