BlizzCon 2019 was impressive in many ways, one of them being the inclusion of playable Diablo 4 demos, alongside demos of other Blizzard games, such as World of Warcraft: Shadowlands and Overwatch 2. Some believe that 2019 was the most eventful year in the matter of announcements: Blizzard presented Diablo 4, a sequel to Overwatch, a new World of Warcraft expansion pack and a new mode for Hearthstone.
Graphics
Despite the fact that the game is modern, it looks like it wants to go back in time with the graphics, as it resembles Diablo 2 more than it does resemble Diablo 3, and this is a very good thing. Many gamers weren’t particularly fond of the cartoon-ish, colorful graphics of Diablo 3, and developers kept that in mind: They made Diablo 4 grim, dark and perhaps eerie, as everything looks like it’s decaying.
Accessing dungeons
Unlike past games, where players would click the entrance to a dungeon and then teleport to the starting point of that dungeon, Diablo 4 features specially designed cinematic transitions that display the character doing something like getting on their knees and pushing vines apart while crawling through a narrow tunnel using a cinematic camera perspective similar to the one of Tomb Raider cinematics.
Animations are fluid and transitioning between animations seems natural. The environment full of slopes and hills looks a lot more polished than the one presented in the previous Diablo games.
The game has many bells and whistles which are meant to compensate the cartoony feel of Diablo 3.
To sum it up, Diablo 4 looks amazing, but this is normal because Blizzard’s marketing tactic heavily relies on art to sell an experience. Time will tell how good they managed to match the gameplay and overall feel of the game with the showcased graphic details.
