Some eleven years after Diablo 3, Blizzard is back with another barnstorming hack and slash adventure. Diablo 4 is a return to the dark, realistic stylings of the first two series entries, with modern rendering tech and a focus on current-gen consoles and PC. At a glance, it’s definitely a pleasing effort, especially when you consider the colossal visual leap from the prior games – but can it sustain the 60fps delivered by its predecessor? Do the new visuals take special advantage of the latest console hardware? And what about last-gen consoles?
The most impressive aspect of Diablo 4’s visual presentation is the lighting. Essentially, most lights within the game world are shadow-casting, and the player gets a sort of soft frontward-facing light to illuminate the area around them that also casts shadows. The subtle play of the shadowmaps as you move through each interior space is very cool, very attractive, and very atmospheric. Light just dances through dark spaces in a really pleasing way, with softly diffused shadows moving in concert with the player character.
There are some interesting tricks going on here as well. Certain light sources showcase a kind of variable penumbra effect at times, with shadow detail falling off at range. And in some circumstances the lighting can cast multiple shadows at once off the same object. Diablo 4 isn’t pushing any boundary-expanding tech here as far as I can tell, but a lot of attention has clearly gone into lighting the game, especially in the game’s softly-lit, dark dungeon interiors.
Diablo 4 also features quite impressive environmental detail and asset work. Each environment is caked with geometry, with a ton of little crannies and crags across every worn surface. The game is almost always presenting a top-down view nearly parallel to the ground, so you don’t really get the opportunity to inspect anything from close range, but from the gameplay view all the details in the world hold up very well.