The Daughter of Hatred has arrived in Sanctuary, and she seeks to open the gates of Hell. The war is only just beginning.

Diablo IV is our return to the gothic, demon-filled world of the Diablo series. Moving further into the live-service area, Diablo IV aims to fill a void in long term play left by Diablo 3, whilst paying homage to the past with regular throwbacks and shout-outs to Diablo 2, whilst maintaining its own identity. A journey of despair, hopelessness and horror, Diablo IV takes a tremendously different approach to storytelling than previous titles and does so with an incredibly nuanced style.

Diablo IV’s story will be divisive. If you are more in the vein of the explicitly explained stories of the previous entries, than it may unfortunately miss the mark. However for those who enjoy nuanced storytelling, with plenty of room for theory crafting and story development of character’s who are uniquely their own selfish persons, than Diablo IV may be the best storytelling in the series. Diablo IV takes a unique approach to its method of storytelling. Rather than having a linear campaign story path, Diablo IV allows you tackle any of Act 1 through to 3, in any order that you want. At first, I wasn’t a particular fan of this approach. The first three acts, whilst being loosely connected, feel incredibly detached from each other. The timeline is a little bit hazy across these three acts, as it is not entirely clear how much time has passed between them. It would be safe to assume that they happen linearly, but it is never really explored deep enough. However, once the story converges again, it becomes infinitely more clear why this approach was taken.

Diablo IV is a tale of individuals. Less focused on the idea of your character as a mythical figure who is the sole character of the progress, Diablo IV aims to show you that there is a world of characters. A world of people who have different ideas of what should be done. Different obsessions and different obligations. You’re core desire is to stop Lilith from opening the gates of Hell, and unleashing what her plan may be. Yet you are stuck following the whims of Lorath Nahr, Inarius, Teyrelle, Donan and a myriad of other characters. The eminent threat is Lilith, yet everyone seems so focused on doing their own thing, thus the major threat continues to evade and be one step ahead. The disconnect of early acts is intentional in this way, to ensure that when things start becoming more narrowed, the character’s almost reluctant acceptance of the inevitable makes perfect sense. The story is carefully curated to break you down, give you hope, to only leave you lagging behind. Characters die, the story moves on, and the world doesn’t acknowledge the loss. You have to bear the burden. Diablo IV is a story of the flaws of humanity, reflected in images of hatred. A divisive method of storytelling, but allowing yourself to get soaked into it, will result in a deep love for the tale being told.

The voice acting is truly some of the most passionate and inspired. Each character is uniquely themselves, and there is quivers, ticks and inflections in the way that they talk and react, that make them feel truly alive. Particular credit has to go to the voice actor for Donan, who has one of if not the absolute best agony crying I’ve ever heard in a game. Picture the sound of absolute heartbreak, the body unable to contain this wave of grief and agony. It almost sounds like laughter, but you know it isn’t. This is the level of quality that is taken to every character’s interaction with the world. They are emotional, bitter and have to harden themselves against the inevitable death that is coming for them and their loved ones. There is one sole focus of hope in Diablo IV. The stopping of Lilith, and the ending of the demon threat. The characters are tired, rundown and exhausted, yet they still maintain hope. The level of emotion conveyed in the voice acting is far and beyond many other titles of today.

If, however, you are not so much drawn to the story. There is still a lot of Diablo IV to enjoy. There is upwards of 100 unique dungeons, all of which reward you with permanent unlocked aspects. Aspects are a gear upgrade that you can imbue. These range from things like providing a barrier when attacking elite enemies, to more nuanced and class specific unlocks. Such as spawning more corpses when using bone attacks with the Necromancer. All aspects are account-wide, so taking the time to do each dungeon as you come across them, will mean future character’s will have a wealth of upgrades available from the get-go to enhance the gameplay. The dungeons themselves are all unique in design. Whilst boss variants are reused across a plethora of them, there is enough variety and tweaks between boss encounters, as well as the procedural layouts and environment itself, that you won’t be left feeling like you’ve done this same dungeon over and over already. There are some dungeons that feel very reminiscent of vanilla World of Warcraft dungeons, and I’d be very surprised if there wasn’t a heavy amount of inspiration from the early, more gothic horror parts of World of Warcraft in some of the world design.

Problematically, some dungeons will be locked behind side quests. This particular problem comes about when it comes to the ones locked behind a stronghold clearance side quests. Strongholds are overworld based dungeon like events, that require you to complete a set of tasks to clear them. Problematically, the strongholds are scaled to always be two to three levels higher than you. For the solo player, this can be incredibly problematic as it means there is a bunch of dungeons and side quests that will be near impossible to clear, due to the inability to clear strongholds. The two to three level difference is high, and it means you will be forced to group up with other players to ensure you are able to clear the strongholds, in order to gain access to these dungeons. It may be a case of ignoring these particular dungeons until you’ve reached the end game, and grouping up becomes far easier. Perhaps a mild oversight for a game that actively encourages solo play.

In terms of side quests, there is upwards of forty per major zone to complete. It is worthwhile to knock out as many as you can whilst you plough through the main story, as it rewards you with renown, which plays a far more crucial role than it probably should. The side quests for the most part, mainly consist of typical live-service kill X enemy quests. Or go to X location to find Y item. Some of them are chains of stories and are far more in-depth. An exorcism storyline, a failure of druidic totems, that sort of thing. There is none that are missable it seems, but the dialogue can change based on progress of the main story. Lore items are randomly placed throughout the exploration you’ll do alongside the side quests, so more of the story becomes obvious with more exploration. For those who rush the main story, they may find themselves not entirely sure why something is being explained so thoroughly in a world event, because they’ve forgotten that part of the game.

Diablo IV definitely encourages slowing down, and exploring. Lilith statues will unlock permanent stat boosts and currency increases on your account, for all your characters on a realm. The Lilith statues themselves are somewhat hidden, but generally if you step into a part of the map that seems like it would have no other use, you’ll find a statue. The main story will take you past a few, but for the most part you will have to explore the world to get them all. Just know it may be worth waiting until the completion of the first three acts, and getting your first mount, before exploring more deeply. Whilst the unlocks are nice, and after finding most of them you’ll feel the increase in stats, they aren’t essential to completing the game and for the player who misses most of them, it shouldn’t be a problem.

The core aspect of exploring and finding the statutes, waypoints and doing side quests is Renown. Renown is a levelled system that has five tiers per area. Increasing your renown levels will give you more health potions to use, increased stats, better rewards. The renown upgrades are directly applicable to improving your gameplay and particularly useful when playing on higher world tier difficulties. Problematically, similar to the stat increases from the Lilith statues, beyond the additional health potion, you could probably miss out on most renown levels and not be heavily punished for it. Theoretically these additions are good, but in practice they feel more like bloat for extension of gameplay, rather than a core feature that feels integral to progress.

There is a substantial amount of end game content to do as well. Diablo IV is taking a far more focused approach to extending the gameplay seasons with live-service content updates, rather than the more typical ladder reset methodology of Diablo II and Diablo III. We will be getting more story beats, expanded Capstone dungeons and daily content, but for now the world bosses are an enjoyable end game task and make grouping a far more natural endeavour. It is quite possible that those bosses will make for a great way of connecting people for Strongholds as well. I didn’t spend a huge amount of time with the end game content, as I wanted to experience the story and world more so. There will be enough here for those seeking Diablo style gameplay, without caring for the story, but for those who do there is enough intrigue, deep characters and nuanced storytelling to keep the story engaging.

Diablo IV is an interesting step for the series, as it takes some of the parts that worked in Diablo II, Diablo III and Diablo Immortal, whilst cutting away some of the fat. Diablo IV is very much focused on keeping players engaged but runs the risk of having unnecessary content bloat for the sake of it. The story is going to be divisive, players who enjoy getting immersed beyond the surface will find a deep and mysterious story of sorrow. Whereas players with more focus on gameplay, might find the story a bit bland and not straight forward enough. The acts themselves offer around twenty hours of gameplay, which may be a bit of a slog for those wanting to get into the meat of the end game. There is a lot in Diablo IV, and it offers players a choice in how they experience the content included in the game. The future looks bright for the series, that seems to be finding its own feet again.