It’s fair to say that back when it was first announced in 2018, Diablo Immortal was not warmly received; likely because fans were eagerly awaiting the next major Diablo game, and not a mobile installment. In fact, some have speculated back then that Immortal will be just a re-skin of an existing mobile game.
That is not the case though as, in a recent roundtable interview, Senior Combat Designer Julian Love shared with us how Diablo Immortal “does not feel like some other mobile game that’s out right now.” While there might be elements of the game that are inspired by some aspects of other mobile games, Immortal still promises to feel like a Diablo game fisrt and foremost.
Regarding this, Love elaborated:
“I can only speak for myself and say that when we’re making Diablo for mobile, and we just sort of played a lot of different games and collected, you know, the different things from each of them. They’re oftentimes really small things like, hey when this game for instance does this with the controls or this one has a little piece of like extra feedback that we like, or something like that. It’s usually never a major overarching inspiration because I think one of our challenges is that we first have to make it feel like a Diablo game and not like some other game that’s out there. It needs to feel more like it’s a member of the Diablo franchise but existing on mobile as a first-class citizen; it needs to feel like it was born there.”
Based on what we’ve played so far in the Diablo Immortal Alpha, the game does play like its own game, and not just a reskin of an existing Diablo-clone for smartphones. It definitely plays more like an actual Diablo game, just with added MMO elements.
“So yeah, we all borrow a small collection of little things in order to get there,” said Love. “But I think a lot of it is still looking back at past Diablo games, and also partnering with the other teams that are developing Diablo products at Blizzard and putting all of that together to make a final product.”
Aside from how Diablo Immortal is being treated as a full entry into the series, Love also shared some details on the future of the game. Specifically in that there’s way more content that will to be added to the game that’s not yet in the current Alpha.
“You’re gonna expect that it is just the beginning, really. It will seems like the end but it is not – it’s the start of something really big and something that’s going to take a long time. We have a lot of content lined up, years’ worth of content lined up in fact, and this will include everything you can imagine,” said Love. “There will be new zones, obviously, story extensions, new bosses, new systems, and new classes. This may include some old favorites, making their way from a previous version of Diablo, and it may even include all new classes that make their way into the world of Sanctuary for the very first time within Diablo immortal.”
Diablo Immortal will release for Android and iOS soon. Pre-registration for the game is open at the Diablo Immortal website.