[Art Director John Mueller, Lead Character Artist Arnaud Kotelnikoff, and Associate Art Director Nick Chilano share insight into their stylistic goals and how to achieve them.

The visual style of Diablo 4 will almost certainly come under close scrutiny as the game's development progresses: one of the most persistent criticisms of Diablo 3 was that it was too bright and cartoonish; with the announcement of Diablo 4, the game's visual style has been described as "too dark." a clear promise of a return to the "darkness" of the first two games in the series (although whether Diablo 2 was actually as grim and dark as we remember it is debatable), the images released in this update certainly look more subdued than the visuals of the previous games. However, they are not lacking in color or flamboyance.

"Thinking back to the beginning, I think at the highest level, the goal was to make the characters in Diablo 4 look as artistic and handcrafted as possible, using the latest tools and techniques," Mueller said. Over time, our ambitions around what we thought we could achieve evolved and became what they are today."

"We wanted to use the latest tools and techniques, but we were concerned about tending toward a "realism" that we felt was fundamental to Blizzard's games and did not feel handmade. We didn't want these processes to make the characters feel procedural or generic"

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One focus of the update is Diablo 4's character customization system, which will allow players to outfit their characters with hundreds of unique armor pieces and detailed facial and body features. In addition, an expanded dyeing system will allow players to customize individual armor pieces and entire outfits "in realistic colors rooted in the world we are building."

This process is not as simple as one might imagine, at least if one is not familiar with 3D rendering techniques. For example, the artist must consider how the material will look under different lighting conditions.

"'Diablo 4' is intended to have a realistic look, and to achieve that it must follow basic rules of color, such as PBR (Physically Based Rendering),"

said the director of the 3D rendering studio. The challenge for the 3D artist is to translate the colors in the concept drawing into PBR values. For example, in PBR, silver is a very light gray, almost white, but the material's reflections make it appear darker. All characters in Diablo 4 follow the rules of PBR so that characters look just as beautiful in daylight as they do in a dark dungeon."

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Each armor set in the game will be available in two body types, as seen in the Rogue and Barbarian sets below:

Blizzard also showcased the armor sets' level of detail, movement, and interaction with in-game lighting in several video clips shared.

There is also the Skeleton Lord, a high-level boss based on vampire blood and magic,

casting direct damage and area-of-effect spells:

Perhaps the worst of the lot is the thoroughly disturbing Spider:

and finally the Succubus, whose wings are somehow attached to its head:

Like the others we've seen so far, these images are all clearly labeled "pre-alpha," but they are very well done and, to my eyes at least, seem to be more in the vein of "Diablo 2" than "Diablo 3". While I would agree with Fraser that the Diablo series faces more fundamental challenges than just visual style, for fans who want a return to a more overtly dark and gothic atmosphere, Blizzard is on the right track! I wonder if.

No release date has been set for Diablo 4 yet, and unfortunately, this update did not offer any sort of hint as to when it might appear; it could launch in 2022, but 2023 or 24 seems more likely. The following is all that is known so far.

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