The developers of Diablo IV have posted new infromation on the game with their March IV quaterly update on the game’s blog.
Here various members of the Diablo IV team discuss the latest revelations about the game. This blog’s focus was on the artists working on the game. Firstly, director Joe Shely speaks about the challenges for the artist working on the game and the necessity of the visuals in Diablo IV.
“Many artists need to work together to deliver Diablo IV with the top-tier visual quality we can be proud of and the promise of an immersive world you can wander through and enjoy getting lost in. The seamless game you play is a composition of many layers of art and visualization, from lighting, to environments, to props and interactives. Today we have artists from many of these layers here to talk about their craft and everything that goes into building the world of Sanctuary.”
Art director Chris Ryder also spoke further about the environments of the game. There will be five main regions in Diablo IV along with hundreds of dungeons for players to crawl through. The game will also have a darker tone compared to previous games.
“We approach creating the environments of Diablo IV through a darker and more grounded interpretation than earlier installments. The aim is for believability, not realism. Believability comes through our use of materials and deliberate construction of architecture and artifacts you will come across as you play through dungeons and the open world. In addition, regional weather conditions, varied local biomes, and a sense of history set the foundation of how an object or place should look visually in a medieval world like Sanctuary (the main setting of Diablo IV).”
This is only a snippet of the developer insight presented in the Diablo IV March update. If you’re interested in Diablo or just learning about video game art and graphics in genreal, it’s worth a read.
Diablo IV will release for PS4, Xbox One and PC. A release date has not been specific.