Diablo IV Season 8 Interview – Developers Reveal Resurrected Belial and System Overhauls

In anticipation of Season 8 of Diablo IV, we had the opportunity to speak with Lead Season Designer Deric Nunez and Associate Director of Game Design Colin Finer about what players can expect when the new season launches. The conversation revealed exciting details about the return of a fan-favorite villain, new gameplay mechanics, and quality-of-life improvements designed to appeal to both veteran and returning players.

The Return of Belial

Season 8’s headline feature is the return of Belial, the Lord of Lies and a memorable antagonist from Diablo III. According to Nunez, the team is “immensely excited to bring Belial back to the world of Sanctuary,” not just as a catalyst for the seasonal quest line but as a permanent addition to the game’s lair boss system.

“We’re expanding the roster, introducing a slew of quality of life updates to the system, and doing some fun novel mechanics,” Nunez explained. One such innovation is that Belial will “sit atop the throne above all the other bosses” as the most difficult and rewarding encounter. Additionally, his smaller form will “haunt and stalk you as you’re fighting the other lair bosses,” with a chance to ambush players after they defeat and loot any other lair boss.

“There’ll be a surprise ambush chance for any of the lair bosses that he’ll kind of come try and get you after defeating and looting any of the other lair bosses,” Nunez added, highlighting how Belial creates “a lot of fun opportunities not just from a narrative standpoint, but from a mechanical integration perspective.”

Boss Powers: Becoming the Enemy

A central mechanic of Season 8 is the collection of boss powers. Players will be able to collect 24 different powers from various bosses throughout the game, with each power having both a primary and secondary function—effectively offering 48 different ways to enhance character builds.

“Each of the powers has a side A and a side B,” Nunez detailed. “The main side is the full expression of the boss’s signature power, like the Wandering Death’s Chess Beam or Duriel’s Burrow. The side B acts as a modifier that either alters how that main power works or alters some other elements of your build.”

The design team has ensured these powers integrate well with existing builds and playstyles. “We took great care to ensure how accessible and non-ambiguous it is for you to know what you have to do to proc the power itself,” Nunez explained. “For example, Duriel’s Burrow procs off of Evade, or the Wandering Deaths’ Chess Beam procs off of Channeling. So we want players to see what kind of play style am I guiding my build towards.”

Finer gave a specific example: “We’ve added this new unique item for the Rogue that levels up the Death Trap. That pairs super well with Urovar’s Loved Bomb power, which reduces the overall ultimate cooldown, so you can get your death traps going on a loop.”

“We definitely put a ton of time and effort into ensuring that regardless of what build you played last season, if you tried playing it this season, it’s going to feel completely different based on all the boss powers that you can mix and match,” Finer added.

Apparition Incursions: New Open-World Events

Season 8 introduces Apparition Incursions, described as “new open-world events focused on fast-paced boss fights.” These events will serve as a primary source for players to collect their first ten boss powers and will integrate into the broader gameplay loop.

“It’s going to be a nice, fun, fast-paced way for all of us to hop on and just get our first batch of powers together,” Nunez explained. “We see the Apparition Incursions as the new shiny that a lot of players will check out first, but for it to inevitably settle into the healthy stable of rotating activities that you do, depending on what your current needs are.”

Nunez further elaborated on how these events fit into the progression system: “When you log on, your first 10 powers will come from the brand new seasonal activity, the apparition incursion, where you’ll be fighting the new apparition bosses and inevitably a showdown against Belial.”

The developers also noted that since the PTR (Public Test Realm), they’ve made Apparition Incursions a source of Whisper Bounties to provide additional value for revisiting them throughout the season. “They now also are a source of Whisper Bounties to, again, pull you back in to find immediate value when you do want to revisit them,” Nunez said.

Lair Boss System Improvements

One of the most significant quality-of-life improvements coming in Season 8 involves the lair boss system. Previously, players had to gather materials to summon bosses, only to potentially discover they weren’t powerful enough to defeat them—resulting in wasted time and resources.

“All of the lair bosses are now free to summon so that you can actually try them out to see if you are capable of taking them on,” Nunez revealed. “One of the areas of friction or turn points that we found with the previous model was you would do all of the activities required to summon the boss just to find out that you can’t defeat it. And then that’s wasted time that you spent just trying to see a gut check, really, if you’re capable to take on even the first rung of bosses.”

The materials previously used for summoning have been repurposed as “lair boss keys,” which now open treasure chests dropped by defeated bosses. “What was previously the boss summoning materials, they’re now living a new life in the form of lair boss keys. So they are now used to open up the hoard or the treasure chest that a defeated lair boss drops once you defeat it,” Nunez explained.

Leveling and Player Progression

Season 8 looks to find a balance in leveling speed. According to Finer, Season 7 saw players reaching maximum level in “single-digit hours,” which led some to question the purpose of the leveling system altogether. The PTR for Season 8 initially slowed down progression significantly, but based on player feedback, the team has found “a pretty good middle ground.”

“We’ve pulled back on a lot of the difficulty changes. It’s still a little bit harder than Season 7, but not massively harder,” Finer explained. “We’ve pulled back on the leveling speed nerfs that we had done as part of the PTR. We think it just feels like a little bit more of a structured and streamlined experience.”

Finer acknowledged the challenge of balancing for different player types: “We heard from both groups of players, or many groups of players, that it just felt like why even have leveling at that point? It didn’t feel like a gratifying and satisfying experience. Part of our job as designers on Diablo is to make sure you feel really satisfied and rewarded. And we can’t really do that unless we push back on the player and have them overcome challenges.”

For casual players or those who haven’t played in a while, Finer highlighted that the Vessel of Hatred content “bridges the campaign into the endgame and also levels you up.” The season’s journey also provides structure and rewards to guide players who might feel uncertain about how to progress.

“If you’re feeling daunted or you’re not sure how to get powerful, the season’s journey is always a place where we make sure it’s rewarding. There’s tons of legendaries. It’s a great track to sort of get you into the mix if you’re not sure what to do,” Finer said.

He also explained how the Torment system caters to more dedicated players: “Everyone can get to the end game in Torment 1. Everyone can enjoy the bosses. Everyone can get up to Belial and defeat him. But if you’re really going to take it to the next level, the Torment system is going to really push your ability to actually do those things and ask the player to optimize more and sort of get more powerful to take on harder versions of these bosses.”

Battle Pass Revamp: Introducing Reliquaries

Season 8 will introduce a significant refresh to the Battle Pass system with what the team is calling “Reliquaries.” This change responds to player feedback that the Battle Pass felt like “grinding for a bunch of stuff that you didn’t necessarily want or care about.”

“Season 8 is introducing what we’re calling Reliquaries. So it is our… We’re essentially refreshing the Battle Pass,” Finer explained. “We heard a bunch of feedback that the Battle Pass felt like you were grinding for a bunch of stuff that you didn’t necessarily want or care about. You might have had something deep in the track that you actually were really interested in.”

“This change is really packaging more of the content in a way that allows you to actually target the things you’re looking for,” Finer continued. “If there’s an armor set you really want, that’s actually something you can work your way towards and target.”

He added that the redesign was inspired by the game’s existing mechanics: “It’s very much in the spirit of how the game actually works, which is like we have these uniques that drop off of bosses that are really cool and compelling in terms of leveling up your character. So we actually sort of took inspiration in terms of giving players more control to target things, just like they can target some of the items in the game itself.”

Berserk Collaboration

In an exciting first for the franchise, Season 8 will feature Diablo IV’s first collaboration with external IP—the dark fantasy manga Berserk. Finer, who described himself as “personally super into” the manga, explained that the team spent significant time considering what would be the right collaboration for Diablo.

“We’re doing our first actual collaboration, which is going to be with the beloved manga, Berserk, which I’m personally super into. It’s super dark. It’s really metal,” Finer enthused. “We spent a lot of time thinking about what is the right sort of collaboration that we wanted to do. And Berserk is just so on brand with how dark it is. It really dabbles in that muddy, is this good? Is this evil? And we think it’s just a really perfect match made in hell, if you will.”

The collaboration will include “earnable cosmetics that you’ll be able to earn as part of the Berserk collab” and “some packages available for you to actually buy and look like some of the Berserk characters in the shop,” according to Finer.

Updated Boss Fights

Beyond adding Belial, Season 8 will update many existing boss encounters. Finer was particularly excited about the Harbinger of Hatred boss from Vessel of Hatred becoming a lair boss, as well as updates to Duriel’s fight mechanics.

“We updated a lot of the lair bosses in the game. It’s the season of bosses, so we leveled them all up in addition to adding Harbinger, which I think is just going to be so cool. Harbinger was a boss fight in Vessel of Hatred, the final boss actually,” Finer said.

He was especially enthusiastic about a new attack for Duriel: “Duriel is getting this attack that I think is really nasty. At any point in the fight, if you get knocked down by Duriel, he’s going to do this big overhead cleave attack and actually suck you into his belly and eat you. And I think that’s just going to be disgusting and awesome. It’s going to one-shot players, and I think that challenge is really going to feel great with the ability to just summon the boss for free and test it out.”

Class Balance and Playstyles

When asked if any particular classes might be favored in Season 8, Finer clarified that the team doesn’t deliberately favor any one class. “We don’t necessarily purposely favor any one class. It’s not a goal of ours to say the Rogue is going to be really good and awesome this season. It’s going to be better than every other class, even though I might want it to be, because I’m going to play Rogue,” he explained.

“If anything, we’re actually trying to get to a point where class balance and parity is a little bit closer to each other,” Finer continued. “We’ve heard a lot of feedback that it feels bad if one class is just way farther ahead of every other class, and that’s something that we’re always trying to fine-tune.”

He did note that the team is modifying their approach to seasonal class balance: “Previously, we’ve sort of held back on touching any of the classes if they’re just way overperforming, for example, because we wanted to respect player time. If something crazy came out and we didn’t know about it beforehand, we’re just like, well, we’ll just let it ride. We don’t want to disrespect player time investment.”

This suggests the team may be more responsive to balance issues in Season 8, though Finer didn’t explicitly confirm any changes to their mid-season balance policy.

Returning Player Experience

Both developers emphasized that Season 8 offers compelling reasons for lapsed players to return to Diablo IV. Nunez pointed to Belial’s return as a major draw: “For players who might not have necessarily engaged with some previous seasons or lapsed in some regard, I think for me, the big ticket item, again, is kind of just the sense of bringing back such a major character into the world of Sanctuary.”

He added that seasons are “not just focusing on kind of temporary content, if you will, but they are focusing on big, major swing and updates to existing systems that, depending on when a particular player stopped, may not have either engaged with in a long time or have been introduced to at all.”

Finer highlighted how the seasonal model provides a natural entry point: “Part of the seasonal model that we really enjoy is that it’s a fresh slate. So no matter where you’ve been or how long it’s been, you always know you can come back with friends or play on your own, and it’s a completely fresh start.”

“We have structured the overall boss power system in such a way where it’s really clear what you need to do. You just need to defeat a boss, rip out its power, take its power, and use it for your own sort of benefit,” he also emphasized.

For fans of Diablo III’s Belial fight specifically, Finer noted: “If you’re a fan of Diablo 3, Belial, and then the fight there, there’s just so much to offer in this season in terms of callbacks. There’s a rich story that we have to sort of take you through those steps and introduce you back to Belial.”

Importantly for players who prefer non-seasonal play, Finer confirmed that “a lot of these changes are also eternal. So if you’re uncomfortable with the whole seasonal paradigm, you will be able to fight some of the new bosses that we’ve added to the game as part of Belial’s return, including Belial himself.”

With its focus on boss fights, collectible powers, and quality-of-life improvements, Diablo IV’s Season 8 appears poised to offer substantial new content for dedicated players while providing clear paths for returning players to jump back into the action.

Diablo IV

Publisher: Activision Blizzard

Developer: Blizzard Entertainment

Release Date: 2023-06-06

Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

Diablo IV is an upcoming action role-playing game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment, and is the fourth main installment in the Diablo series.

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