A new trailer for Diablo IV highlights the dark beauty of the game’s world of Sanctuary and all the activities players will be able to discover within it, which includes exploring the dungeon seen in the game’s announcement cinematic.
In a video titled “Inside the Game – The World of Sanctuary,” various developers on Blizzard’s upcoming ARPG share their insights on how the team went about crafting the look and feel of Sanctuary. The goal was to make the entire game feel like a painting, according to Harrison Pink, a senior quest designer for the project.
The trailer dives into all the activities players will be able to participate in while exploring the world of Sanctuary. Hidden Altars of Lilith will be scattered throughout the world for players to find that will unlock permanent, account-wide stat boosts. Players may stumble across world bosses or enemy strongholds on their journeys as well. Or perhaps they’ll encounter a brief side quest that will involve escorting the ghost of a child.
Blizzard notes that Diablo IV’s pacing varies, and has both short-and-sweet side quests as well as longer, narrative-heavy encounters. One such quest will see players journey to the dungeon seen in the game’s “By Three They Come” cinematic, where Diablo IV’s main antagonist, Lilith, was summoned into the world of Sanctuary once more.
For the first time, players will be able to explore the world of Diablo with no loading screens. As such, the team put a special emphasis on ensuring zone transitions seemed realistic, giving an example of waterfalls formed by ice-melt from the snowy Fractured Peaks zone running down into the swamp zone of Hawezar. The various dungeons of each zone, and the enemies found within them, were also designed to feel unique to each zone. Goat men enemies, for example, will be covered in furs when encountered in the Fractured Peaks, but will sport a different look when encountered in another zone.
Blizzard confirmed that players will, in fact, be able to pet the dogs encountered in the game, with one developer noting the feature was frequent request and that it was “actually a lot of hard work to figure out how to pet that dang dog.”
Diablo IV will receive two open beta weekends in March, with the full game set to release on June 6, 2023 following reports of a difficult development cycle.
