Diablo 5 is coming, and Diablo 4 is on the way out. As Blizzard pushes to release Diablo games faster than ever before, the series is now jumping into its next entry just as the fourth game feels like it just got started.
While Diablo 5 isn’t launching until sometime in 2029, which feels like the far future at this point, its announcement came with the news that Diablo 4 isn’t going to have any more expansions. As fans know, this goes against the original point of the fourth game, which was planned to have an expansion every year, and ended up having two expansions in three years.
Instead, Diablo 4 will be supported by its ever-evolving seasonal structure, which has been a point of contention for some fans. Seasons in Diablo 4 have been game-changing additions that add temporary new features that are retired upon the start of the next season. Honestly, it feels wasteful, which is very much like D4.
Just to preface, I like Diablo 4, but it has major issues. The ARPG has suffered since launch with everything from itemisation to stash limitations to poor endgame loops. However, as a fan of the series in general, the biggest issue is that Diablo 4 has been constantly changing. If you play D4 now, you’re not playing the D4 of 2023, and there have been a multitude of different D4s between those two points.
Since its launch, Diablo 4 has felt more like an experimentation than a Diablo game. Every season brings something brand-new that’s ripped away, but major parts of the core experience are tweaked and altered. For example, the release of Lord of Hatred reworked how skill tress function and removed passives which reset balancing, and nearly everyone loved it. Then they changed how Mythics and uniques worked, and then changed them again.
As far as ARPGs go, it’s actually miraculous that D4 has been fun at any point. From the outside looking in, it’s a game that severely suffers from too many cooks trying to find their own ways to keep players locked into the game at all times. After all, if you’re not engaged enough, you won’t buy the hundreds of different items in the cosmetic store! (Buying cosmetics for a game where you’re hunting for loot that changes the look of your character in the first place is a little silly anyway, but that’s just me.)
Despite this, Diablo 4 has great ideas. There are parts of the persistent open world that I love, even as a randomly-generated D2 diehard. While there are ups and downs, the storytelling of D4 and the tone of the game is leaps and bounds above Diablo 3 which felt like messy, young adult fan-fiction. Even the multiplayer of D4—which is seemingly returning in some form for D5—is a bunch of fun.
The unfortunate truth is that Diablo 4 feels like it was made as an experiment to learn how to make Diablo again. Everything we’ve seen of the upcoming fifth entry (so far) shows a reversion to Diablo 2. D2 is, by far, the best game in the series, but there was a chance to merge what D4 did well with the beautiful foundations of D2, and that just doesn’t seem to be happening. As far as waste goes, everything Diablo 4 did do well is simply being cut out instead of refined.
Diablo 4 feels like it just started. Not just because of the fact that we’re used to waiting a decade for a new game, but because Lord of Hatred’s release put the ARPG in its best place for the future. There was a sense that D4 was finally ready to support the frequent expansions of its original promise, taking players all the way to an eventual fight with the titular Prime Evil, Diablo.
Unfortunately, it seems that Diablo 4 will not get its fight with Diablo, with the Lord of Terror’s return set to kick off the story in D5, and that’s the perfect sign that D4 has been pushed into the pool before it can swim. The story was alwaysleading to his return; the game was always set up for a fight that will never happen. The point of Diablo 4 has been erased. Diablo 4 is now all set up for another game.
Yes, Diablo 4 feels like a waste. Not just a waste of time for fans engaged in the story of the series, but for the years people spent making it. There was a pretty good idea here that’s been plucked and stretched in so many different directions that it often feels visionless. It’s a waste that the game will never get to have its final fight with the Lord of Terror, it’s a waste that so much effort has been spent on cosmetics, it’s a waste that the fans that poured thousands of hours into it are being told to move onto the next one.
There was a sense earlier this year that Blizzard was well aware of what it had with Diablo: multiple forever games. With the Year of the Warlock, Diablo 2 Remastered, Diablo 4 and Diablo Immortal all received expansions because each game has its own players. In fact, Blizzard still wants to do more with Diablo 2, but not D4?
Despite everything, it does still feel like Diablo 5 is the best move forward as D4 is carrying a lot of dead weight behind it. It’s still messy, it’s still inconsistent. The core issue is then is what Diablo 4 symbolises: it’s a promise that’s broken. Every player expected that final fight with the Lord of Terror, narratively, not just through a season that’ll eventually disappear. It all feels like a waste.
