Blizzard Entertainment Unveils Diablo IV Quarterly Progress Report The chief game designer, Luis Barriga, said that because of the pandemic, he and his colleagues had completely switched to remote work. This led to many difficulties, but the company managed to maintain a high pace of work on the game. Cybersport.ru made a generalized translation of the report.
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Behind the scenes
In the process of developing the environment, visual effects are superimposed last, so that testers, if necessary, can easily experiment and try some new ideas for locations. If something does not work as it should, then it’s much easier to redo the blocks than redraw the finished environment. When we share fresh screenshots with you, then usually on them the game does not look at all what the developers see it. Since we decided to show what is going on behind the scenes of Diablo IV, we thought that it would be interesting for you to look at it.
Level at the testing and planning stage
Monsters also change significantly during the development process. Blizzard artists showed the appearance of a standard demon on the layout, in the game and on art.
Demon Layout
Storytelling
In Diablo IV, we refined our approach to storytelling and storytelling. For example, we experiment with the position of the camera and zoom in order to highlight important dialogs with non-player characters with their help. The second method of storytelling is real-time videos. Here we take control of the player’s camera and literally show a movie with the participation of his character. This is a good way to look at your armor and weapons in all its glory, without changing the graphics settings.
During BlizzCon, we showed several of these videos. Since then, our team of filmmakers has taken a big step forward. Here are a couple of screenshots that we were allowed to show in this report. Do not worry, they do not have plot spoilers.
Camera position during dialogue
Open world
One of the main features of Diablo IV is the open world. Thanks to him, you can alternate the story campaign with a joint study of locations, crafting, trading and PvP with other players. Perhaps the most popular will be the so-called camps – these are important places on the map that were captured by enemies. If they are cleaned, they will turn into friendly outposts with NPCs, sellers and a separate point for moving. Each such camp has its own background, but it will be revealed more visually than thanks to story quests. For example, a terrible curse was imposed on the inhabitants of one of the camps, which turned them into piles of salt. Another camp is a crypt in which an evil spirit dwells, moving between the bodies of the dead. To defeat him, you will first have to defeat them all.
Heat map of the most popular routes at the testing stage
The developers also talked about the details of mounts – race horses, which will allow the player to move faster on the map. For example, next to the saddle of such a mount it will be possible to hang a combat trophy, thereby informing other players of their successes. Of course, horses are very demanding on landscape design, and while testers often encounter bugs while riding.
Multiplayer
Fine-tuning the right approach to multiplayer is an important part of our work on Diablo IV. We never set ourselves the goal of borrowing elements from games with a common world in order to enhance the role of multiplayer. This is not due to any technical limitations – this is our philosophy. We found out that the game ceases to feel like Diablo, and the world itself seems less gloomy and dangerous if you constantly see players running back and forth in it.
Dungeons and key moments of the plot are always private – they are available only for the player and / or his group. When the story arch is completed and the cities turn into social centers, you will encounter other people. If you come to the place where a big in-game event is planned, you will meet many other users there. For example, with them you can defend yourself from the attacks of a horde of cannibals or try to destroy Ashawa, the demonic boss we showed on BlizzCon.
Meeting with other players in the city
It is worth noting that in such events, coordination between the players will be useful, but we do not push you to the obligatory search for a group. Loners can also join the battle and receive a reward upon its completion. In our tests, this model of the game feels vibrant and dynamic, without compromising the spirit of Diablo. For team players, we will have group search tools based on activity or location in the world.
More information on the quarterly report can be found on the official Blizzard website. The gameplay of Diablo IV was first shown at BlizzCon 2019. It is not known when the game will be released.
