Story and Narrative Producer Melissa Corning elaborated that while additional knowledge will enhance a player’s overall experience with characters like Lorath-and his obvious connection to Deckard Cain and previous major story beats in the Diablo universe-that won’t impede on how the narrative choose to explore just who this character is and how he became the isolated old hermit players know today. The narrative team wanted to make sure that these characters could stand on their own without new players needing to have experienced the previous games to enjoy them.

Much of Diablo 4’s narrative in general seemed to pull from past ideas, perhaps to use as hallmarks of the growing franchise.īut when it came to the discussion of Neyrelle, a new character brought into the fold, and her potentially being seen as an attempt to correct the narrative pitfalls concerning Leah in Diablo 3, particularly how her character becomes a plot device to bring back Diablo as a boss fight, Senior Quest Designer Grzegorz Sadzinski said, “We want to make sure that each character has their own motivations, aspirations, and the character journey they go through without relying on repeating something.” Lorath Narr, who first appeared in Reaper of Souls, and Neyrelle are two major characters that end up harkening back to Deckard Cain, and Leah who appeared in Diablo 3 only to become an unfortunate sacrifice to bring back the Prime Evil. While Diablo 4 is most certainly its own narrative, it doesn’t hesitate in calling back to previous games for character archetypes or even bosses. But very early on we had this commitment to fulfilling the promise of Diablo 4 being a dark, gothic fantasy.” And that’s the beauty of making a numbered sequel, in that you get to recast the die. All of Diablo one through three all view Diablo differently, and treat Diablo differently. “I think that each of the games, I would say it’s a lens in which you view the world of Sanctuary. When asked if the art direction of the game was done as a deliberate choice in response to criticism of Diablo 3, Mueller elaborated and stated that each Diablo game has its own core visual identity, entangled with the different stories found within Sanctuary, and Diablo 4’s art direction reflective of the narrative this team wanted to tell.

The visceral nature of Caravaggio was also mentioned as key inspiration for how they chose to approach contrast within the visual elements of the game itself, and how Albert Bierstadt’s work helped inform the environments of the game.

Inarius diablo 4 trailer