Diablo 4 Beta Experience:
I’m mostly writing this out for some form of catharsis, but if it so happens that it gains traction and causes some improvements, that would be amazing. I think like everyone else here, I am very passionate about Diablo, hence the details and the thesis.
Background:
I’ve played the Diablo franchise for decades. D1, D2, D3, and now my first real exposure to D4. D2 was by far my favorite, and alone I spent a good 10 years playing that game; it’s easily my longest stretch other than CounterStrike for playing time. I played D3 on and off for a little while, came back to it a couple of times, but it did not capture the longevity of the D2 essence for me. I’ve always really enjoyed Blizzard games in general. There was one thing they caught and captured so well – atmosphere. Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo, the big 3 all captured an essence of a universe that was so vast and had so much to give. And in their own right those worlds were incredible. I played them all, I played them a lot. I used to think I wanted to work for this company, it was one of my dreams. Alas, my career took me elsewhere.
Diablo always intrigued me for the dark world that it was, and I really loved playing through the storyline, building up my character and getting interesting loot, and feeling powerful. I’ve tried POE by the way, a friend of mine was very adamant about playing it. I think in total I played it for 3 months? The game was mechanically and fundamentally sound, but there’s one thing that it lacked. It lacked the consequence and story that the Diablo franchise had. It was maybe a couple of years ago that I played POE, and I honestly cannot recall the story or tell you anything about it. That’s the big difference, and one thing no game can capture like the Diablo franchise. It’s why so many of us are here complaining and having such high expectations.
As far as the D4 beta is concerned, I’ve been reading up on notes and watching core content from the company, but otherwise I’ve mostly strayed from watching review content or gameplay footage. I wanted to experience it myself, simply put. And so here we are. I did not prepurchase the game, or buy the ultimate edition, although I really considered it. Mainly because I’ve had some gripes with the way this organization has been generating content recently, but also because I just don’t tend to pre-order games. I want something tangible, not a promise.
I’ve now played through the beta on PC. I’m at level 25 and have completed the Act / main quests. I’ve played with a single Necro character, I did not have the time to start another character unfortunately. I usually main Sorc/Mage, but if there is a Necro option I typically take that as well.
Start:
Well, performance issues and stress testing be damned. This is something I can’t complain about, it’s one of the biggest reasons for a beta in the first place. I’d expect them to be ready after years of doing this, but I can’t be mad. The game loaded, but didn’t load. Then I had memory pressure and the game crashed. Then I got put into the game queue which for me was >50 minutes. Then as the game loaded it crashed again and I got put back into the queue. So be it.
I finally got in, character building, cutscenes, beautiful, we’re in.
Character selection:
The visual aspect of character selection, I think this is extremely limited, but it’s likely intended for the beta. There are very few customization options, they all kind of feel weak – meaning very subtle changes for the most part. Something I noticed for a few of the characters is that gender visualization just seems very neutral. It’s kind of odd actually, almost like society’s “wokeness” is now making it’s way into a video game based on demons, religion, and evil. I don’t really see how those two coincide, but I’ve noticed this in a lot of games recently. The female Necro for example… I just don’t see it I guess.
Cutscenes:
I will say, I think it’s pretty cool that the cutscenes are designed with our character model in mind. This seems fairly unique or at least in my experience. It’s not really a major gameplay element, but it is pretty cool that it’s there.
Game and Story / Initial Lore Critique:
Honestly, I’m kind of confused. For starters I don’t really understand the story details here. I think that the beginning and rebirth of Lilith makes sense, sure. But then after that, what is even happening? Why is Lilith visiting some small villages in the country side and converting a tiny group of people? What happened to Tyrael? Why are there random churches of Inarius in the world and what is he doing there in the first place? What happened to the Nephalem? What happened to the world in general?
I’ll add to this, I’m going to be honest here and maybe this isn’t a popular opinion, but the visual representation of Lilith just kind of seems extremely lackluster. She reminds me a bit of Kerrigan from the world or Starcraft, but she also feels and looks weak in the world. There’s a scene where she leans over Rathma later on, and she doesn’t even seem taller than a regular person. We’ve had no visual exposure to her strength and this may be intentional, but I guess I just expect more. This is the mother of hatred… So far, she just seems like she’s strolling around being a mother of conversion to her church. There’s been nothing to show for her other than very basic manipulation. Andariel was scarier…
I also don’t really like the tie to this random girl and her mother. I’m sure there will be more to this as the game develops, but so far, it just sort of feels like we picked up a random NPC character from one of these little towns, and now she’s going to become one of the main protagonists. Why? What makes her special?
It also seems like there are very little ties to the story and lore of the previous games. I suspect that more of this will get exposed as the game goes on, and if there’s one thing Diablo does well it’s story, but so far, my experience feels really lackluster. I do want more though, if only just to see how the story develops and ends. I liked the touch of the black lake, but I also quickly recognized it both visually and conceptually as a copy from what seemed like Harry Potter…
Gameplay:
So I’m on the fence with this area. On the one hand I notice aspects of the game that remind me of previous iterations, on the other hand I feel as if some of the ports are things that don’t appeal to me. I think the more I played the beta, the more I felt like there were systems that are fundamentally flawed because they are contradictory. There are just things that don’t add up and almost work against one another.
Visual Gameplay:
For the most part, this really feels like Diablo. One crucial aspect of Diablo has always been that it captures that dark and gloomy atmosphere. Well for sure this does. Cold, frigid wastelands, but even still they found some ways to incorporate a little bit of variety in the land we explore in the beta. The game “arena” looks stunning. The details are amazing, and the caves and dungeons look phenomenal. The towns really look like towns, and the additional regions you get to visit feel, at least visually, like they are supposed to. When you enter the cathedral of Inarius for example, it feels the way it should. It also feels like the endless stairs from Super Mario 64 because of the walking, but that’s a different problem.
But, the visuals are not for lack of problems. The most egregious is of course the ridiculous looking Necro skeletons, but this point has probably been hammered to death and they will fix it. Unfortunately, that’s not the only thing I’ve found to be visually frustrating and immersion breaking.
Map, quests, and Icons.
Here’s an example:
Now by the time I’m taking this screenshot, I’ve mostly explored areas and completed the campaign quests, but have not done all of the side quests or completed all dungeons, or the altars, etc. But honestly, visually, this just looks really bad to me. It reminds me of the Ubisoft world, games like Assassin’s Creed. There are too many random icons, those icons are of no consequence to me and they create visual clutter. Why do I need to see where all of the actionable leaps/jumps are on the map with those weird little arrows? Those are completely meaningless. Also as far as colors and actual icons themselves go, the campaign icons being yellow and obnoxious in shape, don’t do it for me. Same with the blue used for side icons. Maybe I’m nitpicking here but it just seems like the color choices are poor, the icon shapes choices are also poor. Then there’s those additional like side quests to do gem crafting, get the book of the dead upgraded, etc. but those are their own icon field. Why? If it’s core to the story and the gameplay it should maybe sit in campaign? If it’s not, then it’s a side quest? Why do I need more categorizations of quest types, it just doesn’t make any sense to me, and creates a bloated map.
Also, and I completely don’t understand this aspect of the gameplay itself, but we’ll get to that, dungeons are visible on the map, but cellars are only visible if you’re in that area and have completed it during your current game time. Meaning I don’t see the cellars anymore in that screenshot above. I’m assuming there is some purpose to these but I’ll get there later, and if there is, shouldn’t I know where they are? Same with events, but those at least conceptually make sense – ie. if you’re passing that area, you’ll see the event.
Which brings me to another point on visual gameplay. The areas themselves. After spending hours playing the beta, I guess it kind of got visually “boring”? I’m not sure how else to describe it. This might be intended by way of the beta, but I found myself experiencing the same visual areas and dungeons over and over again. In fact, if you go into the aforementioned “cellars” they are quite literally the same. Not similar, not like there are a few that repeat, no they are literally the same 2 squares. Why? I don’t understand them at all and visually they are just a complete bore. The dungeons themselves are vast and beautiful, but they were limited and repeats. I hope that’s just because of the limited region of the beta.
Towns, core regions, Waypoints
On the fence here. Some of these aspects are cool, some just don’t make much visual sense to me. The town of Kyovashad for example, if fairly large and vast, but then the roads don’t look like roads, and the lines representing them on the maps are very light and of no consequence. The shops are basically randomly scattered around. The visual representation of the stores, excuse my French, looks stupid:
I mean think of the time period we are in, but the homes with shops in them are literally glowing? I understand why, but I think it’s just too much and needs to be more subtle. We already have these obnoxious icons on the minimap cluttering it, why does the store also need to visually glow? It reminds me of Assassin’s Creed. The rest of the little towns, visually kind of feel like repeats of each other with a couple more NPC characters scattered here and there. I do not understand the benefit of them, but that’s something we’ll discuss later.
Skills, visually look really good. There’s not much more to say there. There isn’t a lot of variety, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look cool to pop Blood Mist for example and the whole screen just goes crazy with exploding corpses. Or throw a Decrepify and a giant bloody pentagram appears on the ground.
Items and inventory, on the other hand, just look really bad. There’s nothing special visually about the items, they just look bland. They’re not very visible on the character either, and during combat you can forget about them completely. I found the Spinal Wand of Explosive Mist, that one seemed visually interesting, but it’s rare that you can actually “see it”. I’ll also say that visually the inventory just looks bad, but I’ll discuss that later as it’s more of a physical gameplay item.
I will add, that even more of a problem to this is that in your armory you can visually choose which representation of the items you want to see.
You can select your variant of interest, you can change the color pigment. To me this is another aspect of contradictory game design. On the one hand, yeah it’s pretty cool I can deck out my character as I please. But on the other hand, if every other joe-shmo has that same look without the unique find item, what’s the point? Ie. If everyone looks powerful, no one looks powerful. There’s just no uniqueness or again any weight to particular visual items. Maybe I’m misunderstanding something here and this only applies to < Legendary items, in which case, I guess it makes some sense, but then that kind of just reduces any value to items of lesser quality, both visually and gameplay wise which I’ll touch on later.
Monsters and Bosses (mini and beyond): Meh. Again, maybe this is strictly because of the beta, but I found myself in dungeon after dungeon fighting the same old clusters and the same old bosses. Some of them look visually cool, the Blood Bishop comes to mind, other’s just kind of look like a slightly bigger regular monster. Nothing special there, and very serious lack of variety. The packs of monsters themselves repeat and repeat often. There is some uniqueness per dungeon, sure that makes sense, but overall, the variety just felt lacking – again maybe just beta. Also, the gore and nudity aspect that I was always fond of Diablo for bringing to the forefront, that is just completely not there. The succubus for example is clothed. There’s not a lot of blood on the monsters or demons, and definitely not as much as the physical areas surrounding you in some dungeons. Where’s the grungy and dustiness of the mines on the pack of monsters clothing, or even their clothing choices? The spectral ghosts look wonky and cartoony. When you fight one of the larger ones, it just looks like a bigger glowy cartoon on your screen. There are just some strange oddities you’ll find in the monsters while you’re surrounded by an otherwise world that is mostly visually dark and grueling.
Gameplay Sound:
Alright this one is a solid win. I’d probably give it a 9 or 9.5 / 10. The music captures the atmosphere perfectly, it changes based on region and dungeons, it captures the feel of your universe. Only reason I wouldn’t give it the 10, is because I felt the “repeats” and this is likely due to us being limited to one area of the world (ie. I started noticing I was hearing the same music the longer I played the beta).
The sounds of the spells, the characters, the monsters, the bosses, all of this is working really well and seamless. The voice actors are good, they are able to relay their lines and the story well. I’d add this is one of the few areas where I actually felt the “weight” I’m looking for in the world of Diablo – when we encounter Inarius. There, there was feel. On the other hand, I didn’t feel that at all from any lines from Lilith.
Physical Gameplay:
We arrive at the part that I’ve been struggling with the most. At the end of the day, this is a video game, not a movie. The beta feels unpolished, sure that makes sense, but it’s more than that. The beta feels like there were 25 cooks in the kitchen, all with different understandings of what is fun and what is necessary for the game, and all without a clear singular vision or direction. Based on what I’ve heard about the lead game designer history here, that actually might make a lot of sense, in that, there is no direction here.
Map, quests, events, more icons and exploration.
Honestly, I just don’t get it. It felt very D3-esque. There are random areas and regions scattered, but there is no weight to any of them. Why do I need another mini town, with more icon bloat and more shops that represent and do the same thing as the other town I was just in? In fact, most of the waypoints ended up being literally like this: you find another little mini village, it has a few more of the same shops and NPCs, and it develops your story a little bit with a couple more side quests. I think there was only 1 single waypoint that was in an area that didn’t end up being one of these little villages. Getting to another village, just didn’t feel like anything special. If I remember correctly in D2 and maybe sprinkled around in some areas of D3, sometimes you would enter a new town that would have a new kind of shop that you didn’t have access to before. That’s unique, that has consequence. Here, and maybe this is just the beta, but your town of Kyovashad has everything from the get-go, and all the other towns are just extra bloat of the same repeat shops. There’s no purpose.
There were a few instances where I encountered these Strongholds we heard of the dev team discussing before release. I killed some enemies; I freed the town. I mean I get it, but it just felt bland. It wasn’t very difficult (which again beta), makes sense, but I don’t know, I guess I just can’t put it into words. What was the benefit of me freeing that town? It didn’t give me something new to enjoy.
The same can be said about the little events that were scattered around the map when you run by them. Clear 5 waves of monsters, save this guy here or there. Nothing special, just more “things to do”.
The quests are even more exemplary of this problem. Not a single quest dropped me something of weight. Think of like, Leoric’s Crown. There’s none of that. You get some yellow/rare item that isn’t that rare, and if you for example go and try to sell it at a shop for some reason it’s 1 coin vs. actual cost of items from the game. So even the game itself knows there is no weight to that item you just got from the quest you spent time completing. So then why did I complete the quest?
There are only 2 instances of the campaign in terms of quests that are even memorable to me after playing hours of the beta – the moment with Inarius in the cathedral, and the moment in the black lake where we see the vision of Lilith with Rathma. That’s it. I can honestly say I don’t remember any of the other quests, let alone the side quests that quite literally felt like they had no purpose to them or weight at all. Save this person that’s meaningless and get nothing from it except some crafting materials, that you likely won’t even use. Perform an exorcism on an axe, and get the axe, but it’s useless. Like what was the benefit to any of these, a little bit of XP, and some crafting materials?
Moving around the map, felt very reminiscent of my problems with D3. It’s a lot of walking, followed by a lot more walking. There was no reason to exploring and no consequence to any of my movement decisions, at all essentially. I haven’t even really touched on exploration but that’s because I mostly just didn’t feel like there was any reason to do it. Don’t get me wrong, I explored for the sake of spending time in the beta and trying to find new things, but I just didn’t get much out of it. When the game comes out, I suspect there will be 2 main reasons to do this – the completionism aspect to get all the challenges and the quests, and the skills-based aspect to complete certain dungeons for codex, or the alters of Lilith to boost your overall character progression. Otherwise, I’ve just struggled to find any reason to move around the map.
The world boss – well I didn’t even get to experience it. I didn’t look at the related times, I figured maybe the game will give me some kind of warning, nope. No warning ever came. I actually found what I think is the region where the world boss appears at one point, the frozen lake or whatever all the way to the right of the map, but there was nothing there. No indication of any event, or any indication that was the area for the event, or anything at all. I guess this is my fault for not specifically looking up the times the world boss would be available? This seems like really strange game design decisions. I would have liked to experience it or the Butcher I heard about as well, but alas, no such luck. I think this is a clear problem to fix for full release.
Dungeons
Oh boy did I have a problem with this. There is basically 1 game design aspect here. Every single dungeon is the same. Not visually, no, but conceptually. You go here and get 2 things from either side of the dungeon, then you place them in the middle which opens the bigger door and takes you to the miniboss. Even the main campaign quest with the Horadric room, that was literally the dungeon design. There’s no complexity to it, there’s no puzzle to it, there’s no nothing really.
Going back to a previous comment as well, there are also Cellars. I completely don’t understand these. Every one of them was the same 2 little squares, with a small pack of monsters. They are of such inconsequence that the game devs themselves don’t iconize them on the map unless you are in that area and have completed it on the minimap with a little green checkmark. One of these cellars I ran into had weird runes on the ground, didn’t exactly understand it. Maybe this will develop further into the game, but I completely don’t see the purpose to these. They don’t give you codex, I just don’t understand what they’re there for at all.
Also, there’s the movement aspect here. Color me stupid, but I didn’t discover that you could exit back to the start of the dungeon until I had already completed the beta and was at level 25. So, I’d been walking back through the dungeons for the entire duration of the beta. You see, instead of using something from D3 that actually made sense, like opening up a small portal when you complete the dungeon, they make you click the map, and click on the front door entrance of the dungeon in the map, to then hit the “Leave” option. Except, as I later discovered, for some reason this isn’t always available. Maybe this is a bug? Not sure, but in any case, this is just blatantly stupid game design. You finish the dungeon, here’s a portal to take you to the start. If you want to use it, great, if not and you want to TP Back to the town, that’s your call. Not, click the map, click the little icon, click “Leave”. Wtf? And to make matters worse, that visual representation on your screen of the big old T for TP, is complete contradictory to the above process. Why? Because if you hit that big ol’ T button, you get TPed back to the main town of Kyovashad, every, single, time.
Guess what, I’ll do you one better. Another discovery, only after I had actually completed the beta and was level 25 (meaning hours into playing). If you click on your discovered Waypoint from anywhere in the game, you can travel there. Well color me stupid because I remember that Waypoints only work from previous iterations of Diablo, if you are already standing on a Waypoint. Like what the actual hell? I guess the waypoints now are just actual portals that you can get to from anywhere. That’s good to know after I already finished running around…
Skills and build customization
Yeah, this just feels like a lot of bloat and again too many cooks. Honestly, I just didn’t understand a lot of it. The skill tree for example just seems completely sporadic and random.
Why do some subsets of nodes allow for upgrades in 3s, others in 5s. Why can I refund some for nearly no cost, others are more expensive? Further why can I not refund some nodes or clusters of nodes at all? So apparently there is some consequence to skill decisions, which I guess that’s kind of good, but I wasn’t aware of that consequence when initially selecting those skills. There was no reference or warning. The reason this is a problem, is because later you might - like I did during the beta - discover that the items and loot you encounter might go back and substantially re-dictate your choice of build. For example, initially I really enjoyed the reap build and found it was something unique to previous Diablo games. So I wanted to see what I could make of it and progressed my skill tree towards some of those skills. But then, I found a wand of explosive mist and oh boy did I realize all of a sudden that skill was stupid strong. So I decided I’d go back and change around some of my skill sets and selected nodes. Except I found I could not for some reason change/break some of those nodes. No real explanation to it either, other than “you cannot refund a node that’s required to keep a cluster unlocked”. Except that the cluster was unlocked by another set of skills, so it doesn’t make sense…
The overall skill aspect, initially at least, felt really fun. I enjoyed trying out the new spells, like for example the reaper based skills were new to me. But, I felt like very quickly things got repetitive and “spammy”. The skills felt kind of weak in the sense that I would have to consistently wait for cooldowns and spam them to get some damage out. The book of the dead for necro feels really lacking. There’s basically 1 “true” option per summon type. The other ones just don’t feel useful. The sacrifice options felt completely useless and defeated the purpose, but maybe that’s something that would develop with later game itemization. Then when I got the blood mist wand, I felt the “Diablo” feel but it was more-so the D3 feel. I felt completely overpowered when I changed my build around to suit that item. Monster waves exploded, and I could just start running around unscathed. Bosses would take longer to defeat, and there was a bit more complexity there with me trying to keep my summons up for safety, but still, felt fairly easy. It’s a beta, I get it, they don’t want it looking impossible, but I realized at that point that the game had the same skills-based fundamentals as D3. And I’m not sure that it suits me or my desires.
There’s also the level-based scaling. To be honest, this is new to me in Diablo. Previously, your monsters were your monsters based on acts, and then as you progressed, difficulty would progress. Here, the monsters and regions scale to your level. I guess for open world this makes sense, but it goes back to that “power feeling”. You never truly feel unstoppable. Yes your skills can clear waves of monsters, but then there’s the couple of stragglers and it takes you as long to kill those stragglers as it did the entire rest of the wave. It’s just weird, and doesn’t feel like Diablo. I’m cool with having the region not power scale, and then have end-game content specifically related to my level of strength, like the rifts or whatever else. I don’t necessarily want the whole world to feel as strong as I do as I develop my skills and itemization. This just feels suuuper contradictory to the world of Diablo and previous iterations.
There’s one more skills-based addition here, it’s the dodge. I actually think this is a good addition and it’s going to be difficult for implementation and balance – especially in PVP. See the main issue here is the cooldown. I’ve used dodge a lot I’ve noticed during the beta, but I’ve also noticed that means I’m spamming it and waiting for cooldowns a lot. It’s very useful for battles with bosses, no question. I’m curious to see if there will be items or skill-sets that build on this. For the most part though, I just spammed it while trying to walk around the map… I guess mounts will fix this.
Itemization and Inventory
I mean yeah, this 100% looks like a console port to PC. I’m sorry to be blunt about it, but this is just trash:
We want Tetris on PC. Let me explain why. The above goes back to the whole concept of purpose and weight behind decisions, in that, there is none. How can my little gem, ring, or amulet, hold as much weight and consequence as my body armor, or boots, or helm, or weapon, etc. First of all, that just makes no sense. Second of all, it reduces the weight and consequences of my on-the-fly decisions. While I’m looting and picking stuff up from dungeons, in this manner, my inventory hits the limit, and then I bring my stuff back to town. There’s nothing stopping me from picking up all my loot, there’s no “decision” for me to have to make. The same with the consumables and the quest items, etc. Since they all have their own sections, there is no consequence to me holding basically everything with me at all times. I didn’t use the stash once.
The above doesn’t even touch on the actual materials, stats and aspects of itemization. This part, completely makes no sense to me. There’s no sense of development and growth. Within the first 5 minutes of me playing the beta, I no longer touched or needed white items at all, in fact I’m not even sure commons dropped anymore or at least I forgot about them. Within 20-30 minutes, I never picked up another blue / magic item again. And eventually I started comparing some of the rares to the legendaries but I consistently found that I was wasting my time and I should just equip the legendary that best suits my current skill tree. The compare options show you the great little green arrow for main stat, but again there’s no value to any of the other non-skill based aspects that I found. To be fair, I didn’t explore this in detail, and I’m sure better builds will be discovered and people will be on the lookout for specific items, of course, but just overall it felt contradictory. It felt bloated. I mean look at these offensive stats categories, there are 13 of them:
I didn’t do any kind of crafting, geming, alchemy or socketing, some of this was limited by design, but again I just didn’t see any benefit to any of it during the process of the beta at least.
From what I understand, the same goes with the codex, however I basically did not explore this at all. I didn’t see any dungeons that would benefit my skill build – maybe just lack of experience here.
It just didn’t overall feel very “actually” diverse. Instead, it was diversified by being bloated. I found 1 interesting item and as a result rebuilt my skill tree around it. I’m kind of, of the opinion that builds should be built via the skill tree and improved upon and strengthened with itemization. Not the other way around where you find an item so strong it completely rebuilds your character. But, I understand how both approaches can be relevant depending on your play style. Cater to everyone I guess…
Multiplayer:
I think this part of the game, again considering it’s just the beta, felt the most incomplete to me. When I first walked out of a town and encountered an event area, I watched someone else walk through it, kill the monsters in a flash, open the chest, and then disappear just as quickly as they appeared on my screen. I guess what I’m saying is, what was the point? I think there’s been a number of complaints about this already, but there should definitely be an option to disable these things in the game. Diablo has always felt like a solo or small party game. The world is built around your character developing and getting stronger, this isn’t an MMO.
Obviously other than that, I’ve had little to no exposure to the multiplayer aspect. The towns sometimes I see people running around, but it just looks like bloated memory and screen usage. There’s nothing special to it. Other times the towns are empty and it’s just me.
I did not experience the world boss, where I would suspect is the other main aspect of multiplayer at the moment. And evidently no PVP exposure thus far either.
Overall outlook
I have to be hopeful. I think that there are key strengths to the game right now. Visually other than some silly things, it is exactly what I expect out of Diablo. The sound and music, downright near perfect. The atmosphere is a universe of Diablo, no question. I have to also imagine that the unexplored portions of the world that will be available with the full game, will expand on this. There will be more variety, there will be more story, there will be different atmospheres and visuals and sounds. Those are clear. However, what about all of the fundamentals of the actual gameplay . That’s the part I’m most concerned about and the most confused about. It just feels like they tried to shove every idea of “fun” into the pot, and see what comes out of it. There’s a lot of “variety” in gameplay in that sense, meaning there’s a lot you can do. But that also just makes it feel like it’s just bloated for the sake of being bloated, and not like there’s any purpose or consequence or weight to the decisions you make and the quests or events you complete. This seems like a case of trying to cater to too many audiences. It’s a symptom of woke society that surrounds us nowadays, being translated into a video game. Instead of sticking with a clear direction, and catering to a specific vision, they tried to cater to them all, and this is that result. This is an attempt to make a Diablo for “everyone”, instead of making a Diablo with a vision, that happens to entice the interest of it’s fan base.
Yes, I’ll end up buying the game. Yes, I’ll play through the story and hope they work on these issues and develop the game to completion. But that said, I’ll be honest, I didn’t really feel like I was having fun and like I was on the edge of my seat to learn more. It was more like, I was playing as a means to an end.