The 18th of September seemed to be a day of leaks. After Grand Theft Auto 6 was the target of a 90-clip leak, Blizzard’s upcoming title Diablo IV had 43 mins of gameplay footage get out into the wild.
Two videos were shared on Reddit by user iV1rus0, one with 5 mins and the second with 38 mins of gameplay. They’re not as widespread and varied as GTA’s leaks but show a lot more of what the game will be.
They appear to have come out much more different too. This wasn’t a hacker; this was the recording of a Discord stream. Apparently, a Diablo IV play tester was streaming his gameplay to friends, who can be heard talking about what they were seeing.
The footage shows 43 mins of Barbarian gameplay, with the player splitting time between dual wielding and two-handing weapons.
As this screenshot shows, the Diablo IV inventory system has a new bonus for Barbarian lovers. The player is carrying 4 equipped weapons at once: A Two-Handed Mace, a Two-Handed, and two one-handed weapons for dual wielding.
The gameplay footage shows the player swapping between the weapons, but the available skills do not change.
Although this is just a private test build, which shows a game still relatively early in development, the premium shop is already here. It might still change. The world still has a lot of placeholder textures and text-to-speech “voice-acting,” but it seems pretty final from what is shown.
Palladium is the name currently given to the Diablo IV premium currency. It doesn’t seem to be purchasable yet, so no conversion to real money is shown. This is what the premium shop looks like in this build:
The cosmetics tab seems to corroborate the claim that only cosmetic items will be available in the premium shop. These are very similar to those seen in Path of Exile, but no ability effect changes are available for purchase.
Albeit the leak only shows Barbarian gameplay, we got a chance to look at the map in Diablo IV. And it looks pretty massive.
The player is also only taking on level 30ish quests, so this should be early to mid-campaign content. This map will likely only be a region in Diablo IV.
Despite it only being a private test build, the game is already looking pretty impressive. Animations are crisp, visuals are great despite the poor bitrate, and the attacks sound amazing.
This Boss fight at the end of the footage encapsulates a lot of what Diablo IV seems to be doing right. It looks tough, it looks fun, and it sounds great.
All in all, Diablo IV is looking well underway for its 2023 release. The gameplay we’ve seen has looked exciting, but given Blizzard’s track record, it is hard not to wince at seeing a premium shop this early in development. Let’s hope greed doesn’t harm what can be a great game.
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