As I pointed out when discussing the figurative and literal "darkness" of Diablo 4 in 2019, a whitish light flashes when you hit it, although it is not visible in the official gameplay trailer. This is a very normal videogame thing to do, but it somewhat detracts from the feeling of being swallowed by darkness. If you don't like it, good news: you can turn it off.

During a Q&A stream at BlizzCon today, game director Luis Barriga said that Diablo 4 will include a series of accessibility options, and the hit glow will be one of the toggles available.

"So while we really like the focus on how [the glow] works - how intuitive the combat feels - we ran into a situation where certain members of the team found it very distracting and almost prevented them from playing the game." Barriga said. 'So we have it as an option as part of our accessibility suite. We want our games to be playable by as many people as possible."

Apart from this, I asked Barriga if it would be possible to remove the glowing red outline that appears around enemies when the cursor is moved over them. He said he had nothing to announce about that right now and that he only mentioned hit flashes in the Q&A. So it is unknown at this time.

To see the hit glow I'm talking about, you need to see some of the gameplay captured by the press during BlizzCon 2019." This is because the official "Diablo 4" trailer omits both the red outline and the hit glow. I've embedded Game Informer's 2019 video below so you can see what I mean.

I think it's fair to assume that these beneficial lighting effects were omitted from the official trailer because certain coolness is lost when "video game-like" elements appear to aid visual clarity. I think the game would look better without the red outlines and white flashes, but it's quite possible that we'll end up agreeing with Bariga and keep glowing so we can see what the hell we're bumping into in the gloomy catacombs. (I'm assuming I'll play Diablo 4 because, well, I've played other Diablos and it seems a bit inevitable.)

Whichever setting you end up preferring, it's nice to have the option of playing with a more subdued, less modern look. I'm also curious to see what the accessibility options include.

In other Diablo 4 news, the Rogue class was shown off in a new trailer at BlizzCon 2021. We also learned how Diablo 4's open-world PvP will work.

One thing we didn't get at BlizzCon this year was a release date for Diablo 4. But we really weren't expecting it. It won't be released this year, and I don't think it will be released next year either; when Diablo 4 was first revealed as 2019, Barriga said we might have to wait a bit. In the meantime, here's what we know.