In contrast to its predecessor in the franchise, often critiqued for its art direction becoming too vibrant and benign compared to the iconic look of Diablo 2, Blizzard Entertainment made a conscious decision very early on to return Diablo to its artistic roots, offering the graphical fidelity of modern games, but still keeping that gloomy, dark atmosphere of the early Diablo titles. The developers explained the art direction of Diablo 4 as being one inspired by Renaissance and Romantic landscape paintings.
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Players will get a detailed look into how this aesthetic translates into Diablo 4’s depiction of Sanctuary next week, as the upcoming quarterly update was teased by Community Lead Adam Fletcher on Twitter, bringing Diablo 4’s developer blogs back to its regular schedule following a short delay. The focus will be on environment art, and given how much emphasis the developers of the game have teased Diablo 4’s open world, there will no doubt be a lot of locations to showcase.
Diablo 4 will feature five distinct regions of Sanctuary at launch, covering the lands of Scosglen, Dry Steppes, Fractured Peaks, Kehjistan, and Hawezar – offering locations both familiar and foreign to longtime Diablo players. With Kehjistan returning to Diablo 4 after being featured in Diablo 3’s second Act, the game will also revisit its sprawling capital city of Caldeum – now fallen into ruin in the aftermath of Malthael’s reaping.
Diablo 4 is in development for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
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