There are already many helpful posts that deal with gameplay, mechanics and systems feedback that I hope Blizzard take into consideration. I will not be discussing any of those issues here, those issues are already being discussed elsewhere. Instead, I want to focus on my nitpicks and issues with graphics and presentation. This post is almost purely focused on visuals.
TL;DR - Two major points:
- Blizzard has made a lot of design choices for the sake of visual clarity that look unappealing and immersion-breaking (necro corpses, bright skeletons, combat text and icons). They should implement a “immersive” mode so that people may opt into this for a more immersive experience at the cost of extra visual clarity. One click and you don’t have meat pile corpses, glowing skeletons or giant icons floating over enemies’ heads.
- The art style and general aesthetics of the game are amazing and there has clearly been a lot of care, effort and attention put into recapturing the atmosphere of the first two Diablo games that helped define the series. This game could be one of the best looking ARPGs ever. However, there are a lot of cut-corners and cheap elements in terms of graphics, UI and animations that do not mesh with the beautiful work that’s been done on the environments, character models, item models and cinematics. If we’re going to be playing this game for years to come and some elements of it already look dated in 2023, those elements are only going to look worse in the future. Blizzard’s art teams are some of the best in the industry and are more than capable of bringing everything up to the amazing standard already set by the general art style and visuals in this game that are exemplified in the characters and environments. Also, please fix HDR!
High Visual Clarity vs. Immersion
There’s no denying this is a beautiful game, but the visuals are sometimes clouded by some overbearing design choices and UI elements. There is so much goodness here that it needs to be given the room to breathe and the space to shine.
Blizzard has made many choices that prioritize visual clarity and accessibility. The Necromancer’s corpse mechanic is a little unsightly, and can be immersion-breaking whenever a ghost or skeleton drops a pile of bloodied flesh. Further, the Necromancer’s glowing skeletons look arcade-y and out of place in the world. The over-the-head icons for status effects, and the floating combat text can also fill a screen during big encounters.
All of the aforementioned design choices are implemented to easily convey information to the player with a high level of visual clarity. I don’t think these choices are inherently bad and a lot of players will benefit from them. I think accessibility is very important and I’m glad Blizzard included these design elements for those who want/need them, however, it should also come with options. And while Blizzard may have been striving for high visual clarity, I think they’ve also stepped over into visual clutter with some of these design choices.
I play on console through my TV, sitting back on a couch, and even for me I find that a lot of these design choices are over the top for my needs. Playing the Necromancer, the corpse mechanic did not appear helpful, but almost quite the opposite. A screen full of enemies, minions and chunky, glowing corpses is not clear. It’s cluttered and makes it hard to distinguish any of the action. Playing the Druid, I was constantly immobilizing enemies and couldn’t even see my own character through the sea of floating “blue, ensnared foot” icons and the constant pop-ups of “immobilized” littering my screen. I did not have trouble seeing the charred remains of my obliterated enemies, small critters running through the open world or other little details. I would have been more than fine without the overbearing visual designs I mentioned above. If I’m finding these visuals to be too much on console, I can only imagine how frustrating they are for some PC players.
However, I know that what suits me does not suit everyone. I don’t play with health bars or damage numbers, and a lot of other people do the exact opposite. I don’t want to take these design choices and visuals away from anyone who benefits from them. To me, however, they are detrimental and I would love for Blizzard to give players an option for a more immersive experience.
I think the best solution to this issue would be to implement an “Immersive” mode (or have the default be “High Visual Clarity” mode that people opt out of) that reduces some of these design choices that benefit gameplay over atmosphere. In this “immersive” mode, there wouldn’t be large status icons popping up above enemies’ heads, the Necromancer’s corpses could be replaced with subtle, red, wispy beams, and their skeletons would no longer have the pristine, white bones and bright, blue glow. I can’t understate how much a huge improvement this would be to my gameplay experience.
Blizzard, your artists have created a beautiful world, with incredible-looking characters and terrifying-looking monsters for us to slay. Please, do not force us to obfuscate it with excessive UI elements and immersion-breaking visual designs that were created for the sake of readability. Let me truly appreciate and enjoy this visual feast you have created and lose myself in all of the little details, even if it means I’ll die a little more often along the way.
With this big point out of the way, I’m going to move onto more specific feedback. Much of it will be reiterative or duplicative of what I said here, but I want to include it there to provide more in-depth or specific feedback.
HDR
HDR needs work because it is certainly not properly implemented when playing on a console through a TV. It actually washes the image out to such a degree thatthe game looks better on SDR. Again, I was playing on a PS5 through an LG OLED C1 TV. I have my TV properly calibrated for gaming and everything else I’ve played on it looks amazing. Diablo 4, on the other hand, is washed out, overly-bright and the black level raise is insane, making the game look sub-par.
Most well-lit areas looked amazing, while the dark ones seemed hazier and washed out due to the poor HDR. This washed-out look seemed to be exacerbated by “fog” effects which looked fine in the middle of a snowstorm, but seeing that washed-out look when battling Vhenard felt wrong. No amount of adjusting the settings could completely correct this issue. Adjusting the TV settings did further help to a small degree, but not entirely. If I’m missing something, hopefully that’s made more clear at launch so I can get the desired picture quality.
Transmog
I generally really like the transmog system and I love how dyes have been integrated. Hopefully we see more dyes in the full release. I have a few small issues, however, that I believe could be easily resolved.
- The option to transmog the unequipped appearance for weapons. It would be great to have the option to have some weapons appear unequipped while sheathed. For example, as a Barbarian, I had a build that only used two-handers and I would have enjoyed the ability to hide the two, dual-wield weapons via transmog. Same could be said for a ranged-only or melee-only rogue build. Obviously, this would come with the understanding that if the player used any skills that require the transmogged/hidden weapons, they’d appear out of nowhere in their hands for the attack animation and stay there while wielded.
- Appearances should be unlocked when we equip an item or extract its legendary power, as well as salvaging it. Not being able to dye an equipped item appearance I haven’t salvaged before, or not being able to transmog an appearance from an item that I’m saving for a different build is a little frustrating.
- Please allow us the option to transmog different items within the same general category, e.g., any two-handed slashing weapon can be transmogged into any other (sword to axe, axe to polearm etc.). This was an option we had back in Diablo 3. I can use a sword or an axe for the same ability, I don’t see why I can’t transmog one into the other. Maybe the class fantasy for my necromancer is to wield and gnarled scythe but my best-rolled weapon is a sword. It’s a bummer we can’t transmog this when we could in the last game.
More UI/HUD customization is needed
- The option to turn off all combat text (dodge, missed, fortified, vulnerable etc). It’s hard to watch the combat on screen when the words “Vulnerable”, “Immobilized”, “Immune” etc. keep popping up and obscuring the view.
- The option to turn off ALL damage numbers including special hits (don’t show bleeds, poisons, other dots, immune, etc.). Same as above, just wanted to reiterate for clarity that I would love to turn off all floating text in combat.
- The option to turn off enemy and NPC highlighting. Being able to adjust the color helps (set it to black and there’s no highlight), but an option to turn off highlighting entirely would be great.
- The option to turn off the large enemy health bars at the top of the screen (except for bosses).
- The option to remove health bars for special monsters such as elites or champs as well as regular monsters.
- The option to use the PC hot bar position in the bottom center would be nice.
- The option to scale down, reduce the presence of or remove the target marker that appears above the targeted enemy on consoles.
- The option to make the mini-map more transparent.
- The button icons underneath the skill bar on consoles feel disconnected from the art style and aesthetic of the skill bar. They should either be removed or more seamlessly integrated with the gothic style and take up less space. If they are removed, hovering over the skill bar with the mouse could show the button icons as an overlay, or for console, when having the emote wheel open, they could appear as an overlay on the skill bar.
- The text for item drops, dialogue and journals feels rather generic and disconnected from the overall art style and aesthetic. I think the simpler, more readable text is great on item descriptions, but is very disappointing to see out in the game world. I think the text we see for item names when looking at them in our inventory would fit much better with the overworld.
- The circular arrows that appear under the characters when playing multiplayer have been the subject of much criticism, with some people calling them out as reminiscent of a mobile game. Being able to adjust the color/hue of these went a long to remedying some of my issues, however, I still think they should be more integrated with game’s general artstyle. I’d love to see the arrows given the line art appearance of the demonic scrawls/runes that we see out in the game world.
- I’m unsure if this is an unintended issue or a design choice but the “Press button to bring up emote wheel” prompt appears to be persistent and stays on the screen permanently. This prompt should be able to be removed. The same could be said of the Map/Journal prompt.
Character Customization
I had a lot of fun with the character creator in this game, and I can see the potential for a lot of unique character designs. Unfortunately, some of the choices are very limited.
- Add more hairstyles. I feel like this a staple request for every character creator ever. More hairstyles are better and a lot of iconic hairstyles are missing.
- Add more faces. I was very disappointed at how few faces there were in the character creator.
- Having eyebrows tied to facial hair sucks. Some of the best beards in the game come with some of the most ridiculous looking eyebrows and I can’t create the look I’m trying to achieve. If it’s possible to de-couple these, that would be great.
In-game Cinematics
I’m not sure if this is due to them being a work-in-progress and there’s some rendering and shader issues, but the in-game cinematic we saw in the beta did not look great. If we take the opening cinematic, the scene where the horse stomps its hooves is an excellent example and poor visual fidelity. The snow beneath its feet and the snow on top of its hooves stays completely static in the moment and looks more like icing sugar. It’s not good.
The in-game cinematic with the church-goers and the unfortunate priest also suffers from a lot of pop-in, shader issues and rough looking models (that church bell is painfully polygonal and I can count the pixels on the rope).
Hopefully these are refined and improved for launch, as I can’t help but admit that I was a little disappointed in this regard when compared to how beautiful the rest of the game looks.
Animations
Some of the animations and graphics do not feel in line with the art direction of the world and, I think, contribute to the “mobile game” feeling some people are expressing. This is particularly noticeable in NPCs emoting physically, or the generic “rubbing hands together” interaction animation that plays for almost anything the player character does. There are also a lot of small touches that I think could go a long way. For example, when Neyrelle dispels the Horadric runes on the sealed doors, instead of simply fading away, an animation of the rune unwriting itself would be a nice touch. The foregoing example is an extreme nitpick so I’ll try to address the ones I found the most jarring below:
Player Skill Animations
General:
- Any ability that can be looped back into itself should have an A/B variation. For example, Rend swings from right to left, then left to right again when looping it back into itself, Lunging Strike, when using a two-handed bludgeoning weapon, goes up and comes down over the right shoulder and then the does the same for left. Death Blow would benefit greatly from copying this, since they seem to share the same basic “A” animation. Another instance would be an alternating cast animation for Bone Spear so when I dump 4 of them in a row into a boss, there’s a little variety. Small touches for repeating animations make a huge difference compared to watching the same canned animation replay over and over. This might not be possible with every animation, but it certainly helps with the visual polish and presentation.
- Some basic skills need a little improvement to their hit feedback. Separate from the damage associated with these skills, and just strictly in terms of feel, they need a little more oomph. It would be nice to see a bit more visual impact and response from monsters when hit with basic skills. It’s not egregious by any means, but the hit feedback on core skills and others feels so satisfying that it can be a little disappointing whenever you switch back to using a skill that lacks that sort of impact.
Barbarian:
The barbarian, in general, has very nice animations. I feel like they suffer the most with spammable skills without an alternating A/B animation due to the way it throws off the momentum of swinging around your weapons. Thankfully, most of their skills don’t have this issue, but it is noticeable when it happens. Beyond that, the buffs might be the other pressing issues for barbarians, visually.
- The buff visuals for shouts, berserking, etc. on the Barbarian are a little rough and while I appreciate them being very prominent for accessibility, I would love a toggle-able option (Immersive Mode) to have them significantly, or somewhat, reduced.
- The Wrath of the Berserker commits one of my ultimate pet peeves and transforms the character model’s appearance. This transformation hides my transmog, doesn’t look cool enough to justify itself and isn’t as visually impactful as a druid transformation. I know this is personal taste, however, and I’m sure some people like it.
- Death Blow, Hammer of the Ancients (I think, didn’t really mess with it), any skill that repeats the one animation really needs that A/B variation. It’s not fun to watch when it looks like my Barbarian is stuck on loop. Like I said, Lunging Strike with a bludgeoning weapon does it well, so spread the love.
Sorcerer:
The Sorcerer, again, has a lot of great visuals, but also lacks in specific areas. Notably, they have a handful of repetitive animations and some unappealing skill appearances.
- The fire spell animations for the Sorcerer look rather low quality and cheap compared to a lot of the other skills. Incinerate, in particular, should react to movement, with the flame billowing in whichever direction you move, rather than functioning like a stiff laser beam. Maybe the fire skills will look better at higher skill intensities, however, they’re still lacking compared to the low level ice and lightning skills. Right now, they’re looking a little more gooey than they should.
- The giant flaming snake is a contentious skill and, while I actually quite like It in concept, it definitely feels a little detached from the game world and could use fine tuning. Making the snake look more fiery and less physical would solve the biggest issue with this skill. The flame effects it already has are nice, just needs some further refinement, please.
- The frost armor spell for Sorcerer needs a visual redesign. I think transforming into a walking iceberg just doesn’t lend itself to a visually pleasing ability. Maybe fractured crystals of ice and whorls of snow circling the Sorcerer instead. Maybe floating sheets of ice circling the Sorcerer like the Druid’s Earthen Bulwark (although, I have some issues with that ability). As uninspired as it sounds, a frosty version of flame shield would look better, in my opinion.
Druid:
Whoever worked on the Druid obviously put a lot of love and effort into it, because this class has some of the best animations and skills in the game. I believe it’s the gold standard the other classes should be held to. That said, I have little nitpicks.
- Similar to Frost Armor for the Sorcerer, the earthen bulwark ability looks rather clunky with the giant boulders circling around the druid, but still better than frost armor. I understand the visual purpose of the large plates of rock, but would prefer to see them scaled down as they create more visual clutter and make it seem less “mobile game-y”. The green barrier effect behind the rocks also looks pretty rough.
- The vines are pretty good but, again, could be scaled down in size. Having a more numerous tangle of smaller vines, as well as a handful of larger ones would look more in touch with the game world and make the skill look less like it was pulled from WoW.
Necromancer:
The necromancer seems like the most visually contradicted character, simultaneously having some of the best and worst skill animations. The level of quality that’s apparent in their armor and weapon design, as well as skills like corpse explosion and blood surge is amazing. On the other end of the spectrum, the visuals for the corpse mechanic, the skeleton summons and almost all of the basic skills are amongst the worst in the game.
- The corpses, while great for visual clarity to a degree, are clunky, unappealing to look at and often lead to a lot of visual clutter.
- The Bone Splinters animation is too conical, stiff and pointy/polygonal in appearance. The projectiles need to look more fluid and ghostly, flowing through the air with natural movement. The inspiration for this skill, Teeth from Diablo 2, should be used as a visual reference for how the spell should look. D2R is a great resource to pull from. Right now, though, it looks like my Necromancer is shooting out bright green ice cream cones.
- When Enhanced Bone Spear shatters, the three projectiles seem to reuse the animation from Bone Splinters. If the Bone Splinters visuals get improved, this should carry over to Enhanced Bone Spear.
- Blood Lance suffers from the same issues as Bone Splinters. This spell doesn’t look like it’s made from blood, and there’s very little feeling of fluidity in the projectile. This is another example of too pointy/stiff. Bone Spear, on the other hand, actually looks pretty great. Maybe the projectile could be elongated. But please bring Blood Lance’s visual quality up to par with Bone Spear at least.
- The reap animation for the Necromancer is incredibly disappointing. This partially recycled animation from D3 doesn’t live up to other class ability animations by a long shot. Watching my equipped weapon turn into this plain, unimpressive, low-fidelity ghost scythe looks low-effort and cheap. Not to mention that it detracts from the feeling of using the weapon I’ve found and proudly equipped to use in battle, especially when I’m using a non-scythe weapon like a sword. What makes it even worse is when using a one-hander and off-hand, they get sheathed to play this attack animation. I’m not sure how to fix this to get the desired result. Perhaps it could function a little like the Sorcerer’s Arc Lash, where a wave of darkness follows the swing of the weapon, or each swing of the weapon causes a short-range wave of darkness to emanate out in front of the caster. Think caster frame swords from Destiny 2, but very short-range. Whatever you do, just please scrap this current animation.
- The skeleton summons need to lose the bright glow and pristine white bones. We watch these skeletons claw their way out of the ground when we summon them. They should look a little more ragged and dirty like the enemy skeletons that we fight.
- The Necromancer’s summons should disappear while in town. It’s just a little cluttered to run around town visiting the merchants with my entire undead army crowding me the whole time.
Rogue:
I didn’t play rogue in the beta since I felt like we saw a lot of them in pre-release footage and wanted to focus on the other classes. That said, most of the rogue animations are actually really well done. Tiny nitpicks below.
- Caltrops don’t need to be so comically large. We can already see the area of effect quite easily without the massive caltrops placed throughout the circular area. They should be scaled down considerably and, instead, be smaller and more numerous.
- The Shadow Clone suffers some of the same issues as the ghost enemies. It just looks like a little too much like a player character model with busted textures. And the constantly pulsing shadow effect is far too rapid. It should waft slowly like billows of smoke.
Enemy Combat Visuals/Animations
- The channeling animations—such as the Hell Spawns in the Vhenard fight, or the Insatiable Hunger and Rites of Ascension world events—need some work. This animation is very dated and looks like it still belongs in Warcraft 3. The beam is stiff and unnatural. It doesn’t look like something happening within the game world, but rather an arcade-y, gameplay contrivance. It appears like a stiff beam tied between the characters rather than energy or life force being funneled from one creature to the other. Conversely, the Necromancer’s “Decompose” does a good job of conveying this visual effect and manages to hide the “laser beam” effect quite well.
- This isn’t animation specific, but the ghost enemies have been called out a lot, and rightfully so. The red ones do look significantly better than the mint green ones, however, I think they share similar issues. The big failure with the ghosts is that they look more like glowing, colourful human NPCs rather than ghosts. They should be ethereal and otherworldly, with a trail of wispy ectoplasm flowing from their every movement. There are already many great examples of this effect in the game, please apply it to the actual ghosts enemies. Right now, the ghosts look too opaque and physically solid. They are also too luminescent. The mint green ones in particular are far too bright. I think these definitely need another pass considering how many the player encounters early on and these ghosts are a poor indication of the quality monster designs found throughout the rest of the game.
- Some of the battle indicators like the spinning blue circles over stunned enemies, or the ensnared foot over immobilized enemies, don’t feel connected to the game world’s art style and look a little arcade-y. I know readability is important, but grounding these indicators a little bit more in the game world’s art style would really help sell the atmosphere more. I feel the “seeing stars” indicator from Neyrelle’s stun should be the type of visual that should be used as an indicator. Something subtle and part of the world.
General World Animations and Graphics
Some of the graphics and animations we see out in the game world are disappointingly clunky and cheap. It really detracts from the experience when these high quality environments and character models are juxtaposed with low-effort VFX and animations.
The side quests and campaign missions have all been excellent at world building and establishing this dark, grim and morbid atmosphere. It’s a shame to see that atmosphere/illusion shattered by cartoonish and sloppy animation work or dated graphics that do not mesh with everything else we’re being presented. I think the following side quest is the best example of all of the foregoing points.
SPOILER WARNING!
Unyielding Flesh is a great side quest that might be one of the worst offenders in terms of cheap animations and visual presentation. Starting with the low-quality looking chains clipping through Feodor and not properly holding his arms in place or anchoring to incorrect positions, to Feodor’s blocky, lo-fi model. This scene loses some of its impact due to these unpolished visuals. Potentially some of the worst graphics in the game right here.
Secondly, the encounter with Yulia suffers from some presentation issues. Her animations look canned and sync up poorly with her dialogue. I think having her move less, only animating to emphasize certain points, rather than cycling through out of time, canned animations would look better. Next, when her speech culminates in her transformation into a Hell Spawn, it happens through a simple, unimpressive burst of blood. The Hell Spawn transformation in the church at Nostrava was done much better than this and at the very least should be copied here.
According to the December 2021 Developer Update Blog (this video in particular: Diablo IV Quarterly Update Blog - VFX Death Geo and Blood On Characters - YouTube), there are multiple parts of an NPC rig, from skeleton, to musculature to the skin. Ideally, for Yulia’s (and any others) transformation, seeing these parts form in somewhat sequential order, paired with the blood explosion would look much better.
Finally, and possibly the worst offender, is the infinitely repeating blood burst animation that appears when you remove the dagger from Feodor. This animation could look better, and should certainly not repeat infinitely.
END SPOILERS!
On a separate note, the horse models don’t look great from what we have seen. The hair is rubbery and their manes and tails look flat and fake. These issues might be resolved to some degree with the various horse cosmetics, but throwing saddles and trophies on the base model won’t completely fix them.
Lighting
Not much to say here, as it’s actually quite good in its current state, but I’m certainly hoping/looking forward to some minor improvements in the in-game lighting. The shadow always being behind the character is a little unnerving and a lot of the beautiful assets in this game could be further elevated with great lighting. Just a related point of praise to underscore the importance of good lighting, the lighting during the Druid’s Cataclysm ability adds a lot to the skill and the execution on that aspect is excellent.
General Praise
I wanted to dedicate a little section for praise, encouragement and appreciation for everything the team has done right. Despite my feedback and my criticism in this post, I want to give a massive kudos to everyone who worked on this game because it’s truly a feast for the eyes at times.
The environments are one of the strongest points of this game’s visual presentation. The Forbidden City dungeon is just absolutely chef’s kiss. Even the small slice of the game we got to play felt like it was really anchored in a living world. I can’t wait to seamlessly travel between the different zones and see the landscape around me begin to shift and change as it reflects the topography of the different areas I explore. It’s a world I want to get lost in.
All of the visuals are a massive improvement over Diablo 3. From the general art style, to the world, to the character, enemy, armor and weapon designs, everything looks so much better. One of the biggest improvements from Diablo 3 in terms of animations, for me, is the fact that the players’ skills actually utilize their weapons when attacking (except for you, Reap). Seeing the Druid swing their staff, the Sorcerer waving their wand and the Barbarian switching seamlessly between the weapons in their arsenal, it all looks so fluid and satisfying.
Beyond that, I love how grounded the players spells and skills look (with a few exceptions that I’ve pointed out above). The Sorcerer’s Chain Lightning, the Necro’s Corpse Explosions and the Barbarian’s Rend all look like natural abilities that belong in this world.
As mentioned before, I love the transmog system. The fact that the appearances unlock account-wide, allowing me to deck out all my characters, even if I’ve only been grinding on one, is extremely satisfying and motivates me to play more. Being rewarded like this actually increases my engagement and my level of investment/
The character design for all the heroes are amazing. Like I said, I’d love more customization options but as it stands now, I feel like each character class has such a unique visual archetype that provides so much space to tinker with appearances and is immensely enjoyable.
Conclusion
I love the game so far. Depending on how launch goes, I am planning to buy this game and hope to support it for a long time. These issues I have mentioned are not all things I except to be ready by launch, but putting in the effort to polish some of these points, even if over time, would help tremendously with immersion, presentation and selling people on the atmosphere and the idea that this is a game with high production values. These things, though probably trivial to many, can do a lot of heavy-lifting in terms of bringing in newcomers to this franchise and hopefully growing the ARPG genre.
and earthen bulwark fit on bear size just on skinny wolf is big/clunky/wierd