Diablo IV: A Dark and Sophisticated Story with Impressive Cinematics

As strange as it may sound to some, one of the things that always appealed to me the most about the Diablo series was the atmosphere and the story. Back in 1998, when like-minded friends and I were playing Diablo 1 on the PlayStation console, we happily spent an hour before actually playing in the main menu menu, where the developers included story read aloud (lore). In the case of the second and third parts, we were again very much looking forward to the end of each act to see another amazing “cinematic” sequence. So my plan for playing Diablo IV was clear: play through the story first, if possible before unintentionally recommended previews on Youtube or malicious people on social media spoil it for me by giving away some of those surprises.

Diablo IV strives to be an even bigger and better game in every way than the previous installments in the series – this also applies to the story, which this time offers even longer cinematic sequences than in the past, while supplementing these traditional fully rendered sequences with additional, directly rendered ones in the game engine, with your character model (including all current equipment or cosmetic modifications) in the main role. However, don’t look forward to narrative sequences between individual acts, unfortunately the creators have “hidden” the best only for the beginning and end of the story campaign, so most of the campaign has to do with zooming cameras over the characters’ heads during spoken conversations and similar, simpler methods.

Overall, I felt that the first act of the game, which was also part of the public beta access before the release of the game in a practically complete form, was somewhat deceiving in terms of the setting and the complexity of the story. There are elaborate sequences where you watch characters wildly cheer for victory or walk off into the night fatefully humming a song with meaningful lyrics. In short, full of atmospheric details or downright emotional sequences, including, for example, a rather scary mass in a church, the first meeting with the angel Inarius, and so on. The first act and first few hours of the game leave a very good impression in terms of story and character building, and my and my teammate’s imaginations ran wild as we tried to predict what would happen next.

The main star of the story is, of course, the demonic Lilith, who after endless battles between angels and demons wanted to escape this eternal conflict, for which she found an unexpected ally, the angel Inarius, during one of the clashes on the battlefield. The two then together stole the magical “worldstone” to use it to create the world of Sanctuary, separated from the eternal conflict. They subsequently populated it with their children, the “human” Nephal, possessing the potential for both good and evil, inherited from their angelic father and demonic mother. But when other angels and demons turned their attention to this new world and its inhabitants, Lilith decided to massacre all from both sides of the eternal conflict who would lay a hand on her children. At the same time, its goal is to give people enough power to be able to defend themselves against the raids of supernatural conquerors with their own strength. And this is where the story of the fourth part of the series begins.

Lilith is one of those villains you sympathize with: her motivation makes sense, and it’s possible that solving it would make the world a better place. Moreover, it is evident from her interactions with people that she truly loves them as if she were her own children – although she also encourages them not to be afraid to sin and show their true nature. Among other things, this is also why her former lover, the angel Inarius, condemned her, and he is preparing a great military campaign against Lilith and her hordes of demons with the loyal knights of his order. With this act, the “disinherited” angel also wants to earn the opportunity to return from the earthly Sanctuary back to heaven, among other angels. The conflict between the former lovers starts off promisingly, and we passionately discussed while playing whether it would eventually turn out that Inarius doesn’t actually want to kill his former mate. Likewise, we debated quite passionately whether we would get the chance to join Lilith. We also eagerly awaited the appearance of Diablo and other “prime evil” demons on the scene, because both sides of the conflict are calculating with their involvement, and the enemy of the enemy can be an ally. Overall, the story is much more mature, darker and more sophisticated than in the previous parts of the series (although legendary passage with the arrival of Diablo at the gate of heaven in the third volume, it remained unsurpassed in my opinion).

Unfortunately, after a great and narrative first act, the game subsequently falls into a predictable series of genre clichés for most of the campaign, mostly presented sparingly, with just a zooming camera over talking static characters. You will thus spend a good 15 of the total 20 hours of the campaign on classic rescuing civilians, searching for magic keys, chasing all kinds of demons and other unimaginative missions that we have already seen many times in the series – the overall fun, however, is saved by the highly entertaining gameplay, which we will deal with in a separate section article. The big exception to the story grayness of the middle part of the game is the desert expedition mission, where your eccentric guide and a fabulous camel take care of one of the funniest missions the series has ever offered. Fortunately, the creators gave the same care to the last hours of the game as they did to the opening ones. Even so, the story falls far short of its full potential and remains open-ended in some ways, no doubt with plans for years of support for Diablo IV as a platform or “game as an online service” with regular additions.

In terms of game structure, the campaign is also full of contrasts, some wonderful locations or spectacular boss battles are balanced by a significant amount of “backtracking” going back and forth, or the fact that one of the main bosses of the campaign is “immortal”, so you will fight him many times again. I have no doubt that there are other people who want to play Diablo mainly for the sake of getting through the story – so in that regard it’s a bit of a betrayal that, after smoothly leveling missions to suit your character, the final of the game’s six acts is hard-coded to level 45 , which you definitely won’t have if you only get there by completing the main story missions, without playing the side activities. It’s that classic moment when the developers tell you “we don’t want you to finish the story so quickly, go do the mandatory side content and come back in a few hours”. It certainly won’t bother everyone, but there will probably be a few of us. On the other hand, it is nice of the developers that after completing the campaign with one character, it allows you to skip it with the others straight away, just as many other activities or parts of the game progress are shared for all your played and future characters.

I went through the campaign as the Necromancer, although he’s been heavily nerfed since the public beta and is the slowest character in the game in terms of movement. But I really liked the idea of ​​fighting demons and evil with “their own weapons”, in short, I found the necromancer interesting in terms of story. You can play the campaign on Tier I or II difficulty, with the latter giving you experience and gold gained from killing enemies, but the rewards for completing the missions themselves are the same. Tier I is a fairly smooth ride in terms of difficulty, that is, aside from the jump in enemy level mentioned above.

More detailed impressions of the gameplay itself and the presentation of the game will be discussed in the following article, focused on all platforms, however, on PS5 I always logged into the game without any problems within one minute (although allegedly 20 million players used the pre-launch of the game) and the game on this console it runs, just like in the beta, smoothly and without bugs. However, what has been done absolutely perfectly is the music and the sound system – especially on quality headphones with surround sound, you will be absolutely amazed. Considering the great interest and at the same time the great scope of the game, we will devote two more articles to it with the participation of several authors before we give our verdict. But you can already ask us about anything that interests you about the game.