While I am often harping on about Diablo 4 or something going on in the latest entry to the series, there has been a quiet brewing terror in the series’ mobile offering, Diablo Immortal. Over the year, I’ve covered the Age of Unmaking, a massive year-long build-up to this pivotal moment: Diablo has returned, and this time, he has a Worldstone Shard, and it’s about to get intense.
So, this naturally piqued my interest, and when offered the chance to chat to the team about this massive patch and the year of content, AND get to play it early, I grabbed it with both hands. After chatting with Emil Salim, Lead Artist, and Scott Burgess, Lead Content Designer in a group interview, as well as spending some time playing the new content myself, I learned about the Diablo encounter, the new content coming to the game, and some insight into what’s next for the ARPG.
World’s Crown – The Biggest Zone for the Biggest Showdown
With this being the biggest patch in Diablo Immortal’s history, it makes sense that the content is equally as big and epic, starting with the largest zone the team has ever made for the ARPG: The World’s Crown. This new zone is packed, visually and content-wise, and both Emil and Scott had plenty to say about this monstrous new area.
“We’re going all in on this one.” Scott began, “This new zone is definitely our darkest zone in Diablo Immortal. We took a lot of inspiration from surreal art forms that just made us disturbed, and so we really wanted to paint the picture that, you know ‘What is Diablo? He’s the Lord of Terror, how do we convey him infecting a zone and just destroying it?’” Turns out, they take an area already pretty deprived and dead and have it become “twisted and corrupted” to become the hellscape players will see.
As for the visual side, Emil explained, “We did take a slight departure (from the usual art style) in the sense that we really wanted the general feeling of the atmosphere around the zone to feel more of that silent eeriness, that silent darkness instead of more blatant signs of destruction you usually see in the game”. That means the zone is more atmospheric, and Emil detailed some of the things players will see to create the atmosphere.
“As you roam around the zone, you don’t really see that many destroyed buildings, for instance, you don’t see many fresh corpses or people being sad. If you see a corpse, the corpse is so old that there almost merged into the environment. If you see a village, there’s almost no villagers inside, so we really want to go for that quiet eeriness.”
What that meant as a player, was that there was a plethora of visuals and areas to explore. Right from the moment I hit the shore of Worlds Crown, it is apparent Diablo has gotten to work on this zone, and what particularly took my interest was the way it shifted and changed. In fact, Emil mentioned this during the interview and the team wanting to convey “a sense of loss,” and as I went through World’s Crown, zones would go from more bright, saturated visuals into very bleak, dark, and foreboding, and with it, the tone and feeling shifted too.
It was a nice touch that made the zone almost an extension of Diablo, and even for a mobile game with limited space and resources at hand, the zone did feel rather expansive. Everything Emil said, the atmosphere, the eeriness, and the influence of surreal art, all were present and well used to make the zone feel imposing, and it was great to explore and blast away the minions of Diablo with a backdrop as impressive as this, especially when its the finale to a 2 ½ year journey.
Oh, the finale I mentioned? It involves taking on Diablo himself, only this time empowered with a Worldstone Shard, giving him the ability to warp reality and present an even greater threat.
Diablo – Bigger, Bolder, and More Deadly
This new boss battle, the biggest the game has seen I might add, is filled with new and classic ideas. For art, that meant going all in, with Emil explaining what went into making Diablo and the encounter look as epic as it plays.
“We did look back into all the different versions that have appeared in the previous games, and we took little bits here and there to combine them together, and in addition to all of that, we also added some little tweaks here and there that will hopefully make the experience of Diablo a little more fresh.” The inclusion of the Worldstone shard also gave way to some creative ideas, which Emil and the team used to their advantage, with Emil explaining “The fact that Diablo has the Worldstone (shard) and can bend reality, that definitely influenced our approach on the visual of the environment, not just in the final arena where you battle Diablo, but also before that.”
A particular highlight for me was after an encounter with a shadowy, imposing version of Diablo in a more stationary encounter. I was thrown into old zones, places explored before during the game’s life, and as you do, they are twisted and morphed by Diablo, enemies would appear, and it all fed the narrative and sense of the scale of both Diablo’s power and the encounter. Plus, it looked pretty great even on the smaller screen for mobile, so major credit to the team for pulling that off.
For the fight itself, Scott had a lot to say on the fated battle with the Lord of Terror, beginning with, “It was just looking at the past, like Diablo 2 and Diablo 3, looking at those abilities and figuring out how we infuse it, make it bigger. This is probably one of our longer fights in the game because it’s so climatic.” Scott then went on to explain more of what this encounter will entail. “There’s old attacks like the lighting hose and hellfire you’ll see, but then we’re also saying ‘hey, this is the worst Diablo’ because he has a Worldstone shard which basically makes him uber-powerful. He can bend reality in front of you. Honestly, the goal here was like ‘Let’s make this the most badass, frightening Diablo we’ve seen yet. We just took the elements players love and turned it to 11.”
So, what does that play like, well, it certainly was turned up to 11 I’ll say that. The lead-up to the confrontation is epic, and when I finally stepped into the battle, It felt like it had all been a worthwhile build-up as Diablo, with Worldstone shard in hand, wraps and twists the world around you into quite the horrifying scene for your encounter.
Those familiar moves from his previous incarnation would pack and punch, both figuratively and nostalgically, as I moved and darted around the arena to avoid his attacks, weaving in myself to get a few off, and the sizable arena made it much more of a playground to use, which helped, considering Diablo would leap and bound around with ease, or launch attacks that would cover entire areas, so in that sense, it was helpful for gameplay, and for scale. It also was made better by new additions to his moveset, and it ultimately made this Diablo encounter its own, and one I think players will come to enjoy. Especially since you can rematch him for loot.
Challenger Dungeons – Upping the Ante for the Game’s Most Popular Content
While the center for this patch is Diablo’s new encounter, there are a few extra bits of content players will get to experience, including a few more Helliquary bosses themed after the new zone. But beyond that, there is a new layer to dungeons, which according to Scott is “their most successful content”, so naturally, they wanted to make them better. That’s where Challenger Dungeons come in, which will add new modifiers to dungeons for greater challenge and rewards.
“With Challenge Dungeons we’re really leaning into adding variety and a little extra challenge. It’s not the most difficult thing, it’s just so each run feels a little (more) exciting and you feel like it’s fresh.” For now, there aren’t going to be “too crazy” but as Scott explained, “The idea behind the modifiers is we want them all to be negative, make the run a little more challenging, we want them all to be good in combining with each other. We wanted to make sure they complemented each other. The goal behind the whole system is not necessarily to make a punishing system, it is to make a more value-added system.”
Naturally, I dabbled with these and played a few that I could with my early access version. As Scott said, dungeons are popular, and for good reason. They fit the mobile-style audience with fairly quick, rewarding gameplay and rewards, and I know whenever I have played, they have been what I enjoyed the most. So, having a little extra challenge was a nice touch, and the modifiers worked as intended.
They added a little extra spice to my runs, and whether that was blasting the bosses or their minions, it kept things a little more interesting, and I can see that these new ways to get some extra loot and rewards being a very loved feature by players, especially as they intend to expand the system in the future. The only downside is that you need to wait until you reach Inferno 1 to do them.
Put simply, “if you wanna get a little more rewards and you wanna have a little more variety in each run of your dungeon,” this is the way to do that.
A Time to Reflect, An Eye to the Future
Of course, all of this is the culmination of two and a half years of work, with this year lovingly called the Age of Unmaking. During this period, Diablo Immortal’s been loaded up with new content, all of which we covered here at BA: A new class, new activities, storylines, and plenty of events, it has been a massive year for the game, and when I asked about their thoughts on the year and the journey to get here, Scott has a lot to share with me.
“On the story side, this is what we’ve wanted to do since launch,” he told me, “we bought Diablo back, we wanted to make sure that we ended his storyline in Diablo Immortal in just the most epic way possible.” the same can be said for World’s Crown, which as Scott told me, “we just continued to make it more horrific,” and evidently, influence the gameplay we saw during the years of updates.
“I think that bled into the gameplay of the Age of Unmaking over the last year, where we said ‘we’re ramping this up, let’s make some more challenging content, let’s get some higher-end stuff in there for our hardcore players to challenge themselves.” That content came in the form of Terror Rifts, Vanguard, and a host more to “give this ramping tone to the game.” That coupled with the new class and a host more additions, turned out to be a massive year.
But, for all the additions made during the Age of Unmaking and the conclusion of the current arc, this isn’t the end of Diablo Immortal, with Scott and Emil offering some insight into what’s next for the ARPG, starting with some revamps.
“When we go into next year, there a certain amount (of) ‘Ok, we added all this stuff, like you said, tons of content,” Scott began, “that is also like ‘well, we added a lot of things for players to do and now often times, they feel obligated. So, one thing we are going to be doing over the next year is trying to make sure that we streamline a lot of elements, that we clean up a lot of elements, that’s kind of at our forefront. We respect our player’s time, and (want to) lean to the elements that were successful.”
So that’s the idea for content and revamps, but the story of Diablo Immortal is also set to evolve, as Scott told me, “The story is something we are of course thinking about, this is not the end of the Diablo Immortal story, by any means. There is so much that happens between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 that we would love to cover, there’s so much fertile ground.” So, what will that look like? It means exploring what happens after Shattered Sanctuary, after all, this is Diablo’s return after all, and that will play into the story going forward.
“Into the next year, we’re going to be exploring the aftermath of Diablo having a Worldstone Shard. That’s a destructive power that can create life and create destruction, so there is so much we can touch on,” but with all that epic grand scale, angel and demon and what have you, Scott also posed the question “What about the people in the middle?” It looks like that’s going to be quite the focal point following Diablo’s Demise.
“Obviously, there probably going to be exhausted, obviously they want to find hope, so how does that arise? How do people follow certain movements? Is there necessarily movements that are good or bad?” All these will play into the next chapter, along with “characters we’re setting up, that we’ve been setting up to become the headliners next year that we’re really excited about.” The first of those is the Sharvo Wilds (which I think I’m spelling right), which should be a “fun and unique” zone though aside from a name drop, there wasn’t much else I could get from Scott and Emil on that one. Aside from Emil’s mild panic as he asked “Wait, we can talk about that?”
A Chapter Ended, a New Chapter Begun
But at this point, it’s clear that a lot of work has gone into Shattered Sanctuary, and the Diablo Immortal as a whole. Hell, just look back at the last year of updates. The team is passionate and wants to make the game the best it can be. That is certainly the impression I got when talking with Emil and Scott and playing the game myself, both in this early access version and my characters in the live version. I come away excited for others to see the hard work they have put into this update, and the game as a whole. So, it seems only right I leave you with a message from them.
“This is the patch we all wanted, there isn’t anything that got forgotten on the cutting room floor, this is a patch we are all very excited about. Moving forward into the future, we are going to continue to have things we’re excited about, continue to expand systems, and early next year we are going to have a roadmap to tell players what’s coming up.”
“Honestly, just jump in and have fun. We aim to please and also disturb you as well.”
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