One of the biggest surprises of the year was the reveal of Diablo V at this year’s BlizzCon. Sure, we’ll have to wait until 2029 to get our hands on it, but take that decade-long wait cycles for new Diablo games!
After sharing a first look at the game, Blizzard took the opportunity to talk about the improvements they’re making to Diablo V’s gameplay design based on feedback from Diablo IV. Chief among them: the return of procedurally generated dungeons and worlds.
Diablo IV was touted as the first “open-world” title in the series, and with that came the limitation of having a single pre-established world map; it never changed and players were forced to engage with it for hours and hours. And listen, I get the intent. It set Diablo IV apart from previous installments and made players feel like there was a compelling reason to move on from Diablo III. Even though that game had a huge focus on its world, it steered away from an interconnected, open-world map in favor of making parts of its world feel like dungeons themselves.
Yet Diablo IV just feels truncated as a result. Is the map varied? Yeah, you have different biomes and events throughout, but despite these variances, it largely feels like you’re always engaging with the same things, over and over again.
“But wait, isn’t that the point of Diablo?” you might be asking. Well, to an extent, yes! But that is just one aspect of the series. Take it from a degenerate Diablo player like me, who has put thousands upon thousands of hours into each title: Diablo IV felt like it was missing a key ingredient. Prior to IV, my friends and I would share stories of the random dungeons and encounters that the games would generate. By the end of Diablo III’s lifecycle, there were so many random layouts and themes for rifts, that we would hear stories about dungeons that we refused to believe even existed.
And that’s to say nothing about the world of Diablo II and the random generation of its map. The fact that players couldn’t rely on a map to reach their next destination and were forced into a life-or-death battle was among one of many things that made the game so fulfilling. Rolling up a hardcore character (meaning you lose all progress if you die) and praying you made it to the next checkpoint is a feeling that few games have yet to replicate, even in the Diablo series.
So it’s refreshing to hear that Blizzard is bringing procedural generation back in a meaningful way. During BlizzCon’s Diablo V panel, its lead developers talked about how, because Diablo has taken over Sanctuary, the world is constantly “Terror-forming,” meaning that the heroes of the game will need to navigate an ever-changing world. Without a set map–and with the added pressure of leading an entire caravan–players could be forced to endure more tension and uncertainty than ever before. Bearing that in mind, I imagine it will be far easier to engage with Diablo V’s changing world for thousands of hours than it was to travel across Diablo IV’s static map.
Yet maps aren’t the only thing that Blizzard seeks to improve with Diablo V, as the team also gave a very early, work-in-progress look at itemization and new double slot items. They also revealed that the game will launch with the most amount of character classes for any entry in the series before. The team seems to be taking the criticisms of Diablo IV very seriously and is working towards making Diablo V a more varied experience right from the jump.
So I can’t help but wonder: Was Diablo IV a mistake? The game notoriously launched with lackluster itemization and loot systems that required full reworks (though admittedly Diablo III really suffered from this too); the lack of map variety meant that by hour 100 I was sick of visiting the same locations over and over. Hell, in a review for a previous outlet, I questioned what Diablo IV actually did better than Diablo III. With expansion support ending and the next mainline title already being revealed, I can’t help but feel that Blizzard knows what a misfire IV was and how its core design prevents it from being fully reworked. Here’s hoping Diablo V brings down the house in a blaze of hellfire glory.
