Diablo Immortal is an upcoming Diablo game that is being created for the mobile market. Yes, you heard that right Diablo on your phone. Before we delve deeper into this go drink a glass of water, calm your kneejerk reaction rage, and remember a company of blizzards size can work on multiple projects at once.
We’ll cover the big
BUT IT’S NOT DIABLO 4!!
Fans of the Diablo franchise were very disappointed that instead of an announcement about Diablo 4 they received instead news of a mobile game. The response to this reveal at BlizzCon culminates in an audience member asking if the reveal was just an off-season April fools joke. That question was savage, and probably one of the worst ones to face as a developer of a game. I definitely feel for devs on that one.
The lack of information or even a splash screen teaser about Diablo 4 frustrates Diablo fans however just because nothing was said doesn’t mean nothing is going on. A mobile game also doesn’t mean that Diablo 4 will take longer now, ports are normally handled by other teams and with NetEase collaborating a lot of the work will likely be handled by them.
It’s been six years!
The six years since a Diablo game statement has been thrown around a lot following BlizzCon. six years is a rather fallacious figure though, The game may have launched on May 15, 2012, but it was constantly being updated and the expansion: Reaper of Souls launched on March 25, 2014. Reaper of Souls was succeeeded by more follow up balancing and ladder patches with another (granted much smaller) expansion: Rise of the Necromancer launching on June 27, 2017. There may not have been a new title with a shiny progressive number attached but Blizzard has been working on and updating Diablo 3 for five of those six years.
It’s a reskin of another NetEase Game
I think this claim comes from a lack of information regarding hack and slash mobile games. Due to health issues, I’ve ended up exploring mobile gaming quite extensively and while there is a lot of chaff to sort through there are glistening gems hidden within it. A lot of those gems are in the hack slash genre. One thing you have to understand about mobile gaming is that the UI you can use and the buttons available are severely limited due to screen size. Hack and slash games have already found the best layout possible for multiple devices and screen sizes making nearly every UI for hack and slash games look the same.
As to the claims that Diablo Immortal is just a remake of NetEase’s previous title: Endless of God that is probably half true but before you get out the pitchforks hear me out. Endless of God is a mobile Diablo clone. It is a hack and slash looter with dungeons and magic. NetEase was also likely chosen because their game is one of the best examples of that sub-genre. So what you end up with is a company that makes the best Diablo clone on mobile being given the opportunity to make a real Diablo game. Of course the games will look similar, they are similar and that’s due to the nature of the genre and platform. Having created a Diablo clone in the past NetEase also has the advantage of existing code and knowledge already gained from their previous title.
What we know so far
Diablo Immortal takes place five years after the destruction of the worldstone by Tyrael at the end of Diablo 2. This date immediately causes some timeline issues and raises questions. The first big question is why are we playing as the Diablo 3 characters and not the classes from Diablo 2? It’s only been five years most of those characters would still be in their prime and better equipped to deal with evil than the untested (at this time) heroes from Diablo 3.
Then there is the timeline itself. The demon hunter and the wizard have canonical lore in the timeline: they were born during the year 1265 and 1266 respectively. The worldstone was destroyed in 1265 meaning that the demon hunter would be five years old and the wizard would be one year old. Those are not demon fighting ages. Unfortunately, I couldn’t dig up the ages of the other classes but
Them Classes Though
Despite the age issues, nearly all of the Diablo 3 classes are in Diablo Immortal, including the Crusader and Necromancer from the Diablo 3 expansions. One class that is noticeably absent is the Witchdoctor. The Witchdoctors absence is baffling, especially considering the inclusion of the expansion classes. I would have made the assumption Witch Doctors were excluded because a large subset of their skills can summon additional creatures and this would be resource intensive on phones but we can still play the Necromancer. Colour me puzzled
At the end of the gameplay trailer for Diablo Immortal we are shown an image of a familiar looking demon (you can find the image at the start of this blog post). That is a very Diablo looking demon which is very confusing. At this point in the story, Diablo’s
What “mobile” means to PC
Diablo Immortal being announced for the phone had such a negative reaction for a few reasons which I’ll break down now. PC gamers have a very hostile and disgusted view of mobile gaming due to unscrupulous developers taking advantage of human psychology to milk money out of people one or two dollars at a time. A lot of mobile games do this and it has been especially prevalent in licensed games *cough* EA *cough* meaning Blizzard is starting with zero
Mobile games also tend to operate on a free to play monetization structure. While games like Warframe and Path of Exile are shown to do free to play right it’s still a terminology with nasty connotations to most western gamers. Free to play awakens the community zeitgeist that knows only of
Diablo has also been solely PC oriented for most of its life. People think Diablo, people think PC. Only with Diablo 3 did we start to see the game reach out to other platforms and many pundits complain the move to console was only possible because they gutted the complexity of the series so severely with Diablo 3. With console Diablo 3 being scorned by the PC elitists and anger over the console getting offline play and PC not many Diablo fans come equipped with animosity towards any Diablo not earmarked for PC only.
The Lore, The story, The Price?
For me, whether Diablo Immortal is a good game will come down to three main facets: Lore, storytelling, and monetization. Currently, due to the cannon births of the Demon Hunter and Wizard, the game already breaks with established lore and appearance of the characters in the game. I need to learn the Demon Hunter and Wizards trick because they haven’t aged at all in five years.
Diablo 3 was a massive disappointment to me in storytelling the evils were portrayed as simplistic and idiotic, our heroes continually succeed only in failing, and our characters were far too wordy replacing me as a hero with them as a character. The heroes were not interesting people I didn’t want to play as most of them because of the pedantic drivel they spouted. Since Diablo Immortal uses the same character classes I don’t hold out much hope the characters will be any better but maybe the evils will be.
Right now there is no price or monetization plan stated for Diablo Immortal. The lack of such information may be because it’s too early in the development cycle for such considerations but this still unnerves me. Big publishers have repeatedly bit the hands that feed them with their mobile monetization. Blizzard does have Hearthstone which seems to be not as draconian as other monetization schemes but honestly, I would much rather Diablo Immortal be a one-time payment rather than locking out cosmetics or stash space as is often the practice in
So what Now?
All we can do is wait. Wait to see if the story is any good, if the timeline issues are resolved with a rewrite, if the monetization is tolerable. We have a cinematic trailer and a gameplay trailer to work off right now but it’s still too early to make many assumptions. Hopefully Diablo Immortal if not a great game is at least a good game and that’s all you can really ask for isn’t it?