In a year packed with major game releases, Diablo IV has been among the biggest. Building on the groundwork laid by 2012’s Diablo 3, the June 2023 release of the sequel has been one of the biggest launches in the studio’s history, with fans flocking to a more strategic and thoughtful take on the franchise’s standard action-RPG combat. Hence news, announced at BlizzCon earlier this month, that the game would be getting a full expansion, Vessel Of Hatred, to build out its latest story of the war between humanity and the forces of Hell, and follow major character Neyrelle as she delves into the history of the secretive and malevolent Lord Of Hatred, Mephisto, revisiting the mysterious jungle realm of Nahantu in the process.
Curious about Diablo IV’s future (plus the road that’s led us up to this point), we sat down at BlizzCon with Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson and game director Joe Shely to talk about the game’s big year, where they plan to take it next—and all those times The Butcher showed up to murder its hapless players over the last fiv months.
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The A.V. Club: How would you describe the core concept of the upcoming Vessel Of Hatred expansion?
Rod Fergusson: I think with expansions, you have a choice. It’s either a standalone expansion, or one that continues the story you were telling. And we felt like the story [of Diablo IV], where we left it, was so compelling. We wanted to keep it going. And so you get deeper with Neyrelle, and her relationship with Mephisto.
And beyond just being story-driven, Diablo IV, having this Old Master’s kind of art direction, you get a very medieval, kind of Eastern European castles vibe to it. And Sanctuary’s more than that. So we felt that this was a great opportunity to bring in another environment for players to play in. Going into these deep, lush, mysterious jungles. And having that little bit of a nostalgia hit from Diablo II, it felt like a cool place to go. It all kind of went “Click, click, click, this is how this should work.” We’re excited to bring players back to that place.
AVC: Mephisto has been around as one of the series’ three Big Bads since the first Diablo, but until Diablo IV, he’s always been a little out of focus. How do you approach fleshing a character like that out?
Joe Shely: Even with stories about demons and angels, the way people relate to those stories is through relationships. With Mephisto, we have a really interesting relationship with him and his daughter, Lilith [the main antagonist of Diablo IV]. They’re in opposition to each other, but they also have a relationship with each other.
RF: When you think of a “Prime Evil,” you can kind of get into the mustache-twirling villain, “Put them on the train tracks” stuff. And what Lilith really brought as an antagonist was a really good sense of nuance, where we had an antagonist who really believes she’s doing the right thing. It’s funny, the number of people that come up to us and say, “I would have chosen Team Lilith at the end.” That sense of gray also comes through with Mephisto: “Wait, I have a Prime Evil helping me, helping me work against his own daughter.” That grayness is really compelling for us, as we look to explore that relationship more.
AVC: Without getting into spoilers, what are you hoping to express with the expansion’s play?
Joe Shely: The class we’re bringing to the expansion is an entirely new class [i.e., not a returning class from a previous game]. And that means exciting new gameplay opportunities for us. And it’s happening in a new environment, which will afford us many opportunities to bring new gameplay through the environment, as well. And, of course, the expansion is built on all the Seasons we’re releasing now, and next year as well. And those Seasons also give us lots of opportunities to add lots of new gameplay mechanics, bring more endgame to Diablo IV, make improvements to the itemization and rewards part of the play experience.
RF: And new monster families. We’re being cagey, but there’s a reason we keep saying there’ll be “New ways to play.” There’s going to be other things too, that we’re not talking about yet, but that will be exciting sort of innovations within the Diablo space for us.
AVC: Diablo IV uses a games-as-service model for new content, where you’re updating the game almost constantly. How do you distinguish an expansion from that other content you’re already pushing out for free through your Seasons system?
RF: Scope.
If you look at what we do for Seasons today, we don’t have a big campaign with cinematics. You have a questline, or a very robust sidequest, become a vampire hunter or something. And its fun to do! But it’s really a sidequest: There’s no big cinematic moments, no big story thing. And you look at the mechanics that we have with, say, the vampiric powers, and there’s a theme and there’s a mechanic that go hand in hand to make a Season a Season.
But when we look at what an expansion is, we’re talking about adding a whole new zone to the continent in terms of where you can play, we’re talking about adding a whole new class that opens up a new way to play, even going back and playing the original campaign as the new class. It’s all of that stuff. Because you’re asking people to put money up again for an expansion, where Seasons are for free. You have to make sure that you have a scope of a significant enough size that people go like, “Oh, I want to pay for that.” And that’s been sort of the challenge.
AVC: Going now from something very high-level to something very focused: Every Diablo IV player has their story about The Butcher [a recurring enemy who first appeared in the series’ first game, and who can appear randomly in Diablo’s IV dungeon] showing up where they weren’t expecting, and just murdering them. What design principle were you trying to express with that enemy?
JS: Uncertainty and surprise. We want to create more opportunities like that. The Treasure Goblin is also that kind of mechanic, but in reverse, where it’s a huge opportunity for reward. The Butcher is an increased challenge moment, but it’s also a reflection of the fantasy of The Butcher. Right? We talk a lot about how Diablo IV is inspired by the Diablos that came before it. One of the things that the Butcher fantasy is about is that sense of unpredictability and threat. It’s kind of a horror moment. It’s a sense of being startled, and sort of changing from a mode where you feel like you’re really in control of the combat, and like what’s going on, to a feeling where you’re sort of on the back foot a little bit. And we wanted to capture that, the way that the Butcher felt in the earlier Diablo games in Diablo IV.
And the other thing that it does, that I think is really cool, is that often the player’s story of their interactions with The Butcher will go something like, “Yeah, I was playing the game and I was having a great time, but then The Butcher showed up, and it was really scary, and he killed me. And then he escaped. And then I encountered him again, and he killed me again.” And then there’s probably a couple of encounters like that. And then the player story is “And then The Butcher showed up, and I was ready for him. And then The Butcher showed up, and I defeated him.” There’s a really good little story within that, the sort of broader context of Diablo.
RF: And it’s a player-created story. You have this revenge moment: “He has it out for me, he’s my nemesis.” And we didn’t design The Butcher for this, but in modern games, you have to have conversation about, “What is it about your game that’s streamable? How do I get people to want to watch the game being played?” It wasn’t necessarily planned for that, but one of the first thing that popped for us was the Butcher ambushes. And suddenly my Twitter feed is full of people going “Oh crap, The Butcher!” It’s one of those things that you have to have in modern games: What about your game is exciting to watch?