IT Blog | Mr. HiTech Tech Blog

Last week, to much popular acclaim, Blizzard announced the development of Diablo IV, the latest sequel in its long-running action RPG franchise.  As more details on the game have emerged during BlizzCon this weekend it’s become clear that the veteran developer is making some serious changes to the franchise, with a new engine, a new aesthetic, and new possibilities for the popular dungeon crawling series.  During the show, lead systems designer David Kim and lead lighting artist Sean Murphy were able to share some insight about what it’s like working on Diablo IV and explain some of the key ideas driving the game’s development.  Hellishly good systems Both Kim and Murphy began discussions of their respective work by discussing the core game pillars touted onstage during the game’s debut. “Return to Darkness,” “Embrace the Legacy,” and “The World of Diablo.” For Kim (who previously worked as a designer on Starcraft II), “Embrace the Legacy” proved to be where a lot of his design focus would wind up. “At the core of it, we’re trying to make a Diablo game first,” said Kim.  On top of that, we’re trying to take the great parts of each of the previous Diablos and bring it to Diablo IV, and bring in elements from other types of games as well.” Drawing on older Diablo games, Kim explained that some player abilities have been directly inspired by fan-favorites such as the sorceress class’ frozen orb ability. But as a lead system designer, Kim says the next step is to imagine ways players can upgrade and tweak those abilities to fit a specific playstyle.  For the frozen orb, Kim cites a particular legendary item that lets players shoot down frozen orbs mid-air, blowing them up early, creating essentially a brand new skill. “So we want to do more of that,” said Kim. “We want to increase the number of playstyle options and customizations across the board throughout leveling as well as in the endgame.” That’s why Kim says, they’ve implemented a new skill point system that unlocks and ranks up player skills and revamped the game’s talent trees, all with the goal of encouraging players to take more control over their playstyle and abilities.  But while updating granular abilities is sure to attract veteran Diablo players, Kim’s also had his eye on how Blizzard has to adapt with the changing world of online games. Seasons for instance, are a continued feature from Diablo III, that allow players to make progress in a specific window of time in different game systems, earn unique items, and gain prestige in Diablo’s leaderboards.  In Diablo IV, Kim in particular discussed the distribution of legendary items, and creating season-specific legendary items that can help create unique play experiences for longtime players. “We want to make sure we’re including brand new legendary items in seasons, we want to also make sure that we have subset of legendaries that are more powerful from season to season, and the subset is changing.” But when
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